Everything Pure (Part 2)

Which of my readers has not seen a movie with at least some violence in it? I know I have. I have seen a lot of movies with excessive, pervasive violence. I want to ask the same questions as before. Should we be watching movies with violence in them? Does God care about the violent content of our movies? How should we respond to movies with excessive violence? I will be the first to come forward and say I don't have a solid answer. What I do have is an opinion. Actually, I don't even know that I have a solid opinion. Lets just say I have some thoughts on the matter.

Let us start off with the basics. What is this violent content I am talking about? I think that question is fairly self explanatory. Any movie that has death, torture, or even simple brawling displayed has "violent" content. Why put the violence in the movies? This, too, is simple. People, especially men, like to see it. It is entertaining, and gets your blood pumping. The thrill as the hero is captured enthralls us, and we just can't wait to see him bust out of the prison cell and beat up/kill a few bad dudes, then make his escape. It gets adrenaline pumping. Honestly, the violent content is what sells movies. Without it, many movies would never have been a success. Take the Saw series for example. The Saw movies flaunt grizzly, graphic, torture-like violence, and it is what sells the movies. People obviously like to see it.

Violence, I believe, can be summed up into four categories.
1) Accidental violence, which is arguably not violence at all
2) Violence related to justice being served, e.g. the death penalty or acts of war
3) Violence due to a desire for personal revenge or for spite
4) Violence resulting from mental instability or illness, e.g. violent acts committed by psychopaths and sociopaths.

Accidental violence is in many regularly watched movies. I recall a movie I watched when I was a child; some of you may recognize or remember the movie "No More Baths". In this particular movie, which contains a largely Christian message, a girl falls down and hits her head on a rock. Blood is seen, she is seen crying, and she is taken to the hospital. The cause of this fall was entirely accidental, as it was a dog jumping for the ball that she had just caught that knocked her down. I think it is safe to say that most people would not be offended at such content in a movie. There was no preconceived plot, or otherwise unhealthy motive behind the event, it just happened. I can understand parents wanting to be cautious about what their child sees; even I remember as a 8 year old squirt cringing every time that part of the movie came up, but I doubt anyone would be truly offended.

Moment of Truth: Should we be watching violence caused accidentally in movies?
My Opinion: At parents' discretion, though I see no moral issue whatsoever.

Now we make a bit of a leap. When a man is killed in the name of justice, it is just not the same as when a girl gets bowled over by a dog and bonks her head. I can recall, from limited number of movies that I have seen, graphic hangings, lethal injections gone terribly wrong, and sometimes nothing short of a bullet to the head, blood, gore, and all displayed on camera. All in the name of justice. The content itself is no doubt very intense, but should we be watching it? I think it boils down to one question: Was the act truly just?

Though some would disagree, in the case of justice related violence, I think it crucially important to know the motive of the individual or individuals executing said justice. For example, if the man being put to death has actually committed the crime he is accused of, and if the crime he is accused of is truly one deserving death, that I think what you are observing when the gang of western villains is publicly hanged is less about the violence itself, and more about the message that peace is being restored. Really, the fact that the murderers have been executed in public is a declaration that vengeful, spiteful violence will not be tolerated, and those who are guilty of it will be duly rewarded. Nipping it at the bud, as it were. Fortunately for us, the Bible is not silent on this particular issue.

"For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer." --Romans 13:3-4

It would appear that the Bible is in favor of the death penalty, so long as it is executed with justice in mind. Should we observe it? Well, I suppose that is left up to the personal discretion of the observer; for instance, if the observer thinks he will lose sleep after watching such disturbing content, he may want to avoid it in the future.

Should the convicted be innocent of the crimes he is accused of, nonetheless punished with death, it is a different story. What we have here is either a case of vengeful or spiteful violence, that is if those condemning the innocent man know that he is innocent, or it is what we might classify as "accidental violence", that is if those condemning the innocent man did not know he was innocent. Again, we have a largely motive based scenario. If the latter, and the motives were clean, then I would argue that it is up to the personal discretion of the observer. If the former, than we have a completely separate case that will be discussed momentarily. In general, these same thoughts and conditions may be applied to war.

Moment of Truth: Should we be watching movies that contain justice related violence?
My Opinion: If the motives are clean, and justice is served, than I see no moral issue with it.

We come, then, to violent acts that are committed out of a feeling that one needs to avenge himself or a loved one, and violent acts that are committed to spite someone who has offended the person in question. These acts are of a totally different nature than the ones previously discussed. Instead of being based in a sense of judicial justice, the movie-goer is assaulted with graphic imagery of death that is meant either to satisfy the character's anger and personal need for revenge, or simply because the character, disliking another man, kills him. I begin to doubt the innocence of watching movies filled with this kind of violence.

In the first case we have a man seeking revenge that is not his to take.

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'” --Romans 12:19

In the second case we have a man directly and deliberately breaking the sixth commandment.

“You shall not murder.” --Exodus 20:13

The Saw movies are a good example of this type of violence. In this grizzly movie series we have one man, called “Jigsaw”, executing his sick sense of justice on wanted criminals. The idea is that these people, serial killers, child rapists, etc. are brought into Jigsaw's little house of horrors, and Jigsaw makes them pay for what they did. In terrible, terrible ways. For the purpose of this blog post only I will give two particular examples.

In the first, a convicted, repeat offender child rapist is chained by all his limbs to a bed, and is under constant, miserable torture. Jigsaw's ominous voice comes over speakers telling him that, because of the acts the man has committed, in order to stop the misery he is experiencing, he must decide whether to push the button at his right hand, which will gouge out his eyes that caused him to lust, or the button on his left, that will tear off all of his limb which actually committed the acts. The man panics, and pushes both.

In the second, a criminal warlord, and a serial killer is strapped to a machine that will inevitably, yet ever slowly crush his head if he does not push his face through a series of razor blades to press a button that will stop the machine. I can't tell you how it ends, because I never finished watching the scene.

While this type of violence seems to satisfy a skewed sense of justice for what these men did, we must remember that this character named Jigsaw has no authority other than what he has given himself, and therefore cannot truly or rightly execute true justice on these men. What he is doing is purely vengeful, thus he is breaking the biblical command not to take vengeance. These men truly deserve punishment, and strict punishment at that, but what the Saw series displays is far from the biblical definition of justice. When we hear what the men have done, it is naturally to be very angry. It is right to be angry. What is not right is acting on this anger. The Bible, in Ephesians warns us not to sin while we are angry. This is one very good example of what happens we we act in our anger. We take Justice from the hands of our authorities, and we take vengeance from the hands of God. Placing both in our own, feeble, unworthy, unable hands, we commit atrocities equal to those of the men we seek to punish.

Why, then, do we enjoy sitting through two hours of this type of chaotic, bloody vengeance and end by calling it a “good movie”? It is far from “good”. Spiteful vengeance is the way of the world. It is the way of life that we have put off through the transforming of our minds. God is working to sanctify us, and it seems that we work against Him when we sit back and “enjoy” a movie filled with the breaking of God's commands.

Moment of Truth: Should we be watching movies filled with spiteful, vengeful violence?
My Opinion: We should not.

Finally we come to the fourth category of violence; that committed due to mental instability or mental illness. As an example for this I will use “The Silence of the Lambs”, “Hannibal”, and “Hannibal Rising”, which is a movie series based on the acts of a man named Hannibal Lector; a cannibal and both a psychopath and a sociopath. In this movie series violent acts include the slitting of major arteries, men being eaten alive by animals, shootings, and of course cannibalism.

There is one main difference between this type of violence and the other types, and that is that there is no perceivable motive behind the killings in such movies. Maybe the villain feels like he has been wronged by society as a whole, and it out for blood. This would fall under my third category of violence. Pleasure, perhaps. Maybe the mentally unstable villain takes delight in watching his countless victims suffer for a bit before finishing them off while all of the movie-goers cringe and cover their eyes. Maybe the villain is vexed by an insatiable desire for blood that he just cannot explain; he feels the physical need to kill.

Frankly none of these are acceptable reasons for taking the life of another man, so should we be watching movies that contain this type of violence simply because we consider the movies to be entertaining?

Why do we watch movies? Because we find them either enjoyable and entertaining or educational. Unless we are forced, we do not watch movies that do not fall into one of those categories. So... which is it? Do we find the mindless killing of innocent human beings for the sake of personal pleasure entertaining and enjoyable? How about educational? It most certainly isn't educational. I begin to wonder if this is any different that attending the ancient arena fights, where to men would kill each other for the pleasure of the onlookers.

Moment of Truth: Should we be watching movies with violence due to mental instability?
My Opinion: I report, you decide. What do YOU think?

We cannot escape violence in today's entertainment, be it cartoon character thumping each other on the heads with hammers or psychopaths brutally slaughtering all who step in their way. While some I believe is justified, other movies are sending nothing but wrathful, vengeful messages to the public, and typically they are justified in some skewed way. Is it really a wholesome use of our time to be planting ourselves in front of the television to be indoctrinated with these hateful spiteful messages?

I don't really know. All I have is an opinion. I just think out loud; you have to decide for yourself.

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” --Ephesians 4:22-24