Should Christians Judge and Censor What They Watch and Read?

The censorship debate is for another time; what I criticise is the need to tell others what they should watch, and the belief that you can appeal to others of your very broad definition of faith that if they are genuinely living their life as their Master and Best Friend, the Supreme Being wants, then they will join you in your moral beliefs.

I am also against that often those offended by something which they have not seen. According to Wikipedia, Mary Whitehouse took a play to trial which she has never watched. I have been passed petitions against apparently blasphemous films which no-one singing or probably even who standard the list has viewed or done any research on. The Last Temptation of Christ was an example, which I later saw and my opinion is that the moral outrage is based (I suspect as in many cases) on a misunderstanding if not ignorance.

I see the guilt and angst of Christians having to constantly ask questions which seem so alien to the rest of the world as to perhaps be ridiculous. I do not think that anyone’s convictions should be ridiculed and I am not doing so here. But I am criticising the unnecessary conscience pricks and the marginalization that this causes. Like hibernating ladybirds, many Christians therefore cluster with their own and do not interact with all the beetles and spiders around them, assuming that anything that other minibeasts produce will trap them into a web or pincers of unholiness (or perhaps more truthfully – judgment from other ladybirds).

Given their views, I can see why Christians make their own films, books, theatre – it saves them having to (another quote from a pastor I met) ‘filter through the cross of Christ’ all the worldly media. But you’ll guess by now that I’m not joining them