What about the movies-the movies we are showing in our churches and in our schools? Are they a help to the spiritual life of our people? Are they an asset to our educational system? Or are they boring holes in the dikes that must hold our youth? I have no desire to be branded as narrow. But I am deeply concerned.
First, I am concerned as a Seventh-day Adventist. I shall deal with that in more detail.
Second, I am concerned as a mother. I believe there is just cause for alarm when a mother cannot send her son or daughter to any entertainment sponsored by a Seventh-day Adventist school without having to choose the good from the bad. And from my observation that problem has not been confined to any one locality.
Third, I am concerned as a Bible instructor. For I am greatly puzzled to know how to explain to a new or a prospective Seventh-day Adventist just why it is very wrong to see a particular picture of a questionable nature in a theater, but very right to see the same questionable picture in a Seventh-day Adventist church or auditorium. Probably the reason I cannot sell the theory is that I do not believe it myself. Now just a word to clarify. I do not think all moving pictures are wrong. I do not think the fact that they move contaminates them. And I have found no criticism in the pictures produced by our denomination.
Weak Reasoning
But I think we have made two great mistakes. The first is that we have greatly overworked the argument that movies are wrong simply because they are in a theater, or because of our influence.
Those are good reasons, I agree. But they are not the only reasons. If they are, if the product of the theater is good and only the building is bad, then we have no bulwark whatever against the product of the theater coming into our homes by way of the nation's fastmultiplying television sets.
Incidentally, while I certainly do not advocate attendance at the theater, yet I fail to see anything so contaminating about its four walls. Five thousand Seventh-day Adventists jammed into the Fox Theater in San Francisco at the last General Conference session and at the PanAmerican Youth Congress, and suffered no ill effects. Now it stands to reason that if it is right to go to church in a theater and wrong to attend a movie in the same building, then it must be the movie that is wrong and not just the building. And if the movie is wrong in itself, then we have no business bringing it into the church or into the school. And another incidental thought. I think we ought to stop using cigarette smoke as an argument against the movies. If it is an argument of any weight, and if we are consistent, we shall have to stay out of the restaurants and a good many other places. Why don't we come out boldly and say it's the movie that's wrong? Television sets give off no cigarette smoke.
Here is an illustration-a true one. A Seventh- day Adventist minister once said that he felt he could spend a profitable evening in the theater except for his influence. Now tell me, when the movie comes into his home on television, and no one is around for him to influence, or to influence him, will not that preacher look at the movie? Of course he will, if only the question of his influence kept him from seeing it in the theater. But what kind of Sabbath sermons will be born? What kind of pastor will he be? I grant you there are both good and bad movies. There must be a line between. But we have moved the line farther and farther to the left until it gets in nobody's way. Our distinctions are not clear cut. They are muddy and inconsistent. We make a difference where there is no difference. Someone not a Seventh-day Adventist once explained that the difference between the movie and the newsreel is that in one the curtain goes up, in the other sidewise. And that brings me to the second great mistake that I feel we have made. It should be called a situation rather than a mistake, for it is a state of things that has developed naturally through the years. Just why is it that we have moved the line over and over? Why is it that we are now showing films that would have shocked us a few years back? Why are the Hollywood feature films shown in our schools?
Incidentally, someone told me that our academy principals had gone on record against these Hollywood features, but that he did not know of one principal who was carrying out the recommendation. I hope the situation is not that bad. Oh, I grant you that the simplest, easiest way to put on a Saturday night entertainment is to show a movie. And I grant that it will, sadly enough, bring in the biggest crowd and the most money. Sadder still is the fact that the nearer the picture comes to the borderline, the more people will come to see it.
And I am talking about Seventh-day Adventists. But is it not a sad state of affairs when we are willing to sell the souls of our boys and girls for a few dollars for some fund? "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" And why have the movies invaded the sacred prayer meeting hours? I still feel that if the ministry would spend more time on its knees and less in previewing pictures, it would have more to give the people. Problems of Previewers And right here, centered about the previewing of pictures, I believe is the real cause of the trouble. "That's a good picture tomorrow night. You know, we had to preview fifteen pictures to find a good one. But this one is really good." How often we have heard a remark like that! But let us think it through. It is our leaders, local or otherwise, who preview the pictures. They preview fifteen. Fourteen of them are rejected as unfit for our youth. They are pictures that would have a wrong influence, would contaminate them, lower their standards. They must have only the best. After a few weeks the procedure is repeated. And that has gone on and on through the years.
Our youth must have the best. But what has happened to the leaders who have been wading through the muddy, questionable waters selecting these pictures? Every time the youth saw a good picture these leaders saw five or ten or fifteen bad ones. Are they not susceptible to their influence? Unfortunately, even ordination does not completely immunize a man against the. subtle influences of these pictures not good enough for our youth. Is it not logical to conclude that our leaders must have been slightly influenced, just a bit contaminated, by the filth on which they have looked? Is it any wonder that the standard is not quite as high, that the line has been moved over and over and over? I might question the soundness of my theory if it was not shared by others. But I know that it is. Not long ago I was startled a bit to hear one of our pastors, without the slightest prompting from me, advance this very same opinion, giving it as the reason, in his estimation, for the gradual lowering of standards. It so happens that he was speaking to a prospective church member. Is it not regrettable that the time has come when we must make excuses for our lowered standards to those who come into our ranks?
Ought we not to pray most earnestly about this matter, and then do something about it? It may be that here, too, God is looking for a "repairer of the breach." Other Pertinent Questions Some time ago the nation was shocked by the brutal kidnaping and slaying of a lovely eighteen- year-old Seventh-day Adventist girl. I read a rather complete account of the tragedy, and I found tucked away among the details the fact that she had gone to a show that evening. The show had let out late. That was why she missed the last bus home, only minutes before the kidnaping. And I learned, too, that the girl was not in the habit of attending movies, but that this one was a Bible movie.
Now, I would not want to even suggest that God permitted such a tragedy simply because she went to a movie. But the circumstances surrounding the shocking incident do suggest vividly this question: Then we enter a place that our guardian angel cannot enter, does that angel wait for us at the door and begin protecting us the moment we leave that questionable place?
And where is our guardian angel while we watch a movie on television? And one more question. Are movies necessarily good because they have a Bible background? I wonder whether a man fresh from heathendom, having never heard of Christ, could tell the difference between a Bible picture and any other picture. He would see the same actors, the same Hollywood drama, and all the rest. And I wonder, too, whether it is a healthy thing, when one has seen the movie Queen Esther, to ever after that be forced to picture Esther in one's mind as a Hollywood actress with a low-necked, clinging satin gown. If I should meet Esther in heaven, would such a portrayal help me to recognize her? And I wonder-no, I am sure that God is not pleased to see His Son portrayed as a wild man overturning tables in the Temple. God must be grieved to see Him pictured as exhibiting bitterness in tone and manner, and looking at Peter with a look of biting sarcasm.
Those who make most of the movies are not well enough acquainted with the Master to know that "tears were in His voice as He uttered His scathing rebukes." Worker friends, what about the movies? Earnestly, prayerfully, I ask. Are they helping us to finish the work, or are they weakening the dikes that must-yes, must-hold back the last great tide of sin?
