Having been challenged by my good friend Seraphim Danckaert to post something substantial, I submit below a rewriting of last month's post against movies. Originally written in one sitting between the hours of 1 and 5 in the morning, I reworked it and included it on the Editorial page of the latest issue of the Hillsdale Collegian. With Daniel Silliman's opposing view and a nifty cartoon, courtesy of Jordan Irish, the spread was rather nice. Do check it out.

I think movies are destroying humanity.

Not just bad movies. The cinema itself is the worst offender in the slow poisoning of the human soul by a myriad of entertainment media.

Think about it�a good movie stands or falls on its ability to draw us into the world it creates, a world that is a work of fiction. It is a man�s view of the world divorced from the man himself, a world predicated on certain assumptions which insinuate themselves, often unnoticed, into our own view of the world.

This is fine, so long as those assumptions are true to reality--but this is very seldom the case. Consider, for example, the vast number of romantic movies produced every year, and examine how many of those stories portray with any truth the joy, the sorrow, the sacrifice and companionship of the relationship between a man and a woman. To depict such a thing with the ring of truth is incredibly difficult. A rare few dare to try, but most present a picture of starry eyes and happily ever after that is eaten up by the desperate masses longing to escape the daily drudgery of their lives. Whether tripe or art, the people will come�the only distinction is which makes more money. And so the movie theatre has become the hiding place of a generation, the bar and opium den of the common man.

You may say, �Of course escapism and addiction are bad, but not all are addicted, not all seek escape.� Yet all are still affected. For movies speak to our hearts, not our minds, shaping and molding us according to the vision of the filmmaker, speaking in a veiled and insidious language things that we would never tolerate in our own minds were they spoken in plain words in the light of day.

It is strange that we place so much important in rationally subscribing to the proper doctrine and in saying the right thing, yet pay so little heed to the state of our souls beneath those superficial statements of belief. A man may swear that he loves unconditionally and forever, but that love will die when emotions fade if he expects love to always bring him happiness�and this is what movies tell our souls. A man may say that he trusts God to work out his life for good, but that trust will fail when suffering comes if he expects that good to never hurt�and this is what movies tell us. A man may claim that he seeks beauty of the heart, not of the body, but when his eyes are drawn to a woman, he will assume that her outer beauty implies inner goodness�for this is what movies tell us. Movies have the power to look as real as life, and are unconsciously added to our corpus of experience, creating expectations and assumptions of how things are.

This power, I do not deny, has much potential for good�but far more for evil. We humans have enough difficulty assuring ourselves that we ascribe to the right creed, free of error and heresy. How much more difficult is to create an apparently living, organic cross section of life and ensure that it is completely true? The sorry attempts of the Christian media to create anything that really speaks to the heart of mankind testifies to the difficulty.

So instead, we watch what are often admittedly high quality, artistic films, those which best portray the greatest hopes, the darkest fears and the deepest yearnings of the human spirit�but the human spirit is fallen, and the films are full of lies, and who among us is capable of sifting the chaff out unaffected? Is it really worth the risk?

You may say, �Of course it is! The human spirit must be allowed to express itself, whatever the risk.� With which statement I do not quibble. Such artistic expression of the human longing for we-know-not-what�whether on film, paper or canvas�shows forth our very nature as beings created in the image and likeness of God. But that very statement implies something else which leads to the ultimate reason to avoid movies and, indeed, all entertainment.

If we are created to be like God, then the loftiest canvas for human endeavor is not celluloid, paper or canvas, but the human person himself�the only thing capable of truly reflecting the Eternal. And, as God�s nature is Love, then man becomes like God by loving. Love being not a matter of emotion, nor of even choice, but of unity, of communion. And this is found only through prayer. For through prayer we may enter into communion with God�and through prayer we may learn to see our fellow men as unique persons like us, created to love. Through prayer we may begin to empty ourselves in love for others.

But movies, and all entertainment, are the antithesis of love. They are self-centered, not self-emptying, impersonal, not communal, passive, not active. One cannot watch a movie, read a book or hear a song with another�only be present in the same room as another while experiencing the entertainment. One may talk as a movie plays, but it is impossible to converse while watching.

And most certainly, one cannot pray while engrossed in a movie or a book of fiction. Communion with Him who is the ultimate reality cannot mix with that which does not really exist. Man can truly live to the fullest degree only when he walks with God�insofar as entertainment keeps us from this, it is, in the final analysis, little more than an instrument of death.