It’s an easy time for Christians to yell a big “I told you so” to the liberal Hollywood crowd. They are currently drowning in a pool of irony. The world is watching their moral compass spin like crazy as they promote the next movie full of nudity and lewd sexual behavior while simultaneously vilifying those who have treated women in horrific ways.
It’s a terribly broken system that can celebrate the life of Hugh Hefner who treated women as mere objects of lust, while also getting upset that men actually lusted after women as though they were objects. The world has tossed out the morality of God and then acts surprised when people are no longer treated as though they were made in the image of God. We knew this was coming; we warned you about it; and now it is really tempting to gloat in victory.
However, this is a great moment for us all to do some self-reflecting instead of gloating. As clearly as we foresaw the moral consequence of the ever-falling standards of Hollywood, God sees the consequences of our own sins.
Far too often we fall under the assumption that, because we are saved by grace through faith, any future sins have no real consequences. But this slow decay caused by sin is something we are all susceptible to. And we follow the same pattern that we just saw in Hollywood. It begins by testing the limits.
We often do something that is borderline wrong, but we see if we can sneak across enemy lines without getting caught. Then when that becomes the norm we try and take things even further. Before long what was once off limits has become the norm in our life, and we justify it with fervor.
As we are seeing, sin always has consequences. The ugliness of our mistakes spill over onto the closest relationships around us. It causes fights and quarrels, anger and jealousy. Sin reduces the image of God that we were created in and it often denies those around us the truth that they are created in the image of God as well.
So, instead of celebrating the fact that the entertainment world is being exposed for the fraud that it is, I want to turn my critical eyes towards myself and see what sins have I grown so accustomed to that I have forgotten that they are sinful.
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalms 139:23