Movies, Martinis, and Musical Moves

“As obedient children, not conforming yourselves

to the former lusts, as in your ignorance;

but as He who called you is holy,

you also be holy in all your conduct.”

1 Peter 1:14-15

The gaunt old man pulled a squeezebox from its case and stepped to the pulpit. He looked into the distance, as if remembering a special day sixty years earlier, and paused. A few snickers sounded toward the back of the auditorium. And then he pulled the bellows apart and began to croon his way through a fifth-rate poem set to sixth-rate music, the hymn he himself had written, a hymn we ourselves had never sung.

The year was 1987, and the speaker was a visitor at Cedarville College. His appearance as a chapel speaker that day was a ‘one-off’, a one-chapel presentation by a guest; and none of the students, myself included, had ever heard of him. We didn’t expect much.

I tried to follow the message, but it seemed irrelevant. He talked about life ‘back then,’ read a few verses, and told the back-story of the hymn he had written. To hear him tell the story, that hymn had been a real bestseller. This seemed a little farfetched, as I had heard better jingoes for breakfast cereals. And I faded out and started to review my Greek vocabulary cards.

Then he said something that caught my attention and hit me like the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes. It proved to be one of the most memorable things I ever heard at Cedarville. Here’s what he said:

“When I was boy, my mother and father refused to give me a dime to go to the movies. They knew about the lifestyles of the people who made those movies, of the writers, the directors, and the actors. They knew what those people believed. And they refused to permit me or my siblings to give one solitary dime to support those folks and their lifestyles. And the other believers refused to let their kids go either.

“Nowadays, you’all are watching movies on VCRs and TV. Some of you even go to movie theaters. But, what I want to say is this: those folks haven’t changed, you have!”

This statement hit me hard, because the watching of movies by Cedarville College students was a widely discussed topic (at least among the student body). The rule of the college, one of the rules students agreed to when enrolling, was that attendance at movie theaters was forbidden. This was a throwback to earlier days, when fundamentalists believed that attending cinemas was immoral, and it had been a longstanding rule. What had precipitated increasing debate was the rise of VCRs. With the introduction of VCRs, it was possible now for a person to rent and watch a movie in the privacy of one’s home. This raised the obvious complications of a rule that forbid watching a movie in one location but not another. Was the movie itself the problem? Or was it attendance in a public venue to view the movie? Or was it a combination of the two?

The students, at least the more vocal students, were lobbying for the abandonment of the rule. Students should be free to attend movies in cinemas, they argued. The only standard that should be demanded is that they exercise personal spiritual discernment and avoid questionable content.

Fast forward to today. Students at Cedarville are now free to attend cinemas. The issue of attendance at movie theaters is history, and new issues have arisen, issues such as social drinking and dancing.

Let’s consider those two issues for a moment. During the last century, most Baptist fundamentalists – more often called evangelicals now – were opposed to social drinking and dancing. We acknowledged the evils that accompanied social drinking and decided to separate ourselves corporately and publicly from the practice. We did the same with dancing. In recent years, however, many of us, including the folks at Cedarville University, have been reconsidering.

That’s a good thing, right? After all, we all know that the evils related to alcohol consumption are less now than they used to be, right? Alcohol-related incidents of domestic abuse and vehicular homicide are fewer, right? And we know that dancing today is more modest and God-pleasing than it was in the days of Elvis, right?

No. That’s ludicrous, of course. (And sorry about the sarcasm.) We all know that alcohol is no less of a problem than it was fifty years ago, and dancing is no more modest today than it was years ago. In fact, if you consider modern day ‘dancing,’ I would suggest that what is considered ‘family-friendly’ and acceptable during prime-time television would have been considered porn fifty years ago. Case in point? Beyonce’s performance at this year’s Super Bowl’s ‘family-friendly’ halftime show.

So what has changed? Have the standards of God’s Word changed? Are we finally unshackling ourselves from our puritanical, legalistic roots? Or are we falling into licentiousness?

I would suggest it is the latter. Those who lobby for less restrictive standards often put their arguments in the context of grace, but, in doing so, fail to recognize and affirm that the call of grace is greater than the call of law. Law asks what the least is one must do. Grace asks what is the most one can do.

The issue here, ultimately, is the standards that should accompany salvation, not the requirements to attain it. The standards to which we hold ourselves as believers should reflect the highest standards of God’s Word. Discussions of those standards should not degenerate into arguments over whether a particular is so worldly that it should be abandoned. The question raised should be: Is this behavior pleasing to Holy God? Not, Is ‘okay’ with us doing this behavior.

Incidentally, have you noticed that things usually deteriorate rather than get better? Perhaps it is the same with colleges, mission agencies, and local churches. Apart from the grace of God and the determination to live separated lives by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can do no better. We will fall into spiritual and moral laxity.

But, praise God, we need not fall! God has given us His Spirit in full, to convict us of our sins, to call us to repentance, and to conform us to the image of His Son. In His strength, we can realize higher standards, cognitively and practically. We can glorify Him with holiness, if we will listen to and heed His Spirit. Will we?

-Christian Pilet