Why Is Christian Entertainment So Cringe? Pt. 2

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Salvation in Christ Alone and the Coming Judgment

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio. The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Introducing the Marcus Pittman Interview on Christian Entertainment

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll continue to answer the age-old question, why is Christian entertainment so cringe?

So we did a recent interview with Marcus Pittman, the founder and CEO of Lore TV, and we reached out to him because he's the kind of guy who has had his foot in the entertainment realm for a while now, for years now, working with different groups like Apologia.

He's worked with, I know he said Pure Flix. He's interacted with guys like the people at Netflix, and so he kind of understands that realm in terms of how people operate, and he's even started his own company, like I said, Lore TV.

So this is something that is very familiar to him when it comes to entertainment. He's spent a lot of time as a Christian trying to think through how should Christians interact with entertainment, what should Christian entertainment look like, and so we got to ask him a lot about those things.

We wanted to sort of continue that conversation with Tim and I where we basically say, all right, so let's flesh out some of these ideas a little more. Let's reflect on some of the things that Marcus said during our interview and really just try and figure out how should we interact with entertainment as Christians.

Should we just throw it all out because it's worldly? Should we try and claim that everything is Christian? What should we do with all of this? So I guess, Tim, why don't we just start with you just giving some of your general sort of thoughts on the things that Marcus had to say in our interview.

Sure. I thought it was interesting just to interact with someone who has a vested interest in producing movies, and I'm sure that it's a pretty difficult thing to be a part of a Christian, quote-unquote, entertainment company that is having to answer some of those questions in a fairly serious way.

Now, I know that this is a conversation that essentially was somewhat of a hot topic, I guess, a few years ago as it relates to the Church. There's a lot of individuals who are commenting on it and writing articles on it.

I haven't seen the avalanche of articles lately as it relates to this kind of topic, but it is a topic that's out there. My perspective in general is that there's a broad range of what you might describe as Kuyperian Christians who are essentially trying to take every square inch captive for the Lord and all that, and so I think there are groups that do it better and there are groups that do it worse.

I would say that in my mind, the Gospel Coalition is a poor example of that, of how to engage in that area, and it seems like what they're promoting is indistinguishable from crass worldliness. And then you have guys at CrossPolitik who are, I would think, a little bit better examples of individuals who are actively trying to engage the culture in a way that appears to be a little more helpful.

I wouldn't say that everything that they do is something I would recommend, but I would say that I appreciate the way they do it a lot better than TGC, for instance. I always thought that Apologia Church was somewhere in between, but it's been a while since I've interacted with those kind of articles and that kind of discussion online.

But by and large, I thought it was helpful to hear his perspective and some of the insight he had about how some of these decisions are actually made. But then there are times where it's just like it...

I would think that there needs to be a little more clarity about the path forward as far as that goes. I think I understand the kind of individuals that he's reacting against, but then some of the responses do feel a bit reactive and not precisely clear what the path forward is.

In particular, how do we... It feels like, to me, just as an example, Lecrae is a bad example of how to think through these issues and his path seems to be the logical outcome of his thought process on that.

And then it seems, though, that as we're interacting with Marcus, for example, then he viewed that as his rationale for going secular and all that as a good example. But then, unfortunately, he chucked his Christianity along the way and I would say that, well, I think it's tied a little bit more to how he thought about it than that.

But that would be just one example of something where I think.

Maybe...

I would say I'm glad that you have individuals who are attempting to make Christian movies and it seems like we've largely surrendered that territory to the pagans, but then I think I'd probably like a little more definition as to what constitutes a Christian movie, too.

Right, right.

But there's plenty of things to say about that.

Yeah, it seems like TGC has relegated movie-making to Disney exclusively at this point.

Right, right.

You brought up hearing some of his insight into the way that companies like Netflix work. He brought up the whole nudity in the first five minutes.

Sure.

That's like an unspoken requirement that Netflix has and their rule is basically if you have it in the first five minutes, then you're going to keep them for the whole first season, basically. And so that was really interesting.

I mean, those are the kinds of things that you hear and they don't necessarily surprise you, per se, but then they do sort of maybe help you understand the reality of the situation we're in when it comes to pagan entertainment and worldly entertainment, by and large.

Naive Christian Consumption of Media and the Problem of Pornography

Yeah, I want to make a brief comment about that, too, before we get to your question, just so I don't forget. That's something that does concern me about the standard Christian response to media and entertainment is that we go into media and entertainment in somewhat of a naive way.

So, for example, with that kind of problem, the idea of someone watching Netflix, and this is just something that I don't understand why Christians do in general, and I would say that we need to be more thoughtful about how we engage these kinds of things, but we know that these companies do that.

But my wife and I, we won't watch anything without checking it on Kids and Mind to see what the content is, or IMDb, the parental guide, unless we're pretty confident that there's not going to be surprises like that, we don't watch it.

Right.

Sometimes in these kinds of discussions, there's this unspoken expectation that it's kind of normal to be surprised by nudity in the first five minutes, and it's like, it's not. If you just take even just a little bit of caution, and one of the things I've seen over and over again with Christians and counseling and everything else is just like, they pretend to be surprised, but it's like, how many times do you have to be surprised before it's not a surprise?

Right.

At some point, it's like, I would say, Job makes a covenant with his eyes that he doesn't put anything in clean before how can he gaze on a virgin and everything else. If we know that that's what's happening and you have TVMA warning at the very beginning of it, and you know the trajectory of where things are going, you shouldn't be surprised very much anymore.

And that's just kind of a random comment to say, we do have to be careful with how we're interacting with television. I would say that maybe it's possible to get surprised once, but after that point, you're just gullible.

Right.

I have seen a lot of Christians who, they'll watch Game of Thrones, or I think maybe Breaking Bad had nudity in it. I'm not really sure.

I haven't watched any of it, but as far as what I've heard about it, that's what I remember hearing about it.

Westworld is the same way. That new show, Euphoria, I'm pretty sure it has the same deal. At some point, there has to be a... Like you're saying, it's fair enough. Maybe you weren't being as cautious as maybe you should have been or something, and you were caught off guard by it, and you shut it off after you realized that's what it was.

But then, if you keep watching the show after you know something like that has happened, or you shut it off, but then you watch the very next show and have the same deal time and time again, eventually, there has to be something wrong there for the Christian, right?

Well, I think it just goes to show how normalized nudity is in the minds of many people. In general, as he noted, surprise. The fact that so many Christians are being surprised is deeply concerning because it should be...

That should be so unthinkable to the point where... It's like if you treated it like another... Imagine if you walked into a room and there was a... You go to a lake or something like that, and surprise, alligator bites your arm off.

Uh-huh. Okay.

And then you just walk back out there the next day. That would be unthinkable. That would be emotionally scarring and everything else. I'm just trying to say that there should be a kind of a, I don't want to tread this path again, and I need to...

And I'm not trying to say that it's just like you see something you shouldn't see, and you should just be totally psychologically disabled for the next month, but it should be a, whoa, that was significantly abnormal and out of place, and we're not going to go back there.

Yeah, I need to alter my behavior based off of what has happened.

Yeah, significantly. To where there's a zero tolerance kind of... But then the fact that that's just... We just think, well, oopsie, it's kind of weird.

Right.

And I know we're kind of getting off subject here, but I think the concerning thing, going along with the whole we're not really taking it very seriously, is in reality... I know it's sort of blasphemous to say this, but in reality, these shows, it's pornography.

That's what it is. Showing nudity, sexual situations, oftentimes just literally sex on screen, that's just pornography, but then it's labeled TV and it's fine because it's on HBO or whatever, where you have plenty of other perfectly fine shows, and we're not really taking that really as seriously as I think we probably should, as Christians at least.

I think everyone should be, but if no one else is, Christians should at least be calling it what it is.

Yeah, that was something that wasn't clear necessarily in the interview. I think in the interview itself, it was very clear from the company's perspective that that was one of their standards. There wouldn't be any nudity in the shows.

But then at one point, he did mention that Game of Thrones was a Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones,.

What's the difference?

But a Christian show, and then I don't know, I wonder, did you watch it on VidAngel or whatever else? Maybe that's something I should have asked, but I wasn't aware of what's in it at the moment. So I don't know as far as that goes.

That's just a comment. One of the things I find with individuals engaged in that kind of discussion who seem to love movies and entertainment a lot more than I do is that there seems to be very high tolerance for filth of all sorts.

And that's something that there has to be some kind of middle ground I think between breaking the fourth wall and having an evangelistic encounter in every one of your movies in order for it to be okay kind of discussion.

And just like, hey, maybe we should avoid, clearly avoid entertainment with nudity and filth in it.

Right, right.

So anyways.

So talking about his interactions beyond just Netflix, he said he worked for Pure Flix for a while and he talked a lot about the way that they make their movies and he said that it was pretty much solely focused on data and the data that they collect and that would determine what their movies ended up being.

So for you, was that surprising at all? Or were you just kind of like, yeah, that makes sense pretty much.

Yeah, I don't know that it was surprising. I would say it is clarifying. It's more just like it makes sense of what you're seeing so it wasn't like, oh, that's shocking. I mean, that's essentially what big evangelical world is doing with their church services too, right?

It's all data-driven. It's all giving people what they want, giving them the messages they want. It's all tailored to the people. I mean, I thought it was funny the fact that, and we brought that up in the interview, it's very funny the fact that you can, like the Christians are doing that kind of thing.

You pull in the audience and then non-believers are, they're willing to sink their own boats giving you stuff that you absolutely hate. And they're more committed to their principles than we are as far as that goes.

So they're absolutely committed to what they perceive to be the truth that needs to get out there whereas we're much more man-centered than even the pagans are and that's just deeply embarrassing and shameful.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Why there's all of the like horse pure flicks movies if they're mainly selling to women.

Well, one of the things that was interesting about that, and I kind of joked around with him about it a little bit, but I didn't get the impression towards the end that the, as the interview was going on that there wasn't really any substantial response to that.

And I don't know that it's like a significant response. I just thought it was funny. So I mentioned that, so I guess the only good stories are the ones that are for guys, right? And that seemed to be kind of how he defined like a good movie or a good show as one that would appeal to men.

And it's like, well, I mean, yeah, there's two genders, though. So I get there's an imbalance and that one is utterly lacking, but I wouldn't want to necessarily.

Forsake the other.

Well, I mean, I think they're different. I'm more than happy to say I think like your standard Hallmark movie doesn't have a plot, but then it is the kind of plot that a lot of women do deeply appreciate.

They do, man.

I don't know why.

There's no plot. It's just like their relationship, like the development of a relationship. And that's just the kind of thing that, you know, like a lot of women typically like. Now, I mean, I don't know that, I mean, you know, maybe the answer is that that's just a rebuke.

To the superficiality.

Of like American women. And maybe that's the case. It's something I need to think about a little bit more. But I would say that, yes, like your standard guy show is going to have substantially more like plot, like development.

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But it was funny.

I think it makes a lot of sense from the theological perspective in terms of, you know, the quote unquote Christian message that is being presented in all of these movies. It typically seems like it's basically just like a prosperity gospel charismatic type thing more often than not.

I'm sure, you know...

Well, he didn't say that. That was something that was a little bit... I couldn't get a feel for him on that one.

Yeah, I was a little surprised.

By that as well.

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Not wanting to step on toes or something.

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He hadn't thought about that very much. It was just his critiques were coming in other directions.

Right.

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For sure. Yeah,.

That definitely makes it feel a lot, a lot more cringey for me, watching that.

Defining a Christian Story Versus a Secular Story

So,.

The other, the other thing that he, that Marcus had mentioned in our interview was this idea that, you know, basically all good stories are Christian stories,.

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So what were your, what were your thoughts on that?

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