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All kinds of studies show that what people watch, listen to or play (as in video games) affects their attitudes and behavior. But it's tough to figure out just how powerful these influences are. People watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer but don't start carrying stakes around. They listen to pop songs about sex but don't necessarily jump into bed with someone. What difference does entertainment really make?

According to Augustine, a famous Christian born in A.D. 354, bad entertainment can be seriously dangerous to your spiritual health. In his autobiography, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, he wasn't talking about Buffy or the Beastie Boys, of course—the hot ticket in his day was live gladiator shows. But the effects of these shows on a friend of his, Alypius, were pretty similar to what might happen to someone today who says, "It's just entertainment. All my friends are into it. What's the big deal?"

Alypius had gone ahead of me to Rome to study law, and there he was unbelievably carried away with an incredible eagerness for the gladiator shows. At first utterly averse and detesting such spectacles, he was met one day by chance by some of his acquaintances and fellow students coming from dinner, and they with a friendly violence hauled him, vehemently refusing and resisting, into the ampitheater for these cruel and deadly shows. He protested: "Though you haul my body to that place, and set me there, can you also force me to turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall then be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them." Hearing this, they led him on nevertheless, desirous perhaps to try that very thing, to see whether or not he could do as he said.

After they had arrived and found seats where they could, the whole place caught fire with that savage pastime. But he, by closing his eyes, did not allow his mind to run after such evils. If only he could have stopped his ears also! For whenever a gladiator fell during the fight, the whole audience let out a mighty cry; this had a strong impact on him, and he was overcome by curiosity. He opened his eyes, prepared to despise and be superior to it, whatever it was, even while seeing it, and he was stricken with a deeper wound in his soul than the gladiator, whom he wanted to see, had experienced in his body. He fell more miserably than the one whose fall caused the mighty outcry. The noise entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the striking and beating down of a soul that was bold rather than resolute, and the weaker because it had presumed on itself when it ought to have relied on [God].

At the moment he saw that blood, he drank down savageness and did not turn away from it. He was riveted to it, drinking in frenzy unawares, and was delighted with that wicked fight and intoxicated with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the same man that he was when he had first come; he had become one of the crowd, a true associate of the acquaintances who had brought him to that place. Why say more? He saw, shouted, and was inflamed, and he carried away with him the madness which would drive him to return, not only with those who first drew him there, but also before them, and to draw in others as well. Yet You [God] plucked him out of this with a most strong and merciful hand, and You taught him to have confidence not in himself, but in You.

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