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Key Bible Verse: "Your eye is a lamp. … If the light you think you have is really darkness, how deep that darkness!" (Matthew 6:22-23). Bonus Reading: Ephesians 6:10-13

During Hollywood's early days, it enforced the Hays Code, a self-imposed standard designed to uphold social virtue and cultural cohesion. A film industry committee checked every film for content expressing "blasphemy, filthy language, explicit eroticism or perversion, superfluous violence or brutality, ethnic slurs, or anti-American sentiment." No film was publicly released until any offensive material was edited out.

Critics might argue that no great films could be made under such stringent guidelines. But the classic All Quiet on the Western Front, It's a Wonderful Life, Mutiny on the Bounty, Moby Dick, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, and Miracle on 34th Street all honored the Hays Code.

Now filmmakers see how far they can stretch the viewing public's tolerance for taboo. According to a recent poll, 80 percent of Americans believe that there's too much profanity in Hollywood productions. More than 60 percent believe there's too much gratuitous violence. About 55 percent believe that graphic sexuality and scatological subjects detract from the value of a film. And 40 percent believe they've been "desensitized" to issues of moral concern by their viewing habits.

—Rod Parsley in Charisma

My Response: Why do people who deplore offensive content in movies watch them?

Thought to Apply: Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears, in that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.—ERICA JONG (author)

Adapted from Charisma (4/05) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Help me, Lord, to jam those media voices that would drown out Your voice.

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