Today I read Genesis 34 where Jacob and his family are near the city where Shechem rapes this sister/daughter Dinah. It's so interesting to me. As a culture, we are so jaded towards sins of anger and passion, but sins of the flesh, for the more part, still inflame us, as they should. Alma taught his son Corianton that sexual transgression was less severe than shedding innocent blood, or committing murder. And yet as a society, we are WAY more willing to watch murder than we are sex in our entertainment.
As the previews have come out for the new movie, the Hunger Games, basically a re-stylized telling of the Roman gladiatorial games, where, from what I understand about it, teenagers kill each other for the viewing pleasure of the world, I have wondered how any faithful Latter-day Saint can watch such things. As a culture, Latter-day Saints, and Christians in general, are too secure with the rating of PG-13. We, again for the most part, are very good about avoiding rated R movies, but when we see that PG-13 rating symbol all caution gets thrown to the wind and we don't even bother to think and evaluate if the subject matter is something we should be seeing. We are SO conditioned towards violence that you are extremely hard pressed to find a show that does not have it in it in some form or fashion. Even kids shows these days have violence in them, just to a much lesser degree. And yet if sex is involved, we shun it like the plague, or at least pretend we do as a society. I say pretend because the pornography industry is one of, if not the most, profitable industries on the planet. This would not be the case if we were truly shunning pornography and sex in films.
Those who would destroy the commandments of God and who would "liberate" us from our old puritan values would in fact lead us down a very careful path straight to hell. Where the water is turned up by degrees until we find we are boiling in it! I am thoroughly disgusted with the Hunger Games and the very concept of it causes me to shudder and lose the Spirit for quite a while. What's worse to me though, is the fact that so many of my Latter-day Saint friends DON'T feel this same way. That screams to me that there is a huge problem here. Now, the last half of this chapter, Simeon and Levi slaughter the entire town for one man's sin. I can understand their anger and their frustration at what happened to their sister, but their response is so off the mark of how it should have been handled, I shudder to think what the price they had to pay for that sin would have been.
I would not be surprised if, here in 2 weeks, our leaders come out and say something about choosing appropriate entertainment/media in General Conference. If it has been on my mind, I know it must be on theirs! I just hope that those Latter-day Saints will hear and heed the message they are going to deliver. Now, this post seems like I have been anti-violence and pro-sex. Well, for one thing, within the bounds of the Law of Chastity, I am pro-sex. But I am not pro-sex in movies, games, books, music or whatever else is out there. I am quite glad that society has such a stern stance on it. I just wish that same bar of measurement would be meted out to entertainment dealing with violence is all. That's what I'm saying. Maybe someday! Until tomorrow.
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