I don’t watch much TV. I recently purchased an amazing 32″ LCD TV at a great price only to sell it one week later. I have enough vying for my time and money. It wasn’t worth it. I want to put things in my life that lead me to be more focused on the things that matter–my walk with God, my friends/family, Kik, my students, etc. So, no tv for now.
With that said, I do enjoy good movies. A lot. This past weekend, I caught a glimpse of a movie I have seen before– Black Hawk Down. It’s a great war movie. My roommates were watching it in the family room. I walked in during one of the gun fight scenes, and for the first time ever, I had to leave. I couldn’t handle it. I have seen DOZENS of war movies, watched all kinds of violence over the years, and I even play violent video games on occasion and those things have never really phased me.
But Saturday evening, I couldn’t do it. Maybe it was because I genuinely felt for the soldiers who were being killed, or that time away from seeing that kind of movie has made me more sensitive to it, or maybe the fact that I was in the middle of writing a message on ‘Sanctity of Life’ played into the way I viewed those scenes. I’m not sure why it was so difficult.
I never want to grow cold to murder, war, injustice, death, etc. I don’t want be entertained by those things. I have a great appreciation for the medium of film, and the way it communicates history, ideas, comedy, failures, successes, and so forth. I hope that appreciation continues to grow. In the meantime, I don’t plan on not watching any films with violence. But perhaps this was a good reminder that I need to view things with the right kind of lenses, so that they produce a positive change.
Well…I’m off to play some more Halo (just kidding).
