A while back a friend of mine at another church posted an article on this important topic of being a discerning partaker of films. Read it...it is good. One of the sites he recommends is incredibly helpful. It is called Kids in Mind and is really helpful on telling you why a movie was rated the way it was. I will issue this warning, it does describe in candid detail the scenes in question.

What I like about this site and the other sites Ryan recommends in his blog is that it helps you avoid letting a secular institution (the Motion Picture Association of America )  determine for you what is good for you or your family to watch. Frankly, there are G-Rated movies that I don't let my kids watch, while there are PG Movies that are fine with me.

On a somewhat related note, in my last post about Oprah, the most important thing that I never said was this: Oprah is harmless to watch if you are grounded in the Bible. And more than that, I belive Oprah become less appealing to watch when you are grounded in the Bible. In a similar way, being grounded in the Bible and  using things like the sites mentioned above help you in carefully discerning what you allow to entertain you, as well as how often you allow yourself to be entertained. I think Ryan says it well when he says:

"I hear people say that they watch movies to "get away." That is, they use the movie medium to escape their own reality and live in another one. To me, that means they "check out" and I think that is harmful. When we check out, we stop looking out for ourselves."