Amused, entertained, seduced!
(S. Houghton)
The fact is that theatrical performances,
in order to be paying propositions,
must pander to the baser passions
in unregenerate men and women.
They must be a reflector of the world--
the world that lies in the Wicked One.
This, say some, is their merit--
they are a mirror of life, and as life
includes the foul and the sordid,
so too must the theater.
We grant that the playwright sets
out to mirror life. So too does
Holy Scripture. No book is so
revealing as to human nature!
No book better portrays human sin!
But if the theater and the Book
do one and the same thing--
then wherein lies the vast
difference between them?
And why may not one be
the handmaid of the other?
For a variety of reasons;
but principally for this--
that, whereas the Book shows . . .
sin in its true evil colors,
sin in its devilish origin,
sin in its downward course,
sin in its dreadful wages,
sin in its awful and
eternal consequences;
on the other hand the theater
displays sin that men may be
amused, entertained, and alas,
all too often seduced!
The Book smites the conscience
and leads a man to say,
man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst
of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes
have seen the KING, the LORD Almighty!"
(Isaiah 6:5)
It causes him to cry,
(Luke 18:13c)
But the theater tends in another
direction altogether. As it sets out
to entertain, so also it blurs a man's
sight of that which is truly spiritual and
divinely holy; as it aims to amuse, it dulls
a man's ability to examine himself
in the pure light of revealed truth.
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