It was a quarter to midnight, and Olawale was three episodes into the evening. The children were asleep, his wife had gone to bed an hour earlier, and the generator had finally been switched off when the power came back. He had the living room to himself, the volume low, the laptop connected to the television.
The series was the one everybody at the bank was talking about. A crime family, a city of glass towers, a rich man’s son trying to keep his father’s empire together. It was clever and beautifully filmed, and Olawale was in the third season. He told himself it was harmless. It helped him unwind after twelve hours of reconciliations and difficult clients.
In the episode he was watching, the son humiliated his wife in front of a dinner party. He said something vicious and cutting, the kind of line the writers had clearly polished for days, and the guests laughed. So did Olawale. He laughed out loud, alone in his living room, and then he heard the door.
His ten-year-old daughter was standing in the corridor in her nightdress, holding an empty cup. She had come for water. On the screen, the scene had moved on to something he did not want her to see at all, and he lunged for the remote and fumbled it twice before the picture went black.
“Daddy, why did you turn it off?”
“It is not for children,” he said.
PunchlineShe thought about that for a moment, the way she thought about everything. Then she asked, quite innocently, “Is it for daddies?”
He did not have an answer. He filled her cup, took her back to bed and came back to sit in the dark. He was not thinking about the scene she had nearly seen. He was thinking about the line he had laughed at, and when, exactly, a man mocking his wife in public had become funny to him.
What we learn to enjoy
Most of us do not think of entertainment as something that teaches. We think of it as rest: a film after a long week, a series on the phone in Lagos traffic, music in the car, a comedy skit forwarded on a family group. And it is rest. But it is also more than rest. What we repeatedly welcome as entertainment gradually shapes what we find enjoyable, and what we find enjoyable gradually shapes what feels normal.
Stories work by inviting us into a point of view. They ask us to care about certain people, to hope for certain outcomes, to laugh at certain things. A well-made story can lead you to cheer for a thief, admire a liar, or find cruelty amusing, and it can do this without you noticing, because you are relaxed and enjoying yourself. That is part of the power of good storytelling. It is also why a Christian conscience needs to be awake when it is being entertained.
Paul’s description of a society that has turned from God ends with a striking phrase. People do what is wrong, and then go further: they “have pleasure in them that do them” (Romans 1:32). Paul presents this as the last stage of the decline he describes: people come to enjoy watching sin as well as doing it. Isaiah saw the same drift in his day:
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Notice that the woe falls on those who call evil good. It is a matter of perception and naming. Taste can be trained in either direction. “The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet” (Proverbs 27:7). What we feed on long enough becomes what we crave.
This is why Olawale’s laugh troubled him. He had not done anything. He had not mocked his own wife. But somewhere over three seasons, a thing that once would have grieved him had become a punchline.
The eye as the lamp of the body
Jesus spoke about the eye in a way that is very relevant to anyone holding a screen:
The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.
In the ancient understanding, the eye was a kind of window through which light entered the whole person. A single eye is one that is clear, undivided, focused. An evil eye in that setting could describe an eye that is diseased, but in Jewish usage it also meant a grasping, envious eye. Jesus is saying that what you let your eyes dwell on fills you. What you look at, and how you look at it, determines whether your inner life is filled with light or with darkness.
“Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.” That is a frightening warning. It is possible for a person to think he sees clearly while his very way of seeing has been darkened.
The psalmist made a resolution that many believers have adopted: “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes” (Psalm 101:3). Job said, “I made a covenant with mine eyes” (Job 31:1). And Proverbs adds, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). The heart is guarded partly at the gate of the eyes and ears.
None of this means that a believer may never look at anything that depicts sin. The Bible itself depicts sin honestly: murder, adultery, betrayal, rape, war. The story of David and Bathsheba is told plainly. But notice how Scripture tells it. It does not invite you to enjoy David’s lust or admire his cover-up. It shows you the cost, and then it sends Nathan. A story can portray evil truthfully in a way that helps us hate it, or it can portray evil attractively in a way that teaches us to enjoy it. The question is less “Does this show sin?” than “What is this story teaching me to love?”
Think on these things
Paul gives the church in Philippi a list that has guided believers for two thousand years:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
The phrase “think on” translates a word that means to reckon, to take into account, to let something occupy your considered attention. Paul’s list names qualities to seek out and dwell on: the true, the honest, the just, the pure, the lovely, the things of good report, whatever has virtue and is worthy of praise.
That changes the shape of the question. Many Christians approach entertainment only by asking what to avoid. Paul invites us to ask what we are filling our minds with. A believer can avoid every questionable film and still have a mind filled with nothing worth praising. And a believer can enjoy a great deal of art, music, sport, drama and humour that is genuinely true, honest, lovely and of good report.
Some of the finest things human beings have made fit Paul’s list very well: a story of costly courage, a comedy that makes a family laugh together without contempt for anyone, music that stirs gratitude, a documentary that opens your eyes to the wonder of creation, a well-played football match. These are gifts. They can be enjoyed to the glory of God.
Philippians 4:8 also gives us a way to test something we are unsure about. Is it true, or is it built on lies about how life works? Is it honest? Does it treat justice as something that matters? Is there anything lovely in it, anything that could rightly be praised? Not every good story will tick every box. But a diet that consistently scores zero on Paul’s list will shape a mind that thinks less and less about the things he names.
The opposite danger
There is another way to go wrong, and many of us grew up with it. In some churches, all films were worldly, all secular music was demonic, all television was suspicious, and any believer who went to the cinema had backslidden. Laughter at a comedy was evidence of a carnal mind. Football was a distraction from prayer.
That approach is usually sincere, yet Scripture pulls in another direction. Paul warned the Colossians against rules like “Touch not; taste not; handle not” (Colossians 2:21), which, he said, “have indeed a shew of wisdom” but are “not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” (Colossians 2:23). Rules about externals look serious, but they cannot change a heart. And Paul wrote to Timothy:
For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
God made a good world. He made us capable of delight. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine” (Proverbs 17:22). There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Creativity, storytelling, music and play reflect something of the Creator who made us in His image. Nollywood can tell stories of faith, family and justice. A gifted musician can bless a whole city. Christians should be among the best storytellers, artists and entertainers in the land, not people who regard the whole field with suspicion.
Legalism also has a cost that is easy to miss. When everything is forbidden, believers stop learning to think. They follow a list, and when they leave home or leave the church that wrote the list, they often have no way of making decisions at all. Some swing to the other extreme and accept everything. Discernment is better than both a list and a free-for-all, because it forms a conscience that can face things no list ever anticipated.
Do not judge, do not trip
The believers in Rome disagreed about food and drink, and Paul’s counsel to them is one of the most useful passages for questions of entertainment. He had told them not to despise or judge one another over such things. Then he added:
Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of: For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
“Let us not therefore judge one another any more.” Paul begins by ending the judging. Believers will reach different conclusions about particular films, music, games and forms of entertainment. One may feel free to watch a certain kind of action film; another may feel that it stirs things in him he would rather leave asleep. One may enjoy a certain style of music; another may associate it with a life Christ rescued him from. They should not condemn each other.
“But judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.” Here is the harder side. Our freedom must take account of other people. If I know that a brother has struggled with pornography, I will not invite him to watch a film I know has explicit scenes, however freely I might watch it myself. If a sister has come out of a life of heavy drinking, I will not fill a fellowship evening with music that celebrates it.
“Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.” Paul measures my liberty against the value of my brother. He is someone Jesus died for. My entertainment is not worth his stumbling.
And then the great perspective: “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Entertainment sits far from the centre of the Christian life. It is a small matter, though the way we handle it can reveal a great deal. A church that argues constantly about which films are allowed has lost sight of what the kingdom is.
The conscience and its formation
Paul closes Romans 14 with words that speak directly to the individual conscience:
Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
“Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God.” If you are convinced that something is permissible for you, you do not need to broadcast that conviction or argue others into it. Hold it before God. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” There is a blessing in a clear conscience.
“Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” If you doubt whether something is right and do it anyway, you sin, even if the thing itself is not wrong. Your conscience can be mistaken. Even so, overriding it trains you to ignore it, and a conscience that is ignored long enough falls silent.
This is where the matter of personal preference fits. Your conscience may lead you to avoid a certain kind of film, a genre of music or a particular game. That is your conviction before God, and you should honour it. But Romans 14 makes clear that such convictions can inform your decisions without becoming rules imposed on every other believer. The brother whose conscience is freer is not thereby worldly. The sister whose conscience is stricter is not thereby legalistic. Each answers to the Lord.
NuggetA conscience is formed by the Word and the Spirit over time. Your conviction can guide your choices before God without becoming a law you lay on every other believer.
Conscience also needs formation. It is shaped by the culture we grew up in, by our church background and by our own past, and it can be too loose or too tight. Hebrews describes mature believers as “those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14). The word exercised is the word from which we get gymnasium. Discernment is trained by practice. You learn it by bringing Scripture to bear on real decisions, again and again, with the Spirit’s help and the counsel of mature believers, until your judgement grows sharper.
A greater delight
How does a conscience actually change? Rules alone rarely do it. Most of us have tried to give something up by sheer willpower and found ourselves back where we started within a fortnight. The New Testament points to a deeper source. Paul says that the grace of God that brings salvation is also “Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:12). Grace is a teacher. The same mercy that receives us as we are goes on to train our desires.
It does this, above all, by giving us something better to love. The psalmist says to God, “in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11). Notice the word pleasures. God is not the enemy of delight. He is its source and its highest form. The believer who has tasted His goodness has found a joy that makes lesser pleasures look smaller. “O taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8).
The Scottish preacher Thomas Chalmers, in the early nineteenth century, preached a famous sermon on what he called “the expulsive power of a new affection.” His point was that the heart is rarely emptied of a wrong love simply by being told to stop. It is emptied when a greater love moves in and pushes the old one out. A man who falls in love stops thinking so much about the things that once filled his evenings. A believer who is growing in love for Christ finds that certain forms of entertainment lose their grip, sometimes by decision, more often because his appetite has changed.
Paul describes the same process from another angle: “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). We become like what we behold. That is the danger of a screen filled with cruelty and lust, and it is also the hope of the gospel. As we look at Jesus in His Word, in worship and in prayer, the Spirit makes us more like Him.
So the most important thing you can do for your conscience about entertainment may have nothing to do with entertainment. Spend unhurried time with God. Read the Gospels slowly. Worship with God’s people. Let your heart be filled with Him, and you will find your judgement about lesser things growing clearer, and your freedom growing safer.
Lawful, helpful and to God’s glory
Paul gives one more set of tests in 1 Corinthians 10. “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not” (1 Corinthians 10:23). So the believer asks a further question beyond permission: does this help, and does it build up?
He adds a warning in an earlier chapter: “I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Some entertainment is innocent in itself but has a way of taking over. A game you play for an hour becomes six hours. A series you watch “for one episode” keeps you up until three in the morning on a work night. Scrolling through short videos becomes the first thing you do when you wake and the last thing before you sleep. When a pleasure starts to rule your time, your sleep, your prayer, your family or your work, it has become a master.
And then Paul sets the whole question in the widest possible frame: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Entertainment can be received with thanksgiving and enjoyed in a way that honours God. It can also be consumed in a way that dishonours Him. The difference often lies less in what we choose than in how, how much, and with what heart.
Some practical questions can help:
- What is this teaching me to admire, desire or laugh at?
- Would I be comfortable watching or listening to it with Jesus in the room?
- Does it leave me more grateful, more loving and more alert, or more restless, cynical or tempted?
- How much time is it taking, and what is it crowding out?
- Could it cause someone I love to stumble?
Two areas deserve particular honesty in our setting. The first is comedy. Much of the humour that circulates on our phones gets its laughs from someone’s pain or weakness: the house help who cannot speak good English, the person with a disability, the woman reduced to her body, the people of another tribe portrayed as stupid or greedy. A believer can enjoy a good laugh and still refuse to laugh at the image of God being mocked. The second is betting. Many young Nigerians now meet sports betting as a form of entertainment, an app on the phone that makes every match more exciting. It is marketed as fun, but it trades on the hope of gain without labour and has drawn many into debt, secrecy and something close to addiction. Ask honestly whether it is still entertainment, or whether it has begun to rule you.
Parents carry a particular responsibility. Children absorb what they watch and hear long before they can evaluate it. Pay attention to age ratings and content, watch with your children where you can, and talk about what you see. Jesus spoke with great seriousness about anyone who would cause “one of these little ones that believe in me” to stumble (Mark 9:42).
A word about one area that is not a Romans 14 matter. Pornography is not a question of preference or conscience. It exploits real people, distorts sexuality and enslaves many who start with curiosity. If you are caught in it, you are not beyond help. Bring it into the light with God and with a trusted, mature believer. Use filtering software, change your habits, and seek counselling where the struggle runs deep. Grace does not leave you there.
Olawale did not watch the rest of that series.
He thought about it for several days. He asked himself what the show had been teaching him to enjoy, and he did not like the honest answer. So he stopped. Not because his pastor had preached against it, and not because a rule required it. He simply knew, before God, that he could not keep watching it in faith.
At the next cell meeting, the subject came up. A brother who repaired generators declared that every film was from the pit and that Christians should throw out their televisions. A sister who taught literature at a secondary school replied that we are under grace and can watch whatever we like. They looked at Olawale, expecting him to take a side.
He told them what had happened, about the laugh and the empty cup. He said he had stopped the series. “That is my conviction,” he said. “I am not making it a rule for anyone else. But I have started asking a different question. Not just whether it is allowed, but what it is doing to me.” The literature teacher was quiet for a moment. “That is fair,” she said. The generator repairer nodded slowly. Neither of them changed their minds that evening, but the argument stopped.
At home, Olawale and his wife began a Friday film night with the children. They chose together, sometimes a Nigerian family drama, sometimes an animated film, sometimes a documentary about animals that the youngest loved. They talked about what they watched. He still watches football on Sunday afternoons, loudly.
A few weeks later, his daughter came into the living room on a Friday evening, looked at the screen and then at him, and asked with a grin, “Daddy, is this one for daddies?”
Punchline“This one,” he said, making room for her on the couch, “is for all of us.”
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What has your entertainment taught you to find funny, normal or admirable that once would have troubled you?
- Which way do you lean more naturally: towards a list of rules, or towards accepting everything? What would discernment look like for you?
- Measure what you watched and listened to this past week against Philippians 4:8. What did you find?
- Is there any entertainment that has begun to bring you “under the power” of it, taking more time than you intended?
- How can you hold your convictions about entertainment without judging believers who see things differently?
This Week
For one week, before you begin any film, series, game or long scroll, ask yourself one question out loud: “What is this teaching me to love?” At the end of each day, note briefly what you watched or listened to and how it left you. At the end of the week, review the notes before God, and decide on one change, either something to lay down or something good to add. If you have children, choose one thing to watch with them and talk about together.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You are the light of the world. Make my eye single, so that my whole life may be full of light. Teach me to think on whatsoever is true, honest, just, pure and lovely. Show me where my entertainment has trained me to enjoy what grieves You, and give me the grace to change. Keep me from the pride that judges other believers and from the carelessness that trips them up. Form my conscience by Your Word and Spirit, so that I may discern good and evil and do all things to Your glory. Thank You for the good gifts of rest, laughter and joy. Let me receive them with thanksgiving. In Your name I pray, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.