I went to the cinema with my wife this week (The Odyssey, if you’re bothered). We went, we watched the film, we broadly liked it (though she did ancient history at university so cared more about the accuracy and faithfulness to the original story than I did) and then we went home. We enjoyed, in no particular order, going to the cinema together, the story and cinematography of the film, the fact that our children are away and so had the ability to go out. And that was it.

We had chatted with some Christian friends about the film before we went. We were already aiming to watch it and our friends were careful not to spoil anything for us (though, again, my wife did ancient history and I am au fait with the overall story – hard to avoid spoilers on a nearly 3000 year old epic!) But when we chatted, we talked about the filming, the anachronisms, some of the things we’re likely to love and not love. All the things anybody who likes films, or any art for that matter, is going to do. Our friends were pretty much dead on with how we would find it. Good, enjoyable enough, but not great was the broad review.

All of that is well and good. I like chatting about the stuff I like and why I liked it. I like chatting about the reasons why someone having a go at something I like didn’t quite come off in a way I liked at all. This is the nature of enjoying music, art, sport and anything else. When we like something, we have opinions about it that are reasonably informed as fans of the thing and tend to enjoy chewing those things over with other people who are also fans of the thing.

What I am not a great fan of, however, is Christians ruining the thing itself by insisting on drawing Christian comparisons from it. Whatever film comes out, particularly if it is well regarded, long-awaited or just a big budget film, you can bet your bottom dollar Christians will write articles and blogs mining it for allusions to the gospel or to make some sort of serious Christian point. And I’m just going to say it: I’m pretty sick of Christians ruining every film by turning it into a Jesus juke.

I often come back to a thought put in my mind by the commentator, Dale Ralph Davis, about our tendency to cover stuff in cow urine. Here is the relevant section from his commentary on 1 Kings 10:

missionary Don McClure once told about the Nuer people in the Sudan: ‘the Nuer believes that milk is a beverage for women and children, but he likes it so well that he cannot bear to see it all go to the women, so he makes a cocktail with a bite by adding cow urine, which makes it a man’s drink.’ That is, he can’t enjoy it unless he ruins it first.

He goes on to say:

[we often] feel obligated to moan over ‘materialism’ and all that could possibly go wrong with such bounty rather than acknowledging that it is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich (cf. Prov 10:22) and being content to enjoy that should he give it. Must we, to stretch illustration into analogy, pour cow urine over the text in our panic to stay out of bed with the whore we call the health-and-wealth gospel?’

I am minded to think exactly the same analogy holds for all manner of things Christians might enjoy. It seems the only way we are permitted to just enjoy films (or any other art-form) is if we first ruin them by insisting on drawing out gospel allusions and biblical lessons, no matter how stretched, so that we feel it has been a worthy and not entirely worldly pursuit. We minimally have to discuss the inherent spiritual value of the film to feel like it has been a legitimate point of enjoyment.

As an aside, I am convinced this is why so many Christians are obsessed with camping. Camping is the pouring-cow-urine equivalent of holidays. That is, we are allowed to take a holiday and it is okay to enjoy it, but only if we ruin it first! Going abroad, staying in a nice hotel and not making at least some part of the trip inherently miserable means we’re probably being worldly. Only once we have ruined part of our holiday can we then pat ourselves on the back for our “good stewardship” (for which read, being tight and stingy on a budget) and congratulate ourselves that we are not as wasteful as all those who dare to enjoy an actual rest with a real bed, proper shower and an inside toilet unsullied by the effluent of a thousand near misses in a shared block which must be entered in flip-flops. Only then can we truly relax knowing we are being properly godly.¹

But I think we do this with absolutely loads of stuff. We can’t really enjoy anything unless we ruin it a bit first. And, back to the point, we do it a lot with film. It is almost as if we can’t just enjoy a film on its own terms. We can’t just admit we are watching this because we like it and content ourselves with that being perfectly legitimate. No, we have to (over)spiritualise first and then make it into some sort of serious Christian activity. Only then is it okay. Such a position feels a bit like agreeing in principle with the old critique that these things really are worldly but we are seeking to justify it because we enjoy whatever it is. Which, if that is what we’re doing, does seem to fall foul of Paul’s ‘whatever is not of faith is sin’ line (cf. Rom 14:23).

If we really are convinced that watching films is fine, I don’t know why we don’t just enjoy them. You can substitute ‘film’ here for whatever pursuit you like. It could be art-forms like music, painting, poetry or whatever. It could be sports like football or basketball. It could be activities like rock climbing or potholing. It could be stuff like houses, cars, tech, or whatever. If we think the thing is inherently ungodly, we have no business doing or having it at all, even if we are trying to justify it with a spiritual-sounding assessment after the fact. If we don’t think the thing is inherently ungodly, it is perfectly legitimate to just enjoy it. No wonder we are all exhausted all the time with this constant parsing of every bit of minutiae under the sun!

We don’t have to tie ourselves into Jesus jukes and over-spiritual justifications to just enjoy something that is enjoyable. We don’t need to cover anything in cow urine and ruin stuff before we can enjoy it. It is exhausting to live this way. It certainly doesn’t lead to the kind of rest I think Jesus intends for us. If you enjoy something that isn’t inherently sinful, you don’t need to justify it, you don’t need to tie yourself up in knots worrying about “potential dangers” if the thing is fine; just enjoy it and enjoy your life. I suspect that what Jesus wants for us. His yoke is easy and his burden is light after all.

1. Don’t write in telling me that, yes, you really do actually love camping. Nobody does. Not really. And definitely not in the UK where it rains all the time. You rarely meet the homeless person who affirms sleeping outdoors is everything we’re told makes for a good camping holiday. Seriously though, if you really do actually love camping, you go for it and I’ll pray for you. ↩︎