Binge Watching Netflix: We can’t watch dirt and still try to live a pure and clean life

It’s been a long week of finals and now all you want to do it curl up on the couch and binge watch a couple seasons of your favorite show on Netflix. But before you log in, take a moment to stop and think about how binge watching television shows affects your heart.

I speak for myself when I say that I had become so desensitized to the garbage I had let into my life through television. Every time I turned on the TV hatefulness, gossip, lies, greed, cheating, lust, etc. were everywhere. I wondered why I was so hateful when all I watched on TV were teens my age rebelling against their parents. I wondered why I was gripped by fear when I had to go outside at night when I constantly watched shows about murder. I wondered why I lusted after every cute guy that walked by when I was constantly bombarded with sex scenes.

Jesus cautions us in Mark 4:24 to “take heed what [we] hear. With the same measure [we] use, it will be measured back to [us].” We can’t allow ourselves to listen and watch just anything. Whatever we give our ears and eyes to, is what is going to come back in our lives. If we allow ourselves to watch soft porn (heated make out scenes, shirtless guys, women in revealing swim suites, etc.) it comes back to us in the form of lust. If we allow ourselves to watch fights on reality TV (physical fights and friends/family gossiping about and backstabbing one another), it comes back in the form of anger and bitterness. Whatever we give our ears and eyes to will come back in our lives with the amount we give ourselves to it.

Proverbs 4:23 directs us to “keep and guard [our] heart with all vigilance and above all that [we] guard, for out of it flow the springs of life.” If we leave our heart unprotected, anything can get in. When we sit down and watch episode after episode of TV shows that solicit anger, fear, hatefulness, lust, etc., we let that get in our hearts and it stops the flow of life. We often don’t think the shows we watch our polluting our hearts because it’s very subtle. The daughter on TV doesn’t slap her mom, instead, she yells at her and storms out of the room. A son doesn’t run away from home but he lies to his parents about where he’s going. These don’t seem like a big deal but they plants seeds of rebellion and disobedience in our hearts. When we sit on the couch and continually put in the same drama, rebellion, lust, etc. nonstop for two or three days or even a week straight and don’t put in any Word, we plant those negative seeds in our heart.

What happens when we get more and more negative seeds in our heart through television and less of God’s Word? Luke 6:45 says “a good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.” Over time, if we’ve constantly added negative seeds into our hearts, that is what’s going to store up.

One time, during my sophomore year of high school, I decided to sit down and read Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins, in an entire afternoon. When I finished the book, I realized that I had been reading for about seven hours straight. For the next few days I felt like I was really in the mind of Katniss; I was thinking like her, responding like her, and basically wanted to be her. I had consumed so much Hunger Games in a short amount of time that it was consuming my thinking. It’s the same thing with television. When we allow ourselves to binge watch episodes, it doesn’t take long for what we’re seeing to take root in our heart. If what we’re watching is leading us closer to sin (even subtly) then we’re storing up evil in our hearts. If we continue to store up evil, that is eventually what’s going to be the abundance of our heart, and that’s what will come out of us.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t watch tv anymore or that we can’t enjoy a few episodes of Netflix at the end of the day. What I am saying is that we have to guard against what we’re filling our hearts with and how much of it we’re pouring in at one time. And if that means shutting off the TV for a while then the time we would have spent watching Netflix can now be used studying the Word of God and planting good seeds in our hearts. :)

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