Why Looking to the Arts for Moral Guidance is Dangerous in a Postmodern Culture

When we allow the whims of what humans find entertaining define what is right or good, it is often at the expense of real moral truth. It’s time to guard against this postmodern way of thinking and hold firm to our Creator’s view of morality.

Why the Arts and Entertainment are Unreliable Sources of Moral Guidance

Though even the sin nature of man doesn’t reduce most of us to the point of finding the torturing of babies entertaining, there are some who would find it extremely entertaining. Let’s not forget the Colosseum days.

Who gets to draw the line where? For many, the entertainment value of pornography and virtually everything short of torturing babies on screen is free game. In fact, I’m not so sure torturing animals wouldn’t be considered an even greater crime in the eyes of many today. And there are a whole lot of things that humans actually will watch and produce—and defend their right to watch and produce—for artistic license and entertainment value. These would certainly fall on the immoral side of the line that God has already drawn.

But, God is no longer in the equation, as He once was in the film industry. Now man is the measure of all things moral—including art. Pornography is now an art form. One can take classes on pornography at virtually any major college or university in America—all on many unsuspecting parents’ dime.

As man “evolves” perhaps that moral line in the sand will move again. But, to who knows where? Back to the Colosseum days? And since the Darwinist worldview includes “survival of the fittest” it only stands to reason that man’s evolution would lead him to conclude that killing the weak might even become a virtue someday.

Someday? Hitler, and many others like him, seemed to think so already. And now, with digital technology, we can get our illicit sex, blood and guts without any real human sacrifice—if you don’t count time, of course.

Maybe we’re already there, but in a virtual way. The question is this: “When and where will the nut jobs of the world bridge the virtual and the real, and perform their real, rather than virtual, acts on others?”

It’s already happening. Just watch the news.

Are you Letting the Arts Twist your Morality

Like lemmings, the masses will be ineffective in challenging the fact that artists are now the new arbiters of moral truth. Our kids already do think so. Why? Because they have been entertained into imbecility themselves—not to mention that not every truth can be “proved” empirically. Their own sin natures enjoy the new moral code that Hollywood and the Internet have brought to the table.

Sadly, that same sin nature is in all of us. It just manifests differently. We all like sin—just at different levels and styles. And, as time goes by, our tolerance for sin and perversion gets eroded more and more by those in the art world who have taken it upon themselves to be the trend-setters and moral arbiters.

That’s when, for God’s people, the spiritual side of who we are begins to justify certain things and allows those lines of demarcation to be moved in our own hearts. Our will and appetites increase, while God’s will in us diminishes to the point of grieving the Holy Spirit away—right seems wrong and wrong seems right.

But, this is nothing new. Read Scripture; it’s been going on this way from the beginning. Man always invents new and improved ways to fall away from God and serve other gods, mould or build a new one, or even become one himself.

Picture provided by: Dawn Hudson