Good eyes. Bad eyes.

The title here is an allusion to Matthew 6:22-23 which says:
"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness" (NIV)

Since we've recently studied the sermon on the mount in Biblical Heritage class, I thought I'd just bring up this particular verse as it is one that has great consequences for our society today. Very often, we tend to disregard the importance of 'good' eyes in a world that is plagued by sensuality. I remember watching a movie rated PG-13 once, and thinking "who the heck thought this would be appropriate for 13-year olds?!". It's like we spend so much time trying to keep youths away from violence, that we fail to see the the pernicious effects of sensuality in the media.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine once and she suggested we go see a movie. I declined the offer hoping she wouldn't probe me further on my reason for doing so. No luck there. She did asked and I had to explain to her that I'd seen the preview and read the reviews, and I just wasn't comfortable with the movie's sexually explicit content. She looked at me incredulously and said, "Really? That stuff gets to you?!".
Yes friend, that stuff gets to me. It gets to all of us. I used to think the problem was that I was just a really visual person and so I was more affected by images, but after reading the Matt 6:22, I began to understand that I was just more aware of the importance of guarding my eyes. "The eye is the lamp of the body" is what Jesus says. It illuminates us! Yet we're so willing to let anything and everything pervade it.

For those who are having a hard time identifying with me, let me give you a scenario that I hope will drive my point across. You've recently moved into a new house and your friendly neighbors next door come over and ask you to join them for a home-cooked meal and cool hangout time. You get there and have dinner with them. After the meal is done, you ask what else they have planned for the evening and they casually explain to tell you that next on the agenda will be you watching them engage in intercourse. I hope at this point you're thinking "awkward!" and running out the door of your neighbors' house! Sounds like an extreme case doesn't it? But think about it. What do these movies ask us to do by showing sexually explicit content?  They ask us to participate, by viewing, in situations that if presented to us in the natural world, we would waste no time in fleeing from.

What we watch is important friends. This stuff gets to us and unfortunately it also gets through us.
Sufficient for the day is its own troubles...