Joshua Hawk

“If you love anything better than God you are idolaters. If there is anything you would not give up for God it is your idol. If there is anything that you seek with greater fervor than you seek the glory of God, that is your idol. Conversion means a turning from ever idol.” – Charles Spurgeon

Binge watching Netflix has become a favorite past time for many people living in the world today. When it comes to movies or television, I am usually picky about what I watch. I don’t do horror films and I don’t watch films that contain nudity, sorcery, or witchcraft. Despite my efforts to avoid exposing myself to filth and darkness, the majority of movies and sitcoms that are being streamed over the internet today are full of foul language, sexual innuendos, and nudity. It is virtually impossible these days to find anything that doesn’t contain any garbage.

A lot of my friends binge watch shows on Netflix like The Office and The Big Bang Theory. I must admit, I spent countless hours watching these shows and other sitcoms like it in the past. Some evenings I would watch half a dozen episodes on Netflix and would spend entire weekends burning through seasons. At first, I was bothered by the dirty jokes and perversion but over time I found myself ignoring them for the sake of knowing if the salesman and the secretary would get together or to see if the nerd would win the heart of the beautiful girl. Little did I know that my compromise was exposing myself to filth and idolatry.

In Exodus 20:3, God explicitly says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” From our perspective, it is easy to assume that God is commanding us to not have anything between Him and us; however, many of us lack understanding and are blindly breaking this commandment in ignorance. When we think of the word “before”, we often think of it in terms of priority – before and after, first and second, now and later, etc. Because of this understanding, our natural interpretation of God’s commandment is to put Him first in our lives before anything else. This is a correct interpretation but not the full interpretation. We are to love God more than anything and anyone; however, “before” means something completely different. The Hebrew word Moses uses for “before” is the word Pânîym which is pronounced as Paw-neem’. Pânîym is defined as “in the presence of” or “in the face of.” When God said “You shall have no other gods before me,” what He said was, “You shall have no other gods in my presence!” This means God must never be second nor first of many; God must be our only!

So many Christian break this commandment by simply having something in their possession or a habit in their life that offends God. In one of my previous blog posts entitled Idols of the Modern Age, I talk about social media and technology being idols. I also talk about my personal experiences and how video games were once an idol in my life. I originally thought I had removed all of the idols from my life but in these past couple of weeks, God has revealed more junk that needed to be removed from my life.

For those who haven’t been over to my apartment, I had a large movie collection next to my television. My movie shelf was usually one of the first things that people notice when they came over. Most of the Blu-ray’s in my collection were pop culture films but my prized collection were the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. To say I was a super fan would be an understatement. I had a section in my movie shelf designated for Marvel films and bought countless T-shirts and Funko-Pops. Any time Kevin Feige would announce a new movie, I would count down the days for the trailer and the release date of the premiere. When it finally arrived in theaters, I would see it several times. In fact, I saw Avengers Infinity War SEVEN times while it was out in theaters! Because I liked these films so much, going to San Diego Comic-Con to attend the Hall H panel and meeting Stan Lee easily became bucket-list items.

The night of New Years Eve, December 31st, 2018, I was listening to a sermon entitled Josiah’s Reform. The sermon was about how King Josiah turned an idolatrous nation back to God. The story can be found in 2 Kings 22 and in 2 Kings 23:1-25. After hearing that message, my heart was convicted and I repented. As much as I like the superhero film genre, I owed movies that contained false gods – Thor the god of thunder, Loki the god of mischief, Hela the goddess of death, Diana the daughter of Zeus, and Ares the god of war. I was repulsed in my spirit that I had let these things into my home and before the presence of God Almighty. Not only that, my fervor for those films and fictitious characters was greater than my fervor for Jesus. That night my heart became like Josiah’s. I cleaned out my movie collection and threw away my t-shirts. I also ended my subscription to Netflix.

Although Marvel films might be considered harmless entertainment and good for families, I ask the following question: does your love for Marvel, Star Wars, or your favorite shows on Netflix exceed your love for God? My friends, if you are a Christian and have a habit of binge watching Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube, please take what I am about to say to heart. It is easy to be offended and take a “judge-not” stance to defend your habits. But if you are a Christian and spend more time binge watching movies and tv shows than you spend time in the word or in prayer, you are living an idolatrous lifestyle and have exposed yourself to darkness. “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Matthew 6:22-23 NKJV 

Now some of you might be thinking right now “I don’t worship idols!” Although that may be true to a degree, anything that consumes the majority of your free time is considered an idol and idols cannot be found anywhere before the presence of the Almighty. We cannot walk with Jesus and have any form of idolatry in our possession or in His presence. Assemblies of God evangelist, Glenn Meldrum, once said “A prayer-less life is an idolatrous life because everything else is more important than Jesus.” If a football game, TV show, or movie excites you more than going to church or spending time with Jesus in prayer, it is probably time to reevaluate your love for Jesus. No one can serve two masters but the good news is God forgives when we repent of our sins!

“But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15 NIV