Should You Watch an R Rated Movie?

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is the organization which gives films their ratings. Of course the purpose of the ratings is to help parents give guidance to their children regarding what movies are appropriate for their age. Over the years the standards have changed, somewhat, so that movies which used to be thought of as containing adult material are now rated as acceptable for a younger audience. It is obvious that many movies which are now rated PG-13 would have, in past times, been rated R. But even with that, the ratings do give us a sense of the moral content of the movies.

Personally, I try to avoid R (restricted) rated movies. Typically, these are filled with gratuitous profanity, violence and sex or nudity. While occasionally an R rated movie comes along which is worth watching (such as The Passion of the Christ), for the most part, these movies promote values which conflict with my Christian values.

Well, there is a new R rated movie coming out soon called “My Son.” This one is about a young man who falls in love with a young woman and stands by her side when her child is taken from her. The movie contains allusions to drugs and also has a rather scary hostage standoff in a church. But even with that, there is nothing graphic which would normally merit the R rating. And did I mention, the movie has been produced by a church – Retta Baptist Church in Burleson, Texas.

So we have a movie which is produced by a church, with a faith based message, no sex, no foul language, no nudity, and even the violence and drugs are handled lightly, but still an R rating? What’s going on here?

Well, it seems that now the MPAA has another category that they want to warn parents about – Christianity. You read that right. They want to try and limit the audience for an evangelical film. They are offended and believe that a message which indicates that there is only one way to heaven and promotes traditional moral values is bigoted.

Of course, the MPAA would never say that out loud. They say the R rating is for some violence and drug use. But considering that many of the movies which they rate as much as two classifications lower have less offensive material than what is contained in this one, the rating is a crock. There are definitely other motives at play.

Almost everywhere you turn these days, the Christian faith, and Christians, are being abused – and much of it already rises to a level that it can be called persecution. We see it in government policy, the military, businesses, schools and the list could go on. It is not too late to turn this around, but the only way it is going to happen is for Christians to begin exposing the hypocrisy of the attacks and pushing back in the appropriate forums. To effectively do this, we must grasp the worldview concepts which help us not only understand why our Christian faith is the truth and other beliefs are not, but also give us the tools to share our faith with those who don’t know Christ. Ultimately, that is the key to changing the culture. Ultimately, that is what must be done to promote the values that we, as Christians, cherish so strongly.