Congratulations on the first ST podcast. The sound quality was excellent.

Allow me to offer my 15 cents (inflation) on this topic. I find nothing wrong with violence and sex in entertainment. Though I find our culture has backwards attitudes about both - it's okay to show someone get shot in the head but don't you ever, ever consider showing a penis on TV, even in a non-sexual way. Yet almost no one will ever witness a murder of any kind and almost everyone will be exposed to a penis (hell, half of us have one). I guess it's just one of those cultural absurdities.

This may reflect my biases. I love sex and hate violence. But I don't think I'm unusual in that aspect. What may make me unusual is that I generally don't like violence in my entertainment. It's part of the reason I see so few movies.

Finally, since I don't consider sex between consenting adults a sin, I don't consider most sex for entertainment, including pornography, a sin.

Oh, and I wanted to give you props for holding the Jesus Geeks feet to the consistency fire. Being more accepting of viewing violence than sex betrays a cultural bias that God may not share.

Is that a call for more Penises on TV? I don't think I would back that.

The podcast quality was indeed solid. It took longer to download than it did to listen to, but that delay could be due to my computer being paleozoic in age.

Regarding the issue of violence in the media and it's place for Christians (not one personally, but I speak the lingo):

It's my understanding that the Old Testament god and the New Testament Jesus had quite opposite takes.

There are numerous passages in the OT in which warfare on Israel's enemies was glorified. The commands to slay thousands of enemies often came from God himself or one of his appointed mouthpieces. There were imperatives to stone certain types of criminals in a very non-Bob Dylan way. If filmed, the OT would be rated R.

This disparity actually raises a separate topic, as to whether a NT believing Christian should accept both testaments. It's part of my ongoing thoery that each time the world "expanded" in the view of bible readers, a new section of the bible was added (New Testament once the focus left the fertile cresecent, the Book of Mormon once the "New World" was discovered)

I agree with the idea that viewing acts of violence or crime or sorcery (probably the goofiest of modern Christianity's self-precieved "threats") doesn't typically give rise to thoughts of committing these acts remotely as often or as easily as sexual content can.

But of all these things: murder, theft, vulgarity, torture, occult arts, sex... only one is something that is universally condoned (albeit under certain circumstances). The human body in its natural state, removed from emotion or "sin"... is still going to gravitate towards one of those acts on a subconcsious, biological level. It's why virtually all of us are here to begin with.

Some Christians are trained to believe their own nature is a weakness to be kept in check or a source of evil to be overcome. In extreme cases, it ruins those people with guilt. I'm certain that if there did exist a creator, it would have to have been the judgmental OT God that would set his people up to fail like this.

In modern America, the ideal NT Jesus would spend his time in bars and titty clubs in order to reach the masses. Taking water to the desert and all that jazz. Isn't he presented as someone more concerned with the person, and less with the specifics?

It's that "living the message" vs. "calling it from the pew" that makes Christianity so unappealing and inaccessible to us sinful masses out here.

I'm all over the place, I know that. But to conclude my response to the original topic... the bible instructs people to "think on whatsoever is good, pure, etc." This can be interpreted to mean that Christians shouldn't be spending their focus on anything "secular" to begin with, regardless of the flying bullets or boobies.

Doesn't this mean that a sports fanatic or that music, movies or any entertainment should be as wholly Christian as possible? Being in the world and not "of it"? It feels like declaring certain non-faithful elements fair game is spitting on a faith that clearly spells out it's requirements for complete devotion.