Empowering Matt Damon

Matt Damon says that he has a hard time entrusting "the nuclear codes" with someone who believes dinosaurs were alive a few millenia ago. Hmmm... I guess he wouldn't trust me.

I enjoy the Bourne movies -- I would probably like them no matter who starred as Jason Bourne. The fact of the matter is that Matt Damon is the one who took home a check for that part (and perhaps residuals). His face on that screen and his bulging checkbook have given him the ability to fund anti-christian causes, and I am responsible for a small part of that. So are other Christians. It's like Saul taking up a collection to send the Philistines so they could hire Goliath.

That said, there are a couple of things I need to consider for myself and fellow Christians should, too.

First, we are as bad as the society around us in being entertainment-driven. Is film-music-art (the media, not the content) inherently "bad"? Is it "worldly"? As a worldview proponent, I would find it hard to take that position. They are only as bad as the motivation and message they present. In the proper hands, they can be wonderful at "telling a story". Ravi Zacharias portrays the arts as the bridge between abstract concepts and supper-table discussions. The arts bring concepts down to where we can see and respond and formulate action.

So, we need to accord the muses their proper place in our world. We also need to look at ourselves and how we treat entertainment. Advertisers would have every new book title, every new movie, every new TV show, every new CD, every new restaurant menu offering as "must see", "must hear", "must read" and we respond with our time and our money. Is that wise?

Next, and corresponding to that, I frequently get "urgent - response needed" emails from organizations like AFA who act as a watchdog for anti-Christian activity in the aforementioned places. Their well-intentioned warning mechanism is a good example of calling like-minded people together to deal with a crisis, but also an example of how we treat the symptoms, not the causes. We have to take away Matt Damon's empowerment. We have to stop sending money to Goliath. We have to do that by re-evaluating and scaling back our appetite for entertainment and by committing ourselves corporately to a long-term effort to defund our enemies.