Living on the Big Screen

Read: Deuteronomy 11:8-17

Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them.                                  Deuteronomy 11:16 

     As technology advances, so do the special effects and graphics in movies produced in Hollywood. Let me make it clear that I don’t participate in watching the things they produce, but I have seen movie trailers. I am aware (through reading magazine and internet articles) of what they do. There is no question that Hollywood, through their movies, portrays a false sense of reality. Make-up artists have become adept at creating muscle-bound heroes and perfectly-complexioned women. They are skilled at making people believe that what they are producing could actually happen. The hero always gets the babe to come swooning back into his arms; and, no matter how he acts, he is always “the man.” Celebrity magazines, through pictures, portray the movie stars as being perfect. The women all have perfect skin and are perfectly shaped. The men are all handsome and perfectly proportioned. What happens to the young men who view these movies and pictures is that they start to see their lives through the lens of the big screen. They begin to imitate the actions and phrases, and they picture their lives as being perfect, just like the guy’s in the movie. They become dissatisfied with “ordinary” women; they feel that they could only settle for a “knockout” as a wife.

     Hollywood’s warped sense of reality has attracted many unsuspecting young men and made them feel as if their lives were not good enough. It has made them believe that they, too, can be the hero that saves the world and wins the perfect girl. It has made them feel that if things in their lives are not as perfect as those in the lives of their celebrity heroes’, then they are a failure. Hollywood lied.

     The truth is, the movie industry is built upon deception. I enjoy photography and have done much work in the photo-editing program Photoshop. I’ve watched many tutorial videos that show how ordinary women are transformed into supermodels through the skilled use of a computer mouse. Young men are falling for fake versions of women who could not possibly be real people. The life they perceive on the screen is not even real. Since it is not reality, it is impossible to live there.

     The point is this: God has someone specific that He wants you to be. He did not create you to imitate fictitious movie characters who have no interest in godly things. Step away from the fake big-screen glamour, and start living as the man God intended you to be.

Quote of the day: “We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task is to find reality.”           – Iris Murdoch