"It's 'Only' Violence"

     I read another article that applied to me quite a bit and I would love to share some of it to y'all; it was called "It's 'Only' Violence." It begins with an eye opening story that really caught my attention.

     "Not long ago I decided to conduct an informal survey to find out about Church members' views on television and movies. When I asked members what makes some movies and TV shows objectionable, the most common response was sexually explicit scenes, followed by profanity. Nobody mentioned violence. When I asked about specific movies, a common response was, 'That movie had only one bad scene.' I asked, 'What happened? Did someone get killed?' The answer was always the same: 'No. It was a sex scene.'" When I applied myself to this I realized that not very often do I consider violence as something that makes a movie objectionable. I often find myself enjoying a good little battle between good and evil and don't even raise a thought to how it may be offensive for God to see us enjoying that. Now I am not saying that your classic Jerry smashing a pan in Tom's face is what is being talked about here. I think it is more of a Jack Bauer tearing some terrorist's guts out to get some information, or a Jason Bourne fighting with a hand towel to win the fight and chokes a guy with a power cord type of thing, both of which I have enjoyed. 

     It continues, "Sex outside of marriage is a serious sin. In fact, Alma taught that it was among the most grievous of sins. But what did Alma rank as the two most serious sins? Denying the Holy Ghost and 'shedding … innocent blood,' or committing murder (Alma 39:5–6). I was puzzled that many [people] did not feel concerned about watching people being murdered on the screen. And many seemed to consider profanity to be more objectionable than violence in movies and TV programs." I, myself, have never really thought of violence as something that was that bad too watch, like I said before, but when you consider the fact that to God the only thing worse is denying the Holy Ghost it changes my perspective a bit. 

     But why could this possibly be so bad for our society? "The Spirit is offended when we pollute our minds with harmful, violent material, whether or not such material causes us to commit violent acts. Consuming violent media makes it more difficult to keep ourselves 'unspotted from the world' (James 1:27). It is troubling that so many people consider it entertaining to view violence or play violent video games." He says that even if the violence we see does not make us more violent it does keep us from having the Spirit. Now the fact of whether violence actually causes someone to be more violent is questionable. However, it is much more feasible and realistic that seeing violence causes one to be more violent, as displayed in many of the studies from the article.

     If I was to address every point in the article this post would be huge so I will end it here and recommend that y'all read it. I would however like to end with one quote to get those gears in your head spinning. "By the time the average American child graduates from elementary school, he or she will have seen more than 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other assorted acts of violence, such as assaults, on network television. The numbers are even higher if the child has access to cable television or a videocassette or DVD player, as most do."