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Question 8
Tertullian asks, “How can it be right to look at the things that are wrong to do?” and the author confesses letting PG-13 standards decide for him; what parts of your entertainment choices are effectively outsourced to rating systems, peer expectations, or the “conservative community,” and what concrete standards would early Christians likely find inconsistent with discipleship?
Another way to ask: Tertullian asks why it’s okay to watch things that would be wrong to do, and the author admits relying on PG-13 labels. Where do you let ratings, friends, or your church group choose your entertainment for you, and what standards would early Christians likely say don’t fit following Jesus?

Direct Answer Bercot’s confession suggests that when we rely on ratings or what “conservatives” accept, we let the culture define righteousness for our eyes and ears. Early Christians would likely call inconsistent any entertainment that trains the heart through “violence, crime, and immorality,” even if it is socially acceptable and not labeled “too risqué.”

Support from Transcript:

  • Tertullian’s principle: “How can it be right to look at the things that are wrong to do?”
  • He warns that theater defiles through “eyes and ears,” not only through speech.
  • Christians “shunned the theater with disgust” because themes were “crime, adultery, and immorality,” and mimes “teach adultery by acting it out.”
  • Bercot admits cultural outsourcing: he accepted movies if not “worse than PG-13,” letting “the motion picture industry decide” what was fit.
  • He also notes peer benchmarks: he avoided what the “conservative community” called risqué yet still watched content “saturated with violence, crime, and immorality.”
Discussion Follow-ups If we stopped using ratings as our conscience, what positive standard would replace them? What content do we excuse because it is “normal,” and how would Tertullian’s question expose that excuse?

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