Discerning Teens

My friend, Kim, and I have been sharing and praying for each other’s families for almost ten years now.  She recently wrote to share her concern about a current film.  I haven’t seen this film myself, but I value Kim’s discernment.


She writes:

I am writing to you today about something very important that God has put in my heart and the Holy Spirit has urged me to share with as many people as possible. My husband and I just went and saw the movie "Gamers." We like sci-fi, adventure shows, and the previews for this one looked great (future where death-row inmates have the option of becoming a "Gamer," virtually wired and "played" by someone else, and if they survive, they're free.) What the commercials didn't show is what happened before that, how this technology became available and "society" was formed (kind of like facebook), so people chose to let themselves be controlled by "players", people who sat in their house all day, making them do anything and everything, choosing their outfits (most half-naked), so as you walk down the street all you see are these people being controlled, having sex on the sidewalks, girls with girls, guys with guys, violence so disturbing I actually had to cover my eyes more than o nce. As we walked out of the theater, 5 barely 17-year-olds were behind us. I was so disturbed I felt overwhelmed that I had to do something, write a letter to the producer, email all my prayer teams. And I said afterwards to my husband, we are in the midst of a spiritual battle so strong, we have to teach our kids to be discerning, look at the big picture and think about such things. The movie previews were so deceiving, they looked very cool, especially for video gamers and techno teens. Paul (13) knew all about the movie and had watched the trailer online more than once. I left more determined than ever to warn kids to be discerning in how technology is subtly infiltrating their lives. I've had talks about this with my own kids when we gave up cable, but still we've got people having sex in commercials.

I truly believe our children and teenagers are much stronger, smarter and deeper than people give them credit for. We're in a war, and we need to teach our children discernment and equip them to go out there and be warriors for Jesus Christ!