One weekend several years ago, the adult women workers in our student ministry took the girls on a retreat. A few of us guys grew bored in about twenty-three minutes. So I wondered aloud what we should do, and somebody hit the default button. “Let’s go see what’s at the theater.”
Reagan Farris and a few other guys piled into my car. Once we reached the theater, we paused on the sidewalk to check out the movie titles.
“Let’s go see this one,” one of the guys said, pointing to the poster of a movie called The Grudge.
“I don’t know, man,” I said. “I used to go see horror movies all the time as a kid, and I just don’t need that stuff in my head.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “It’ll be good.”
“I don’t know. Nah, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Come on, come on, come on.”
Then he started the whole bro thing. He looked at me and cracked a wry smile: “Dude . . .”
“Nah, man.”
“Dude . . .”
I shook my head.
“Dude.”
Sigh. “Fine. Let’s go.”
There I was, minister, man of the cloth, leader, pastor, overseer — all of those terms — and I just got peer pressured into doing something I knew I shouldn’t do. I have a personal conviction against horror movies. Everything they pump into my head and my heart screams “old life” instead of “new life in Christ.” Still, The Grudge had a decent rating (PG – 13). So I relented. I’m pretty picky about the movies I watch. I’m not going to pay ten bucks to see sexual stuff or hear God’s name taken in vain. But this movie wasn’t like that.
It was just . . .
It was life scarring.
In the first thirty seconds, I knew I would never be the same. The opening credits had barely rolled when I felt that creepy feeling from childhood that reaches down, grabs your gut, and rattles you to the core. Scene after scene, I kept thinking, That’s going to stay with me. That’s going to come back to haunt me later.
It grew worse. Horror movies and salty popcorn don’t mix. Horror movies produce adrenaline. Adrenaline makes your heart pound. So does sodium. A pounding heart races blood through your kidneys. And your kidneys fill your bladder. The $40 Guzzler drink probably didn’t help either.
Halfway through, I couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I said.
We were at a giant cineplex with dozens of theaters. The closest bathroom seemed to stretch half the building away, which now reminded me of the hotel hallways in another horror movie from my childhood. They never leave.
The bathroom had stall after stall, and it was nearly midnight. Not another soul graced the room but me. Listen, bathrooms are not scary . . .
But they were on this night.
I was still alone when I reached the sink to wash my hands. It was an automated sink. Wave your hand over the electric eye you can never find, and the water comes on. As I stood at the sink in an empty bathroom, suddenly the flush of an automatic toilet roared behind me about three stalls down.
Whooooooossssshhhhh.
I found out I hadn’t finished going to the bathroom after all.
I did what everyone does and bent over to look underneath the stall and see if anyone was there. The joint was empty. Toilets aren’t scary . . .
But they were on this night.
“I bolted back into the theater, back to the safety of the seat next to my buddies. I watched the second half of the movie and deepened the scarring.
We headed home afterward in silence. I was still spooked when I looked over at Reagan. “So, what did you think of the movie?”
“Pretty good.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
I drove a little farther. Then I cleared my throat and spoke. “So, uh, you could, uh, you could stay at my house, if you want. Because Melanie is, you know, on the girls’ trip. Plenty of space.”
Reagan was like, “Ah, I don’t kn — OK.”
When we reached my house, we walked up the sidewalk to the front stoop. Now, I had no way of knowing a little family of birds had made a nest at the top of our porch. All I know is that when I stepped onto the darkened porch, they awoke. With a vengeance.
Birds flitted around our heads like something out of a Hitchcock thriller. It wasn’t a bloodcurdling, terrifying moment, but it startled me enough to make me fumble my way through the door. Guess what? Birds are not scary . . .
Once inside the house, Reagan and I sat and talked. And we talked. We talked about as much stuff as possible. We talked about things that didn’t matter — just stuff about stuff. After a while, we both knew we were stalling because we didn’t want to be alone.
Our eyelids finally convinced our nerves to go to bed. I showed Reagan the guest room and then retired to my room, took off my jacket, and tossed it aside. I just oh-so-casually threw it.
Imagine this scene in slow motion.
As my jacket glided in midair, I walked toward the light switch that for some reason an evil builder had put on the other side of the room. I wasn’t halfway across the darkened room when my jacket landed. How could I have known that my daughter, Zoe, had left her little doll in the chair? I had begun reaching for the light switch when the jacket landed on the doll, which then screamed, “Ha, ha, ha, ha! Let’s play!”
Dolls aren’t scary . . .
But they were on this night.
Let me tell you something. I flipped that light switch and bounced around my bedroom quoting Scripture. “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” “He will not leave you or forsake you.”
I belted out the chorus of a hymn. “Majesty, worship his majesty! Unto Jesus be all glory, power, and praise!”
Right then and there, I confessed everything I’d ever done and committed to a life of missions in the deepest, darkest outpost.
I just knew Reagan could hear me and thought I was losing it. Because I was.
Here’s the thing. All the stuff that scared me — I put it there. I booted up the mental computer and loaded the file. And it’s still there. It doesn’t ever go away.
Dolls? They’re still not cool. Any time, ever. When my daughter wants one for Christmas, my first question is whether it comes with batteries. If so, mark it off the list. You’re supposed to play with dolls; dolls aren’t supposed to play by themselves. Dolls that play by themselves . . . that’s a whole other horror story.
I don’t like to go into my basement now. Horror movies are to blame. I take Zoe with me. Zoe is ten.
“C’mon, Zoe. We have to get something out of Daddy’s studio.”
“Dad, we always have to get something together in the basement.”
“You’re my little helper.”
“But Mom said it’s time for bed.”
“Hush and come on.”
The point is this: The images we put into our brains matter. The music we pump into our heads matters. It’s all going somewhere and eventually will come out, but it’s never going away. I can go into a restaurant and hear a song from my high school years and tell you where I was when I heard it back in the day. I can tell you how the room smelled. It’s seared into my brain.
It’s amazing how scary movies can redefine reality and make us uneasy about things that never bothered us before. Toilets are not scary. Little kids’ toys are not scary. Birds are not scary. But they all were redefined and became scary to me because of the effects of one movie.
This is why it is essential that believers saturate themselves in God’s Word. When the world launches its multimedia guns at us, we can overcome the trash with the purity and tranquility of God’s truth. Digging into his truth helps us root out the weeds of the world.
Do you like to go swimming in the ocean at night? Anybody who has seen Jaws doesn’t want to do that, even four decades after the movie debuted. Old dilapidated houses are automatically haunted because of horror flicks. Going into the basement in the dark is taboo because of the most scary movies you’ve ever seen. In unsettling moments, we are convinced that things lurk under our beds and in our closets — all because movies have redefined how we see them.
Like the surprise twist in the worst kind of horror movie, that’s exactly what the Enemy tries to do to your walk with Jesus.
Point to Remember
Satan works to redefine what we believe.