I sat there, on my couch, late at night, watching a giant cockroach gorge on some “red shirt,” splattering the camera with poorly-rendered CGI blood, while the heroes of this B-movie ran for cover down some cavern. I loved those kind of movies. The cheesier and bloodier the science fiction, the better. In this case, the horror and blood was nothing but gratuitous, and I relished in it on that particular night.
My wife and I were going through a marital challenge, and I was unjustly angry at her. I knew putting something like this on television would make her leave the room. It did, and she went to bed.
In the midst of the movie, I recognized I was “numbing out” the anger and pain I felt by watching these monsters feast bloodily on humans, or at least the image of humans, since it was just a movie.
“Why am I enjoying watching the image of humans getting ripped apart?” I suddenly asked myself. “Isn’t this devaluing and degrading to the image of God?” The thoughts came unbidden to my mind.
And then suddenly, almost as clear as you reading this to yourself, came the question, “Why do you enjoy watching the destruction of people, when I love and died for them?”
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.