You can keep watching your shows and still learn to see what they are teaching you about sex and love. That is the aim of the one weekly practice at the center of these pages: choose a series or film you already watch, watch one episode fully awake, and then name what the story asked you to want. Nothing here asks you to give up entertainment. The goal is attention, practiced on purpose over four weeks, until noticing becomes a habit rather than an effort.
You can work through it alone in about an hour, then carry the practice through the month. A group can use it across two meetings: one to learn the practice, and one, a few weeks later, to compare what people noticed.
Start with what you already assume
Before reading further, take ten minutes and write down short, honest answers to three prompts. Keep the paper, because you will come back to it at the end.
- List the shows or films you return to most often, the ones that are simply on in your week.
- Finish this sentence in your own words: When I watch TV, the thing that affects me most is…
- Write one sentence about how much you think your viewing has shaped your expectations of romance, attraction or faithfulness. Very little, some, or a lot? Give a reason.
There is no right answer here. Some people will write that television hardly touches them. Others already suspect it has shaped them more than they would like. Either starting point is useful, because the practice is designed to test it.
Morgan Avery McCoy, an actress who studied theater at Hampton University and earned a master’s in communications with an emphasis on film producing at Regent University, puts the problem she wants viewers to notice this way: “it’s educating you, but you’re not even realizing that you’re being educated. And that’s the danger of it.” Her concern is awareness. A lesson you know you are receiving can be weighed. A lesson you receive while you think you are only relaxing gets past the part of you that weighs things.
Two passages for a watcher
Open your Bible to these two passages and read them slowly, ideally out loud, before you think about any show.
In Philippians 4:8, Paul tells the believers to think on whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report, and on anything that has virtue or deserves praise. He is writing to a church he loves, near the end of a letter, and this verse comes right after his words about God’s peace guarding their hearts and minds. The instruction directs what a believer dwells on. The KJV word honest carries an older sense closer to honorable or worthy of respect, and other translations render it that way. The verse gives a watcher a set of tests that can be applied to a story: Is it true about people? Is it just? Does it treat as honorable what is actually honorable?
Notice that Paul’s list begins with truth. A story can be full of sin and still be true about what sin does. A story can also be clean on the surface and false about how love works. The verse does not let you judge a show only by counting scenes.
In Hebrews 5:14, the writer says that solid food belongs to the mature, those whose senses have been trained through use to tell good from evil. The writer is rebuking readers who have stayed spiritually immature, and the verse is about maturity in understanding God’s word, so applying it to television is an application rather than its direct subject. The principle in the text is still plain: discernment comes through use. You do not become discerning about media by deciding once to be careful. You become discerning by practicing, week after week, on real material.
Pause and observe: Look at both passages again. Which one describes what to aim your mind toward, and which one describes how a person gets better at telling good from evil? Write one sentence on how the two need each other.
Where the lesson usually hides
If you watch for explicit scenes only, you will miss most of what a story teaches. The conversation between Lisa Fields, the founder of Jude 3 Project, and McCoy points to two quieter places where formation happens.
The first place: who you want to win
Fields recalls her mother telling her to “notice how the media makes us root for sin.” Her example is one of her own favorite films, Brown Sugar, where viewers spend the story hoping the two leads end up together while one of them is married. Fields describes the audience’s reaction honestly: “We don’t even think, oh, he just committed adultery.” Instead, she says, “we are like, oh, they’re finally together.” She sees the same pattern in Scandal, a show she watches, where Olivia and Fitz are portrayed so that, in her words, “because they feel a certain way that overrides the covenant of marriage that Fitz has with Millie.”
This changes what you look for. The question is less What did I see? and more What was I hoping for while I watched? Hope is where a story trains your desires. When you cheer a couple across a broken vow, you have practiced a moral judgment without deciding to make one.
The second place: what seems normal and common
Fields also describes how repetition works on a viewer. When you see something over and over, she says, “you see it enough, it normalizes it.” Then she adds the next step: “And then it makes you curious.” McCoy stresses that television in particular works this way, “especially if it’s a TV show, ’cause you’re watching it on a consistent basis.”
McCoy names one specific false impression this creates. Viewers come away sensing that “everybody’s drinking, everybody’s having sex, this is what everybody’s doing. But that’s not everybody.” A story suggests what is typical as well as what is good, and a person who believes they are the only one waiting or the only one staying faithful starts to feel strange for doing what is right.
McCoy also explains why these lessons slip by. The music is good, the show is funny, the lead actor is attractive, and while your attention is on those things, she says, “you’re missing all of the messages that they’re pouring into us.” None of those pleasures is the problem. They are simply where your attention goes instead.
The weekly practice
Do this once a week for four weeks, with something you would have watched anyway. Use the same show each week if you can, since patterns show up over several episodes that a single one hides.
- Before you press play, say one question to yourself: What is this episode going to ask me to want? McCoy’s version of this habit is simple: “let me see what messages they’re trying to tell me.” Keep the question in the background. Do not pause every few minutes or take notes during the episode.
- Watch normally. Laugh, get invested, enjoy it. The practice fails if it turns watching into homework, because you would no longer be watching the way you usually do.
- Right after it ends, spend five minutes on these three questions. Answer in a few words each, on paper or in your phone’s notes.
- Which relationship did I most want to work out, and what would have to be true about promises for it to work out?
- What did the episode treat as normal or as what everyone does? Is that actually true of the people I know?
- Did any choice about sex or love have a cost on screen? If not, what cost would it have in real life?
- Hold it up to Philippians 4:8. Pick one quality from the verse, such as true, just or pure. Ask where the episode was faithful to that quality and where it worked against it. Write one sentence.
- Mark one thing worth keeping. Name one moment that was true, honorable or lovely. This step matters. A practice that only hunts for problems trains suspicion instead of discernment.
Step four needs a starting standard, and it helps to say it openly so you can examine it. The standard here is the historic Christian ethic, which Jude 3 holds with grace rather than condemnation, that sexual intimacy belongs within marriage. Fields roots it in covenant, calling marriage “one of the greatest covenants you can make outside of your relationship with him.” Paul’s word just shows why that matters for a viewer. A story that frames a broken vow as the happy ending is being unjust to the person the camera stopped following. The practice is not a verdict machine. It asks whether your imagination is learning to experience faithfulness as good, or as an obstacle the main characters must get around, and you are free to test that standard against Scripture as you go.
Testing the practice against honest objections
Two objections usually come up, and they pull in opposite directions.
The first says this is overthinking a TV show. McCoy anticipates it. She warns believers against treating it as “oh, it’s just a TV show. Oh, it’s just a movie.” Her concern is specific: “And if your eyes aren’t open, then you’re gonna begin thinking about things that you hadn’t even thought about before.” The practice offers a fair test of the objection. If a show truly teaches you nothing, four weeks of honest questions will show that, and you will have lost about twenty minutes.
The second objection says that a serious Christian should simply stop watching. McCoy is candid about her own preference when speaking to young people: “I’m not telling you like to get rid of all of your secular CDs, although that would be what I prefer.” What she asks for instead is this: “just be aware of the message that’s being shared.” She did stop watching Scandal for a season, partly because ratings support more of the same content. Fields, by her own account, kept watching. This guide does not decide that question for you. It gives you better information for deciding it. Some readers may find after a month that a show costs them more than it gives. Others will keep watching with sharper eyes.
One more caution. If the practice brings up something heavier than a show, such as a pattern with pornography that feels out of your control, or grief over past choices, that deserves a real conversation with a pastor, a trusted friend or a counselor. Seeking that kind of help is not a failure of faith, and this guide is not a substitute for it.
Questions for conversation
If you lead a group, nobody should have to name what they watch or describe their own history. Let people answer about a show in general terms if they prefer. For the second meeting, consider choosing one episode most of the group already knows and walking through the practice together before people share their own weeks.
- Think of a couple on screen you badly wanted to end up together. Looking back, what did their story assume about commitment or faithfulness?
- Repetition can make something feel normal and then feel common. What has come to seem common to you that, when you think about the people you actually know, is not?
- Philippians 4:8 begins with what is true. Can a story that shows sin honestly be more true than a story that avoids it? What makes the difference?
- Hebrews 5:14 says senses are trained by use. What would a trained sense for media look like in a real person? What would it not look like?
- When two people with the same convictions decide differently about the same show, what should each of them be weighing?
- McCoy hopes for stories that “show the struggle. Be real. I’m not saying be fake about it.” What story have you seen that showed faithfulness honestly, struggle included? What made it believable?
After four weeks
Take out the paper you wrote at the start. Read your sentence about how much your viewing has shaped you. Then read your notes from the four episodes, and look for one pattern that repeated, whether in whom you rooted for, what seemed normal, or what never seemed to cost anything.
If your first estimate was wrong in either direction, you have just had the kind of exercise Hebrews describes. Write a new sentence beside the old one. In a group, spend the second meeting laying those patterns side by side: when people watching different shows find the same assumption about love repeating, the group has learned something about the stories themselves, not only about one viewer. Then keep asking the first question before you press play next week: What is this story going to ask me to want?