When a friend or a teenager brings up a show like Boomerang, the talk about faith often stalls before it starts. Someone assumes that a Christian who watched it must approve of it, and the conversation turns into a fight about permission. This guide works on that stall. Watching a story and endorsing what its characters do are two different acts. Once you see why, the show’s portrayal of a pastor’s sin and shame can open an honest conversation about faith.
The guide draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields, the founder of Jude 3 Project, and BJ Thompson, executive director of Build A Better Us, about one episode of the series. Alone, you can work through it in about an hour if you write out the exercises. A group can use one session, or two if discussion runs long. You do not need to have seen the show, because the guide summarizes what you need.
The assumption underneath the stall
The episode centers on David, a young pastor who has committed to celibacy. He breaks that commitment and sinks into a guilt that Fields describes as a kind of depression. Then he tries to make sense of it with friends who mostly do not share his faith. A person who hears that summary may conclude that a show built around a pastor’s sexual sin must celebrate it, and that anyone who watches has signed off on it.
That reasoning usually rests on one premise: to watch a depiction of wrongdoing is to approve of the wrongdoing. Few people say it aloud. But if you hold it, every conversation about the show becomes a test of your conscience. The teen across from you learns that faith has nothing to say about the story itself.
Two plain definitions help. To watch is to give a story your attention. To endorse is to commend what the story presents as good, or to take it on as your own. The two can go together, because a person can watch in order to enjoy what they know is wrong. But attention alone does not require approval.
Map the argument before you argue it
Write the reasoning out as numbered steps. Putting it on paper slows people down enough to see where they actually disagree.
- This show depicts a pastor committing sexual sin.
- Watching a depiction of sin is approving of that sin.
- Christians should not approve of sin.
- So Christians should not watch this show.
Most believers will not dispute steps 1 and 3. Jude 3 holds the historic Christian ethic that sexual intimacy belongs within marriage. David agrees with that ethic, and that agreement is the source of his anguish. So the whole argument hangs on step 2. If step 2 is false, the conclusion does not follow from these steps. A different argument might still reach a similar conclusion for a particular person. Keep that possibility in mind, because it comes back later.
Exercise. Under step 2, write one example that seems to support it and one that seems to count against it. Then try to rewrite step 2 so that it is true. Most people end up with something narrower. For example: watching a story that presents sin as good, in order to enjoy the sin, trains approval. The narrower version depends on what the story does with sin and on why you are watching. It no longer covers every depiction.
A counterexample from Scripture
The Bible tests step 2 directly. Second Samuel 11 tells in detail how King David took another man’s wife and arranged her husband’s death. The narrator reports all of it and then gives a verdict: “But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD” (2 Samuel 11:27). Chapter 12 follows with Nathan’s confrontation and David’s confession.
Read as narrative, the passage describes sin without commending it. The reader is meant to see the sin clearly, feel its weight and hear God’s judgment of it. If depiction equals endorsement, reading 2 Samuel would make every reader complicit in adultery. No careful reader accepts that. So step 2, stated broadly, is false.
The limit of this point matters too. It shows that depiction and endorsement can come apart. It does not show that every modern show handles sin the way 2 Samuel does. Each story still has to be judged on what it actually does.
The strongest objection
The best version of the other side does not need step 2. It appeals to Paul: “For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Ephesians 5:12). On this reading, some things should never become entertainment, and repeated exposure dulls the conscience whether or not you approve of what you see.
That deserves a serious hearing, so read the verse in its setting. The sentence before it says, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11). The sentence after it says, “But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light” (Ephesians 5:13). Paul is warning believers against taking part in the deeds of darkness, and he sets exposure against that participation. In this passage, bringing a deed to light is the alternative to fellowship with it, not a form of it.
That reading cuts against a blanket ban on depiction. It does not settle whether a given show exposes sin or indulges it, and Paul is not writing about television. What the text offers is a test rather than a rule: does this story bring wrongdoing into the light, or does it invite me to share in it?
The objection also leaves something true standing. Paul writes, “all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not” (1 Corinthians 10:23). Someone who knows that certain content pulls them toward sin has a good reason to skip it, even if the show is honest. This is the different argument mentioned earlier. It reaches “do not watch” through one person’s situation, not through step 2. So it binds that person, not the friend sitting next to them.
What this episode actually does with sin
Now apply the test. Thompson’s reading is worth weighing because he watched carefully and did not go looking for the show. Fields assigned it to him. The first thing he noticed was its candor: “I really appreciated the honest dialogue around relationships and around faith and around career.”
On David in particular, Thompson saw the show refuse a common assumption. “I think sometimes we think that people are willfully running into things and they feel so good afterwards,” he says. Many believers do not experience sin that way. “They feel shame, they feel guilt, they feel confusion, and they really don’t know what to do,” Thompson says, and he admits he related to David from his own years before marriage. He valued a character caught between conviction and failure. In Thompson’s words, that character is saying, “I both affirmed this and I’m wrestling with it at the same time.”
By the Ephesians test, this portrayal leans toward exposure. The story does not present David’s broken vow as freedom. It shows what the vow cost him. It also includes voices that get things wrong. Fields describes his friends telling him it is not that big a deal. A discerning viewer can see that their reassurance is kind and also mistaken.
One friend gets something exactly right. After David sleeps with the woman he has been seeing and goes silent, she sends him a long text. Fields recounts the friend’s response: “she’s probably devastated because you were supposed to be different. You were a Christian Guy.” Then Fields presses the point: “this is a friend that’s not even a believer saying this to a guy who’s supposed to be a believer.” A true observation does not become false because of who makes it. That one exchange gives a viewer more to talk about than any argument over permission.
From the screen to the conversation
Once watching and endorsing are separated, the question changes. You stop asking whether your friend should have watched. You start asking what the story got right and wrong about faith, sin and shame. A believer can actually have that conversation.
Thompson explains why many Christians are not ready for it. At a dinner, David breaks into speaking in tongues, and his friends do not know how to respond. “I think some of the strangeness that we see is we just haven’t practice our faith in real time with real people,” Thompson says. The friends step back, he adds, “Because they didn’t know how to enter into the space of what he was experiencing.” Fields describes the same trap from inside church circles, where “you think everybody’s arguing about what you’re arguing about and nobody really cares.” A show your friend already watches can be the place where you practice talking about faith in words outsiders use. Paul’s instruction fits: “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Colossians 4:6).
Thompson also offers a way to frame David’s fall that will matter if your friend sees themselves in him. In his view, “it’s relationships that reveal issues, they don’t create the issue.” David’s failure exposed an immaturity that was already there. Thompson adds a line about what comes next: “It is not okay to suffer in silence.”
Practice: the two-column conversation
Try this with one friend or teen who has seen the episode, or with any show they bring up that touches on faith.
- Before you talk, draw two columns. In the first, list what the story shows truthfully about people. In the second, list where the characters, or the story itself, are wrong about God or about what is good.
- Ask your friend what they would put in each column. Hear all of it before you share yours, and do not correct the first thing you disagree with.
- Pick one item you both put in the first column, such as David’s shame or the friend’s rebuke. Ask together what it would take for someone in David’s place to come back.
- Afterward, write down one thing they said that you did not expect, and ask what it shows about how faith sounds from outside the church.
If you lead a group, expect that someone may see themselves in David. Make sharing optional, and never ask anyone to describe their own sexual history. Galatians 6:1 sets the tone: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” If someone’s guilt has turned into heavy, lasting distress like the depression the episode portrays, encourage them toward a trusted pastor and a licensed counselor. Seeking that help is not a failure of faith.
What would change your mind?
Write a short answer to each of these before the group meets, then compare your answers.
- What would a show have to do for you to decide that watching it is unwise for you? Be specific about how it treats sin and what it does to your thoughts afterward.
- What would a show have to do for you to decide it is worth discussing with someone who does not share your faith?
- If a friend draws the line in a different place than you do, what would show you that their line comes from conscience rather than compromise?
Some disagreement here is legitimate and will remain. Christians who share the same ethic still differ about which stories they can watch with a clear conscience. The argument map shows what the disagreement is about. It is rarely about whether sin is sin. Usually it is about step 2, or about one person’s particular weakness. Naming which of the two you are discussing keeps the conversation honest.
Questions for discussion
- Which version of step 2 do you find yourself holding, and where do you think you learned it?
- The narrator of 2 Samuel judges David’s sin. In the episode, which characters judge or excuse the pastor’s sin, and whose judgment does the story seem to side with? What in the episode supports your answer?
- Thompson says many believers feel shame, not satisfaction, after sin. If a struggling friend fits that description, what do they need to hear first, the standard or that they are not alone? Can one come without the other?
- A friend who is not a believer names the harm David caused. When someone outside the church criticizes Christians, how do you decide whether the criticism is accurate?
- Where does your church vocabulary make it hard for outsiders to follow you? Name one phrase you would need to translate.
- Thompson says relationships reveal issues rather than create them. Can a story do something similar for the person watching it? What might your reaction to this episode reveal about you?
- How would you answer a teen who argues that Christians who watch these shows have no ground to talk about sexual ethics?
The next time someone mentions a show that touches on faith, notice the first question that comes to mind. If it is whether they should have watched, set it aside and ask a second one: what did the story get right about people, and what did it get wrong about God?