To those whose major concern is the salvation of men from sin, disease, and death through the practice of Christian Science, the theater and cinema of today might seem a good place to stay away from. The few choices available might appear to be only between varying degrees of vulgarity, violence, and animality. Stage and films often seem intent on subverting moral standards, shocking the public, and depicting extravagant examples of lifestyles with which we cannot agree or which we will not condone. We may think that instead of providing plain, wholesome entertainment the theater is now either devoid of constructive ideas or committed to the existentialist or nihilist philosophies. No wonder the Puritans considered the theater the place of the devil!
Christian Science does not admonish us to treat the evidence of wrong thinking with shocked and righteous indignation. The errors we see in the theater are, when considered calmly, only evidences of misconceptions—the same misconceptions that have always tried to subvert healthy social intercourse—and they call upon those who know the truth to use it to make both the world and the theater free. We might well ask ourselves what desultory habits of thought, what apathetic inaction, and what blind following of the crowd have objectified in our experience a theater that often is as much a mockery of art as it is a denial of man's essential Godlikeness. Anger and self-righteousness have no healing effect. When Jesus said, "Get thee behind me, Satan,"Luke 4:8; he was neither afraid nor angry; he was commanding Satan to move. He asserted the unequivocal authority of the Christ-idea over aggressive evil beliefs by identifying himself with the Christ, Truth, which heals human conditions.
Christ Jesus was not afraid that evil would pollute his thinking. And he did not let it remain where it was. Move! The challenge for the members of The Mother Church becomes evident. Right thinking will help to promote right activity on the part of actors, directors, playwrights, and audiences.
