What about the issue of self-censorship in the movies I choose to see and the song lyrics I listen to? Can you give me some guidance from the Christian Science perspective? I feel like a lot of movies give a good message, but you have to get through the swear words, images of drug use, nudity, and so on to get message—like the movie Requiem for a Dream, which is about a guy getting addicted to drugs and eventually dying. It's so hard to watch, but you gain from watching it.
A1 The self-censorship you're pondering reminds me of something Mary Baker Eddy said in Science and Health, "Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love" (p. 106). As the desire to be governed by good, by God, in even the little decisions of our lives, deepens, God's guidance becomes louder and more tangible to us. Mrs. Eddy gave this guidance, "... keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210).
I, too, have seen movies that I felt enriched by, though I had to wade through a huge amount of the mistiness of mortality to catch a glimmer of redemption, compassion, or supremacy of good over evil.
