Can a Christian go to the theatre or be an actor?

This is the question I received from a reader of our portal yesterday and I want to answer it in this article.

Theater is a tool

Theater is a tool of communication that can be used for good or for bad, just as television or the Internet or the telephone, they can be used to communicate the truth of God and valuable things, but also to spread immorality, aggression and evil that destroy human souls. We can not condemn the theater just as we can not condemn the knife.It matters who uses this tool and what purpose he has.In the hands of a chef, a knife helps to prepare tasty food, in the hands of a surgeon to make complicated operations and save lives, and in the hands of a killer, the knife is a tool that brings death and misfortune. It is the same with the theater.

Do not go to plays that threaten the spiritual and moral integrity

One of these plays is The Vagina Monologues, that is used by some people as a tool to spread immorality.Do not go to such a play, because this will affect your thinking and you will be attracted by practices that will bring grave consequences, that you have never wanted. So, before going to a play, inquire about the author of that play. Once I was in a situation when I had to leave the room where the play was, just because I realized the presence of some attempts to slip immorality and apostasy.I felt offended and I did not want to expose myself to such things.By the way, some more persons went out with me, too.

God has used the theater as a tool for effective communication

When I was a student at the Faculty of Theology I had to do a workpaper, where I analyzed the symbolic prophetic acts from the book of the prophet Ezekiel.Read this book and you will see that it floods with such symbolic acts. Such a symbolic acts is also described in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, chapters 27 and 28. The biblical passage begins so:

In the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying– thus says the LORD to me–”Make for yourself bonds and yokes and put them on your neck. (Jeremiah 27:1-2)(NASB)

Through this prophetic act, that was an element of theater, God asked the prophet Jeremiah to put a yoke on his neck and thus to tell the people of Israel to submit to the king  Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babilon and accept his yoke, to not be destroyed.

Theater should be used for sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Theater is a very powerful tool of communication with certainty. I am sorry that it is used so little by Christians. I remember how in their childhood, I put the children on one side of the bed and I was lying on the other side of the bed, and I took a doll or other toy, and began to make a show with those dolls, as they were teaching each other the Holy Scriptures.The children were staying very amazed for many hours and were listening, then they taught and were playing that game by themselves, that was such an effective way to teach them the holy things.

Every summer, we are used to organize inductive Bible study camps, where the participants learn one lesson from the book a day and then prepare skits through which they show the central truth of the lesson. This is fun, but it helps them very well to learn the biblical truth and communicate it to others.

I am glad to see that there are more theaters in Moldova, but I am so sorry, and I dream of the day when it will be a group of Christian actors, that will have their beautiful building where they will present plays, that will share the truth of God’s Word and proclaim the Gospel. What a great blessing will be such a theater for our country.

Translated by Felicia Djugostran