I should be very thankful if you would assist me in the following questions: Is there any harm in going to the theater? Is it a suitable place for a Christian?
The subject at our Sunday school class meeting lately was theater-going, and most of our scholars seem to think that there is no harm in the theater, which I myself could not agree with.
There was one who said that the theater was established six hundred years before Christ. If you have any account of it, I should be very thankful for your statement.
I am very glad for the privilege of answering this question, for I know that it is one that exercises the minds of a great many people, both young and old.
I will note the last part of it first. There is no doubt that the theater is much more ancient than six hundred years before Christ, as ancient history, especially Grecian history, abounds with references to plays and to the stage, and actors. In fact our word "hypocrite" is simply the Greek word meaning one who acts a part on the stage. Hypocrisy is the actor's art. However, the matter of time has nothing whatever to do with the question. Sin does not become righteousness with age. We have positive evidence of idolatry more than sixteen hundred years before Christ, but that does not make it right. Murder and lying date from four thousand years before Christ, but they are just as wrong as though they were introduced only yesterday.
The only thing that really concerns us is, What is the effect of the theater both upon the actors and the attendants? Even the strongest apologists for the theater, those who are the most intimately connected with it, admit that it is demoralizing in its tendency, and that, too, without reference to the class of plays. We can pass by the depraved exhibitions, which, by the way, constitute by far the largest part of theatrical representation, and take into consideration only the better class of plays. Even these are demoralizing, first of all to the actors themselves, who live in an unreal world. I am not making any charge against the morality of actors, I am only speaking of the inevitable tendency of the stage. It is the truth, admitted by those who know most about the matter, that it requires much more power of resistance, to live a moral life as an actor, than in almost any other calling; and that in general there is more laxness, to say the least, in the theatrical profession, than in any other.
This comes from the very nature of the case. The fact that our word "hypocrite" is the ancient Greek actor is significant. A solid character cannot be built out of nothing, out of untruth. The effect of the theater on those who attend cannot be other than demoralizing, because their minds are always wrought up to an unnatural pitch of excitement. The effect is precisely the same kind as that of drinking intoxicating liquors. It is self evident that if nothing were displayed on the stage except the events of ordinary, everyday life, it would have very few if any devotees. People go to the theater to see something extraordinary.
Even if everything exhibited were possible, and had actually occurred in real life, yet the fact remains that the sum of it all is an exaggeration, since the striking incidents in a score of lives are made to appear as occurring in a single life. People go to a theater to be excited and stimulated; and the effect of a mental stimulant is as bad as that of a physical one. It always results in a reaction. In time something stronger is required, and there is less and less relish for plain food either for mind or body. False views of life are presented, or if in any case there is an exact representation of real life, it is of its worst side. Therefore we may truly say that at the very best the theater represents that vanity from which the Psalmist prayed the Lord to turn away his eyes (Psalm 119:37); and we should do likewise.
It is right that the mind should be drawn out to view wonderful things, that the conception should be enlarged, but this can be done by truth far better than by falsehood. The truth as revealed in the Bible and in nature is far more wonderful than anything that the wildest flights of human imagination can conceive. There is not a faculty of the mind that cannot be developed and strengthened by the contemplation of truth. But falsehood tends only to narrowness and weakness.--Present Truth, January 22, 1903.