| According to the Bible, we shouldn't take part in sin but the Bible is silent on some other aspects. For example, if you like cooking or you like playing sports, it's not a sin just because it's not directly stated in the Bible. Although that's true, in the same way, we can still use the Bible to influence our life. For example, anime wasn't around during Biblical times but It tells us not to lust because we've made a covenant with our eyes. Using that, we can see that as a way to stay away from Ecchi anime. All in all, we can use the Bible to tell us it something is write or wrong so we should ultimately check with God on those things but no not all anime is evil. |
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| Just like literature books, not all anime or manga series are evil, and most are certainly great ways of developing one's imagination, but there are in fact some series that promote atheism or try to attack Christianity, like Berserk, Dies Irae(the visual novel), Satsuriku no Tenshi, Oyasumi Punpun, Fate/strange Fake (novel), Shingeki no Kyojin, Grancrest Senki, Youjo Senki, Jojo part 6, and Ookami to Koushinryou, for example. But I don't think that even series with many "gods" necessarily carry a message against Christianity; It depends on how it done, and the word 神 in those series is most of the time clearly not used with the same meaning of the word God used by Christians in real life, but rather just to mean some very powerful beings, just like many Christians do not deny the existence of the so called greek "gods" but just claim that they are angels. Even Shuumatsu no Valkyrie, that has "humans vs gods" as its theme, and does in fact have some blasphemies here and there, it actually confirms the truth of Christianity in many aspects, with it being confirmed that Adam was in fact the first human created by God, and also that the great flood happened and that humans attempted to construct the Tower of Babel but were stopped by God. The only problem is that the meaning of 'God' is distorted to mean multiple "gods" making each decision, but at least personally I see that as bearable, since it seems like the author is genuinely just trying to make the story interesting with a lot of creativity, and not really trying to attack Christianity, like is the case of the other series that I mentioned in the beginning. Perhaps I'm being naive here and actually should also be against Shuumatsu no Valkyrie as well, but at least that is how I feel now. |
| “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” ― Saint Augustine |
Mummykun said: Yea i agree. No hate intended but what did Shingeki no Kyojin do that promoted atheism or attacked Christianity?Just like literature books, not all anime or manga series are evil, and most are certainly great ways of developing one's imagination, but there are in fact some series that promote atheism or try to attack Christianity, like Berserk, Dies Irae(the visual novel), Satsuriku no Tenshi, Oyasumi Punpun, Fate/strange Fake (novel), Shingeki no Kyojin, Grancrest Senki, Youjo Senki, Jojo part 6, and Ookami to Koushinryou, for example. But I don't think that even series with many "gods" necessarily carry a message against Christianity; It depends on how it done, and the word 神 in those series is most of the time clearly not used with the same meaning of the word God used by Christians in real life, but rather just to mean some very powerful beings, just like many Christians do not deny the existence of the so called greek "gods" but just claim that they are angels. Even Shuumatsu no Valkyrie, that has "humans vs gods" as its theme, and does in fact have some blasphemies here and there, it actually confirms the truth of Christianity in many aspects, with it being confirmed that Adam was in fact the first human created by God, and also that the great flood happened and that humans attempted to construct the Tower of Babel but were stopped by God. The only problem is that the meaning of 'God' is distorted to mean multiple "gods" making each decision, but at least personally I see that as bearable, since it seems like the author is genuinely just trying to make the story interesting with a lot of creativity, and not really trying to attack Christianity, like is the case of the other series that I mentioned in the beginning. Perhaps I'm being naive here and actually should also be against Shuumatsu no Valkyrie as well, but at least that is how I feel now. |
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BlackShonen said: Mummykun said: Yea i agree. No hate intended but what did Shingeki no Kyojin do that promoted atheism or attacked Christianity?Just like literature books, not all anime or manga series are evil, and most are certainly great ways of developing one's imagination, but there are in fact some series that promote atheism or try to attack Christianity, like Berserk, Dies Irae(the visual novel), Satsuriku no Tenshi, Oyasumi Punpun, Fate/strange Fake (novel), Shingeki no Kyojin, Grancrest Senki, Youjo Senki, Jojo part 6, and Ookami to Koushinryou, for example. But I don't think that even series with many "gods" necessarily carry a message against Christianity; It depends on how it done, and the word 神 in those series is most of the time clearly not used with the same meaning of the word God used by Christians in real life, but rather just to mean some very powerful beings, just like many Christians do not deny the existence of the so called greek "gods" but just claim that they are angels. Even Shuumatsu no Valkyrie, that has "humans vs gods" as its theme, and does in fact have some blasphemies here and there, it actually confirms the truth of Christianity in many aspects, with it being confirmed that Adam was in fact the first human created by God, and also that the great flood happened and that humans attempted to construct the Tower of Babel but were stopped by God. The only problem is that the meaning of 'God' is distorted to mean multiple "gods" making each decision, but at least personally I see that as bearable, since it seems like the author is genuinely just trying to make the story interesting with a lot of creativity, and not really trying to attack Christianity, like is the case of the other series that I mentioned in the beginning. Perhaps I'm being naive here and actually should also be against Shuumatsu no Valkyrie as well, but at least that is how I feel now. That's a good question, since it's actually the series that I added to the list without being totally sure if it deserved to be in it, considering how I don't remember seeing the author doing any direct attack against God or Christianity in the source material, with only one exception, and near the end of the story some characters who died were even shown somehow going to Heaven, which was nice, but there are two details that led me to mention it: The first problem is how in the first opening of the anime it is said that praying is useless (祈ったところで 何も変わらない), and the second problem is how in one of the last chapters of the manga there's a conversation between Armin and Zeke that is clearly meant by the author to defend nihilism; Zeke reaches the conclusion that people just live to reproduce the species, without any transcendental meaning in life, so all what people do is just excuses to keep reproducing the species, and then Armin replies with the existentialist argument, that life is pointless but can have meanings found in things that one subjectively like to do, which is similar to how militant atheists in real life argue that there's no God and no real meaning in life, but people can set their own goals according to their subjective desires (which is what leads most atheists to become degenerates). It may be argued that such was just the opinion of the two characters of the series, and not really the message of the series as a whole, but I still don't like it. And, this part is more my opinion, and I don't claim to speak in name of the Christian doctrine, but I have the strong impression that a series in which naked giants are shown eating people alive is not very recommendable to Christians. I have read it until the end because the story is very captivating, but if someone asked me if I would recommend it, I would say no, because I believe there are better ways of enriching one's imagination than by seeing people being eaten alive, etc. |
| “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” ― Saint Augustine |
Mummykun said: Oh alr I get what you mean. The story is good but some themes are questionable.BlackShonen said: Yea i agree. No hate intended but what did Shingeki no Kyojin do that promoted atheism or attacked Christianity? That's a good question, since it's actually the series that I added to the list without being totally sure if it deserved to be in it, considering how I don't remember seeing the author doing any direct attack against God or Christianity in the source material, with only one exception, and near the end of the story some characters who died were even shown somehow going to Heaven, which was nice, but there are two details that led me to mention it: The first problem is how in the first opening of the anime it is said that praying is useless (祈ったところで 何も変わらない), and the second problem is how in one of the last chapters of the manga there's a conversation between Armin and Zeke that is clearly meant by the author to defend nihilism; Zeke reaches the conclusion that people just live to reproduce the species, without any transcendental meaning in life, so all what people do is just excuses to keep reproducing the species, and then Armin replies with the existentialist argument, that life is pointless but can have meanings found in things that one subjectively like to do, which is similar to how militant atheists in real life argue that there's no God and no real meaning in life, but people can set their own goals according to their subjective desires (which is what leads most atheists to become degenerates). It may be argued that such was just the opinion of the two characters of the series, and not really the message of the series as a whole, but I still don't like it. And, this part is more my opinion, and I don't claim to speak in name of the Christian doctrine, but I have the strong impression that a series in which naked giants are shown eating people alive is not very recommendable to Christians. I have read it until the end because the story is very captivating, but if someone asked me if I would recommend it, I would say no, because I believe there are better ways of enriching one's imagination than by seeing people being eaten alive, etc. |
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| Assuming they aren't some completely different fictional world (One Piece, Naruto), most of the shows portray worlds and worldviews where Christ never existed or if so, he did not rise from the dead. In that case, it's up to the imagination of the authors/creators how things come to be. Usually, they present only surface perceptions and stereotypes of church people (priests and nuns, Catholic school kids, street preachers, televangelists). Rarely do you see just a regular believer and even rarer if they do any kind of witnessing that resembles how most people witness. You can even get TV shows like Supernatural where they bring in a bunch of elements from the end times / apocalypse, even a character who is supposedly God, but again, no concept of Christ there. Is that evil, or just secular? It's fiction for sure, so it doesn't have any need to claim any of that as being fact. If characters do things there that are good or evil, it is relative to that world system presented, so if the author wants to make one based on a King Enma figure judging people, or by Death Note rules, or killing 108 "bad" Shikabane, or purifying lost souls, then so be it. |
Angus said: Assuming they aren't some completely different fictional world (One Piece, Naruto), most of the shows portray worlds and worldviews where Christ never existed or if so, he did not rise from the dead. In that case, it's up to the imagination of the authors/creators how things come to be. Usually, they present only surface perceptions and stereotypes of church people (priests and nuns, Catholic school kids, street preachers, televangelists). Rarely do you see just a regular believer and even rarer if they do any kind of witnessing that resembles how most people witness. You can even get TV shows like Supernatural where they bring in a bunch of elements from the end times / apocalypse, even a character who is supposedly God, but again, no concept of Christ there. Is that evil, or just secular? It's fiction for sure, so it doesn't have any need to claim any of that as being fact. If characters do things there that are good or evil, it is relative to that world system presented, so if the author wants to make one based on a King Enma figure judging people, or by Death Note rules, or killing 108 "bad" Shikabane, or purifying lost souls, then so be it. I don't think that most shows portray worlds where Christ never existed. Only because Christ is not mentioned in them, this doesn't necessarily mean that in those shows Christ's existence is being denied; It just means that this part of reality is not being mentioned in them. That's only the case when the narrator of a series declares as a fact something that denies Christianity, such as that there's no God or that there's no eternal salvation. And I disagree that whether what the characters do is good or evil is relative to the fictional world system presented. Regardless of whether or not even some character who is a god in a series perceives something as good or as evil, you, as a viewer, can use your discernment to try to judge whether what in the series is being presented as good is really good and whether what is being presented as evil is really evil according to the absolute moral standard as determined by God. |
| “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” ― Saint Augustine |
| It depends if they're trying to portray the current world as it is, or adapting other sci-fi ideas like parallel universes, or certain religious and/or secular systems to truly be how the world works. A lot seem to be based on salvation by works, like with the live-action TV show The Good Place, doing "good works" gets you a bunch of points, and doing "bad works" subtracts the points, and having the good outweigh the bad. Although that show starts with that premise, it then goes into a way different idea as their whole system gets deconstructed. Hell Girl's a rather interesting watch; the main reaper character gives the person one last chance to repent, and of course, they don't, so they suffer the consequences of their choice and the nightmares that go with it before they are ferried to the underworld. This is somewhat hopeful that they adapted the concept of repentance and forgiveness, even if they didn't adapt the concepts that the Creator is involved in that forgiving. Regarding relativism, I did not want to imply that good and evil are relative terms, but when the author sets that in their created world to be full of relativism like that, then to me, it's more evidence that it's indeed a fictional world, and I thank God that the real world we live in is not like that. |
Angus said: It depends if they're trying to portray the current world as it is, or adapting other sci-fi ideas like parallel universes, or certain religious and/or secular systems to truly be how the world works. A lot seem to be based on salvation by works, like with the live-action TV show The Good Place, doing "good works" gets you a bunch of points, and doing "bad works" subtracts the points, and having the good outweigh the bad. Although that show starts with that premise, it then goes into a way different idea as their whole system gets deconstructed. Hell Girl's a rather interesting watch; the main reaper character gives the person one last chance to repent, and of course, they don't, so they suffer the consequences of their choice and the nightmares that go with it before they are ferried to the underworld. This is somewhat hopeful that they adapted the concept of repentance and forgiveness, even if they didn't adapt the concepts that the Creator is involved in that forgiving. Regarding relativism, I did not want to imply that good and evil are relative terms, but when the author sets that in their created world to be full of relativism like that, then to me, it's more evidence that it's indeed a fictional world, and I thank God that the real world we live in is not like that. Yes, I was just referring to more realistic series, or some that have some fantasy in them but without touching on matters related to what happens when one dies and eternal salvation, for example, which could cause a direct disagreement with Christianity. In fact, even if the world shown in a series does not correspond to the real one, and even if Jesus Christ is not directly referred as the saviour, the series may still convey messages that are generally in agreement with Christianity. Tolkien's books are a famous example of it. Sure, I misunderstood you then. I agree with you here. My mistake was that I said I disagreed with you without understanding you properly. But I was mainly trying to point out that we, as viewers, don't need to conform our moral views with some moral standard presented by an author while reading or watching his work, thinking in this way: "Sure, the moral standard presented in this series is not in agreement with Christianity, but while I watch this series I'll just accept as good or as bad what the author is presenting as good or as bad in order to enjoy the work of fiction that it is, which shouldn't be a problem, since I'm consciously being able to distinguish that it is just fiction, and not reality." I say that the kind of thought that I exemplified above is a mistake because the main purpose of reading or watching a work of fiction is to develop one's imagination and personality, taking the situations shown in the fiction as references for one to reflect about how one should behave in the same situation, for example, and trying to discern whether something shown in a fiction is morally right or wrong is certainly a good means to train and sharpen one's moral discernment, so if a person, while watching an anime, relativises his moral sense to conform with a moral standard presented by an author, instead of trying to judge the rightfulness in the characters' actions in the anime while taking as reference the real absolute morality, the person is basically deliberately limiting his own thought process and wasting a time that he could be using to sharpen his moral discernment, which is always important, since the more developed is one's moral discernment to be able to judge properly what is right and what is wrong in each kind of the situations that may occur in one's life, the higher is the chance that the person will be able to do the right thing at the right time in real life. And if what is being presented as good in a series is actually very bad, such as cloning, "love" between humans and robots, or transhumanism, for example, with some melodramatic music being played to give an impression of hope as people have their bodies substituted by machines, for example, I say that this is a good reason to simply stop watching the anime, instead of thinking that "sure, it's wrong, but it's just fiction, so it's okay". I'm not saying that this is what you meant to say in your previous post; I understood you now. But I'm just adding this as an observation. Just looking at the drawing on the cover of the anime 'Texhnolyze', for example, made me make the decision never to watch even one minute of it. And recently I even read some clearly nihilist person praising it saying that 'Texhnolyze' is a faithful expression of "Nietzche's philosophy", so I'm quite sure I'm making the right decision by avoiding allowing my mind to be infected by the nihilist propaganda that must be contained in it. |
| “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” ― Saint Augustine |
| You make some great points about the media tending to influence the audience into accepting their world systems. We are indeed susceptible to whatever content we take in, especially secular material, being the "you are what you eat" or you become whom you hang out with. That doesn't mean we aren't allowed to eat that, but we do have to think about how much of that we are putting in our diet. Some content might flare up allergies (affects some people a lot more than others), and others are rotten or have mold that the world packages it as normal or even good. And if you're trying to pick through the rotten apple basket and trying to cut and eat what little bits haven't been affected, that's a tough task. Or be in denial and say that mold that will kill you is good for you. That the content is being produced in Japan and has a certain artistic style is pretty much the only surface difference between the anime/manga and the rest of the fictional shows and books out there. As for sharpening moral discernment, yeah that's a good idea to try that on any fictional show. It probably has a background from those sitcom shows where some lesson can be learned on how to behave. Even in rom-com anime, the protagonist learns how to interact with their romantic interest better. We enjoy shows where the character develops and becomes a better person, otherwise we'd just go back to episodic cartoons. We tend to think all shows are like that, but when we hit ones with little moral redeeming value, then that's just that. Finding evidence of Christian influence in the created fictional society is interesting as well, like: the existence of orphanages; societies and groups valuing women, children beyond property; helping the poor and the foreigner; being monotheistic; committed to marriage; being accountable; considering certain behaviors "sins"; atonement and forgiveness; grace and mercy; and sacrifice. |
| Interestingly, Frank Turek has a book out called Hollywood Heroes where he talks about popular fictional films. |
| Forget about, “Is it evil, is it good?”If you're distracted by entertainment or anime and it's causing you to be useless, then you should avoid it completely. Often we make excuses to keep participating. If you can't avoid it, then try and make something good out of it. That would be better than complete uselessness. But to answer if a material (entertainment) is good or bad... If the mind-set of the author is not on Jesus, then it is evil. And their works should be discouraged and mocked. However, often things can be neutral where it's natural in nature. It's neither good nor bad. Like a game of soccer, ambient music, chess, maybe some slice-of-life anime. It's just a waste of time. (humility) Personally, if you look at my anime stats, I have some difficulty avoiding it. Recently, I decided that I would apply scripture to the things I watch, avoiding the obvious degenerate trash, of course, and also use it to fuel my own possible creations which will be more gospel in nature. Because who else am I going to learn from? If I am an artist of sorts, I will be picking up some amount of poorly done material to learn from. That's just how it is. Simply because there's not enough Christian works on the market. And that is something Christians have to change. So follow your calling so the gospel can reach even more ears. And more can be saved. Be an active mind. At the end of the day; there are better things to do that will accomplished more than watching anime. 1 Timothy 4:8 (NLT): “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.” PS: To speak a little in spirit: If you're a Christian, then you know better. Once you know better, it's hard to go back. Because what you've left behind was meaningless junk that did not inspire intelligence 1 Corinthians 13:11( NLT): “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” Like the bible says, it's like eating your own puke. Or how I like to put it, like going back to watching kid shows like Teletubbies. It's impossible to reverse. We simply know better. And you can only do this by reading & studying the Word. |
| I really do feel like it comes down to a case-by-case basis, and depends on the content. If it goes against something the Bible says then it would best be to avoid it. |
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