Be careful little eyes...

When I was a child learning about how the human eye processes images, it was likened to a camera- snapping an image and feeding it to the brain, where it is processed and stored. The brain has a magnificent ability to recall any snapshot instantaneously. This function combined with the gift of imagination can create a powerful place of great beauty. Artists, authors and talented creatives count on this realm to be their playground and workspace. It is a retreat to the weary at times and a reprieve from the mundane. It can also be a terrible, haunting, and poisonous place. Just as quickly as the mind can bring up a vivid picture of any happy memory - the perfect rainy day, the face of a loved one- it can recall something you wish you'd never seen.
At about the time I was looking at diagrams of the eye and adding words like cornea to my vocabulary, I was also listening to children's radio theater. There was one episode in a series that featured a song about the brain. I still remember the chorus:

Input, output, what goes in must come out
Input, output, that is what it's all about

Not high art to be sure, but it stuck. It communicated this basic truth- that what we see becomes part of us, affecting who we are, what we think about, and what we do. Any time I feel convicted about something I've seen, I hear that chorus ring in my head. Tonight that chorus is on full blast repeat.
I went to see the midnight showing of a film that I had low expectations for, and I can report that all of them were met, and exceeded. As I pulled into the parking lot, a memory from a similar venture played in my mind and I could hear the echo of my father's voice saying "There are some things you regret seeing, and I think this would be one of them." Sucker Punch was never going to be a high minded artistic film packed with deep and meaningful messages, and the posters let you know you're in for young women scantily clad doing impossible things, shot in a stylistic, dark and video game like universe. It absolutely delivers this product without pretense and is built to create moments of intense sexual tension as well as flashy adrenaline spiking special affect sequences. Not to mention every cliche in the book thrown in there. These girls are dressed to the nines in fetish costumes that are just as suited for zombie nazi killing as any of Natalie Portman's Black Swan costumes would be for fending off storm troopers. All of these were things I expected. And though I had expected these things, I found myself surprised at the responses I had emotionally and internally. As I watched the lead character "Babydoll" work her way through the contrived farce of a plot with parted lip and doe like eyes any anime girl would die for, I found myself wondering if the actress and her 4 comrades of similarly scant coverage knew what they were in for when they signed on. I wondered if they knew they were being used.
True, the film has a rating that is below an "R" grade. The film does something I consider far more dangerous than what could earn the higher rating- it appeals to the playground of the imagination.

"...though it's fetishistic and personal, I like to think that my fetishes aren't that obscure. Who doesn't want to see girls running down the trenches of World War One wreaking havoc?" - Snyder the director on the content of the film.

As I drove away from the movie theater I remarked to my passenger "I am sad that men I love have seen the movie, and I wish we hadn't." Why did we? Why did I go to see a movie that openly invites the viewer into a celebration of the fetishes of the flesh, objectifies young women and cheapens purity? In light of the previous post, Purity is something we need to fight to maintain internally. The place where memory snapshot meets imagination can be the playing field the enemy wants to camp out on and claim as his own. I know this, and still I went.
I went because I'm old enough to think for myself, I can handle it, it's not really crossing the line, and every other rationale we tell ourselves when entering the "grey area" of what is and is not appropriate. Truth be told, the line of "appropriate" usually gets fudged over, smudged and blurred based on the immediate circumstances, convenience and majority rules. Here's the problem - I trust myself too much.
I think far to much of my own ability to discern what is and is not ok for me to consume. I usually side on the end of "I can take it" instead of "I want to avoid the opportunity to sin." I have a false perception of my human strength being capable to resist temptation. I'm practicing self trust - the opposite of what we're supposed to do.
In Philippians 2 Paul talks about how to shine brightly for Christ. Verse 12 and 13 talk about how much trust we are to have in ourselves

"So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

The thing that I should be practicing is this: "Self-distrust, serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ."(Amp.) But I don't. I chance it. I take the risk, relying on my human wisdom to keep me from danger. That is neither faith, nor faithfulness. I bank on my ability to fence the things I'm filling my mind with from interacting too powerfully with my flesh's imagination. I am taking a terrible risk. Instead of running and striving to protect the work of the Lord in my heart and mind as he purifies and renews me, I put it to the test- an unnecessary, selfish, and vain test. Instead of choosing to honor God, I am honoring the desire of the moment.
Is it worth the risk? Once the experience is over and the moment fades, what I have done is given my brain plenty of snapshots that can be used as ammunition for the place of imagination to be twisted with temptation, haunted with the things I put in there. It's MY input. It will come out.