Opinion: Why we must shield our eyes from evil
Taylor Deaton, News/Opinion Editor
Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash
Like every other angsty college student my age, I was thrilled when Netflix announced a reboot of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. There was a time when I thoroughly enjoyed watching reruns of the OG, lighthearted Sabrina on television.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the Netflix remake, was released on Oct. 26, 2018. I sat down, insanely excited to binge-watch the season, and quickly realized it was nothing as I expected. I was not prepared for the unfiltered praise of Satan throughout the entire series.
The word best used to describe the difference between Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina would be dark. The Netflix version takes on an entirely different approach to the world of witches, one that puts Satan front and center.
In the 2018 Sabrina, the plot-line centers around Sabrina needing to sell her soul to the “Dark Lord” (Satan) in order to become a full-witch. Thus begins the season of praise to Satan, as those around Sabrina try to coax her into giving her soul away.
The referral of Satan as the “high lord” and “god of free-will” are just two reasons why Christians should not watch Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
As Christians, we have to be cautious of everything we put into our brains from television. The shows we watch can definitely have an impact on our mindsets.
We know that media is impactful. If media wasn’t impactful, no one would pay any attention to the things happening in our world. The media also tends to have a different impact on Christians, because we look at things from a different perspective.
Typically, we are careful about what we watch. We avoid shows on regular television that we know to be inappropriate, but we don’t really take as much caution when it comes to Netflix series such as Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Everything we watch should be viewed with intentions to bring glory to God, and this series does just about everything but bring praise to His name.
1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “’bad company ruins good morals.’” Now, I’m not saying that a Christian might watch this series and immediately turn their life over to Satan, but mindlessly watching this show could have an impact on the way we view talk of Satan on television.
From the very first episode, when Sabrina is informed that she’ll have to partake in a ceremony known as a “dark baptism” to become a full-witch, we are set up for an entire series of praise to Satan.
Talk of this praise is very heavily included in the beginning of the season, which numbs us to the talk of Satan that goes on in the rest of the episodes. It is important not to become numb to blasphemy, because it sets us up to ignore other forms of it.
I certainly didn’t expect the level of darkness included in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and neither did the Satanic Temple, who reached out shortly after the release of the Netflix show to announce that they were suing Netflix over the use of a goat-headed statue in an episode of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
If the Satanic Temple can take legal-action to avoid Sabrina from giving their organization a “bad reputation,” we must avoid letting these thoughts invade our minds.
To bring glory to God is to avoid letting evil come into our lives, and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is achieving this evil by openly praising Satan.
