The Bible Should Be Rated "R"

What is "family friendly" supposed to mean? Usually it means some form of media that has a happy go lucky, simplistic message without much content.

Consider this. In movies today, we rate them on a system: G, PG, PG-13, R, NC17. Very few movies end up being NC17, the highest most go is R. And what do they recieve this rating for? Violence, sexual content, thematic material and vulgar language, mainly. With the exception of vulgar language, the Bible is filled with these.

Consider Judges 9. After Gideon's death, his son Abimalech puts together a plot to kill his 70 brothers. Now first of all, the fact that he had 70 brothers implies that Gideon was busy and had lots of wives. Second of all, Abimalech was the product of a concubine that Gideon wasn't married to. But putting all that aside, Abimalech obviously doesn't have a problem with mass fratricide.

Skip over a couple of chapters to Judges 11:29. Jephthah vows that if God defeats Israel's enemies he'll sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house, which ends up being his daughter. So now we have filicide.

Judges 19 deals with a Levite who lets the men of the city sexually abuse and kill his concubine. Then he chops her up and sends one of her body parts to each of the tribes of Israel. So now the Bible has exhibitionist mayhem.

2 Samuel 11 deals with David and Bathsheba. No commentary necessary. Homicide and adultery.

God ordered Jeremiah to walk around naked and Hosea to marry a harlot who then cheated on him.

Moving to the New Testament, Christ's death did get an R rating for Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Paul’s life would get at least a PG13 rating for action, and if displayed correctly would get an R rating for all the beatings, floggings and stonings. Last but not least Revelation would get an R rating for all the "stylized action violence".


So what should we be watching as a family? This is up to your conscience, but lets not make the mistake of thinking that just because it has some uncomfortable moments that our kids should not be exposed to it. After all, the Bible should be rated R.