Most people don’t know this about me, but when I was 14, my dream was to make movies. I wanted to go to film school, USC specifically, and I wanted to write and direct. Movies played in my mind like my own personal theater, and I was a natural writer and storyteller, so the pieces were all there.
In my planning, I did ask God to make it happen. Actually, I begged. My parents were against it, and I even met with my pastor over it because I was so convinced this was what I was supposed to do with my life. But every time I went to Scripture about Hollywood, I kept being led to Babylon. Over and over again. Not exactly the warm and fuzzy feeling you want when you’re 14 and asking God to make your dream come true.
The theme of Babylon starts developing back in Genesis with Babel. The people gathered together to build a tower reaching toward heaven, and God eventually confused their language and scattered them. But what interests me now is what they said before they built it: “Let us make a name for ourselves.” — Genesis 11:4.
Make a name for ourselves.
At 14, I wouldn’t have understood why that mattered. Looking at Hollywood now, I absolutely do.
In fact, in today’s culture, with social media and influencers popping up at every turn, everyone is still trying to make a name for themselves.
Babylon continues throughout Scripture. Isaiah speaks about its pride. Jeremiah calls Babylon a golden cup that made the earth drunk. By the time we get to Revelation, Babylon has become this picture of wealth, excess, sexual immorality, power and commerce, and God’s people are warned to “come out of her.” At 14, I didn’t understand what God was trying to tell me through any of this. I just knew that every time I asked Him about the place I desperately wanted to go, I was getting an answer I didn’t want.
It took me years to understand why.
Hollywood itself didn’t begin as some intentionally corrupt institution. The early American movie industry was actually heavily centered around New York and New Jersey. Filmmakers began moving west in the early 1900s for fairly practical reasons. Southern California offered abundant sunlight, good weather for year-round filming, relatively inexpensive land, and an incredible variety of landscapes within a relatively small area. By the 1920s, Hollywood had become the center of the American film industry. Then, as the Great Depression began in 1929 and deepened through the 1930s, movies became an increasingly important, affordable escape for Americans facing economic hardship.
But something else happened as the movie business grew. The studios discovered that audiences weren’t only interested in the movies. They became interested in the people in them. Certain actors could sell tickets simply because their names were attached to a film, and Hollywood realized there was tremendous money in that. The star system developed, studios carefully managed actors’ public images, fan magazines exploded, premieres became spectacles, and celebrity itself became a product.
And we wanted it.
That’s the part that’s easy to leave out when we’re talking about everything wrong with Hollywood. We wanted to be entertained. We wanted the fantasy, the beautiful people and the stories. We wanted to know what the stars wore, where they lived, who they dated and what their lives looked like when the cameras stopped rolling. Plenty of people also wanted to go there and become one of them. I certainly did.
Over the next hundred years, technology only intensified what had already begun. Radio and television brought celebrities closer. Tabloids made their private lives entertainment. Cable expanded the amount of content we consumed, and then the internet, reality television, social media and streaming removed almost every remaining boundary between the performer and the audience. Hollywood had figured out something incredibly profitable: people weren’t only willing to pay for stories. We were fascinated by the storytellers themselves.
That’s where I think we get Hollywood wrong.
Hollywood isn’t inherently evil. That would be unfair, and it would also allow the rest of us off the hook far too easily. Hollywood is what mankind has made it when enormous amounts of money, power, beauty, influence, sexual access, admiration, and notoriety are concentrated around ordinary human beings.
And it’s not just Hollywood.
It’s corporate America.
It’s government.
It’s professional sports.
It’s even the church when we’re not careful.
Anywhere that money and power collide with the uncircumcised heart, there is enormous potential for people to get hurt.
I talked to my daughter about this a few days ago. I told her that with a lot of money comes power, and not everyone is equipped to hold that kind of power without someone, or everyone, eventually getting hurt. Money doesn’t automatically make someone evil, and neither does power. What they can do is give you a much greater ability to act on what was already in your heart.
If you’re generous and suddenly have millions of dollars, you now have the ability to be extraordinarily generous. But if you’re selfish, greedy, controlling, or desperate to be admired, that money gives those desires power too. Add fame and influence, and suddenly fewer people are willing to tell you no. Add an entire industry that financially benefits from keeping you successful, and accountability can become even harder.
So why does God allow Hollywood to exist when there are documented cases within the entertainment industry of sexual abuse, exploitation, drug abuse, trafficking, and people in positions of enormous power taking advantage of vulnerable people?
I think the answer is connected to a much bigger question: why does God allow evil to continue at all?
Jesus gives us part of that answer in the parable of the wheat and the tares. When the servants discover weeds growing among the wheat, they ask whether they should pull them out. The master tells them no because they risk uprooting the wheat with them. Both are allowed to grow until the harvest. God’s decision to permit evil for a time is not the same thing as God’s approval of it.
But I also wonder whether we’re supposed to learn something by seeing what happens when the human condition is given room to reveal itself. If we don’t recognize evil for what it is, we’ll never understand why we need to stand against it.
The unfortunate part is that I don’t think we’re connecting the dots. We expose what happens in Hollywood. We make documentaries about it. We prosecute people when we can prove actual crimes. We get outraged when another story comes out, then go right back to feeding the same machine.
And I’m not even suggesting that we should stop watching movies. If Hollywood disappeared tomorrow, another powerful institution would eventually rise in its place because Hollywood isn’t ultimately the problem. Human beings are. You cannot eliminate the human condition by shutting down an industry. We will simply build something else and bring ourselves with us.
Hollywood didn’t invent greed, lust, pride, exploitation, or our desire for attention. It didn’t create our obsession with beauty or our desire to be admired. And it certainly didn’t invent mankind’s desire to “make a name for ourselves.” We were doing that in Genesis.
Hollywood just learned how to monetize it.
That’s why I’ve come to see Hollywood as a microcosm of the human condition. Not because everyone there is evil. They’re not. Talented, kind, and generous people are there, and some went into the industry for the same reason I wanted to at 14: they genuinely love telling stories.
But take fallen human beings and surround them with extraordinary amounts of money, power, beauty, influence, access, and admiration, and eventually what is inside the human heart will reveal itself. When those people also possess enough power to affect the lives of everyone around them, the consequences can become enormous.
So if you want to know whether mankind really has a sin nature, look at Hollywood.
Not because they’re different from us, but because they ARE US.
Hollywood may simply be a concentrated version of us, with enough money and power behind the human condition for all of us to see what it can become.
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