However, the more important part of this discussion is that we have been counseled to not watch R rated movies or anything that “alienates us from the Holy Spirit.” Understanding this, I would then state that heeding the counsel of the Prophet is a far cry to “zombie-like” obedience. To know that Thomas S. Monson, and the many holy men before him, speak with God is power within itself. It takes serious reflection and searching to even consider this notion to be true. Not to mention, a sincere belief in its truth to even follow it.

Generally, my experience shows that the “zombie-like” followers you speak of rarely follow the prophet’s counsel. Often, these “believers” have not developed the spiritual conviction to search, ponder, pray, and obey. As long as the counsel doesn’t interfere with their lifestyle than obedience to God’s laws are no problem, but once it becomes hard their “moral choice” is to take the path most traveled.

Francis Bacon once penned, “Homo minister et interpres naturae” or “Man, the servant and interpreter of nature.” Lord Bacon further wrote, “[Man] can do and understand so much and so much only as he observed in fact or in thought of the course of Nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.” Man honestly believes he can accurately be the “interpreter of nature.” However, it is the “beyond this” that he does not know and thus makes his “facts” often fallacious. The absolutism behavior you abhor in your LDS film students doesn’t come from blindly following, but rather it comes from knowing that man’s facts are rarely God’s truths.

Violence in American society is at its lowest point in recorded urban society. We are far from a desensitized society–if anything, our children are more socially conscious than ever before (teenage pregnancies are also at an all time low).

I have many students in the church who have very strict rules about films, values, and ratings. The problem is that they simply accept that these films are “bad.” All of these films in my class are well-made, fantasy (none of it ever happened), and they tend to show less than imagined. I allow students to make choices in their viewing habits, but members of the church are so zombie-like in their obedience. We want people to make moral choices–not simply do blind obedience. Yet, most members never “think” about the choices–they just do what they are told. Sad.