Story by Reverend Josh Reavis
The Bible is not shy about showing us the worst of humanity.
There are stories of murders that shock us, sexual assaults that nauseate us, and betrayals that leave us unsettled long after the page is turned. Scripture does not sanitize the darkness of the human heart, but it also does not invite us to linger there. These stories are not written to intrigue us but to repulse us. They are meant to sober us, warn us, and remind us why redemption is necessary.
That distinction matters, because we live in a cultural moment when the darkest examples of human depravity have become a form of entertainment.
True crime podcasts, docuseries, and dramatizations are everywhere. They dominate streaming platforms, climb podcast charts, and fill long commutes and late nights. According to industry reports, true crime is now one of the most popular podcast genres in the world, with tens of millions of regular listeners. Streaming platforms have leaned into the demand, producing an endless supply of serialized stories about real murders, real victims, and real evil.
The appetite seems insatiable.
To be clear, Scripture does not call us to ignorance. Christians are not required to pretend the world is safer or better than it is. Wisdom includes awareness. Parents teach children not to talk to strangers for a reason. Pastors warn congregations about wolves because wolves exist.
But awareness is not the same as indulgence.
There is a difference between being informed and being entertained by darkness. And that line is easier to cross than we might think.
When the Bible recounts the murder of Abel or the rape of Tamar, it does not invite speculation or fascination. There is no soundtrack. No cliffhanger. No episodic release schedule. The reader is meant to feel the weight of the sin and the grief it produces. The ugliness is the point.
True crime as entertainment often does the opposite. It packages evil with suspense, production value, and narrative hooks. The violence becomes content. The trauma becomes a story arc. And somewhere along the way, the human cost fades into the background.
On the other side of every true crime episode is a real family. A real parent. A real child. For them, this is not a mystery to be solved or a case to be debated. It is the worst day of their lives that is replayed, reanalyzed, and redistributed for mass consumption.
That alone should give us pause.
Scripture consistently warns that what we set before our eyes shapes us. We become accustomed to what we repeatedly consume.
There is also the quieter danger of what sustained exposure to this content does to our souls. Scripture consistently warns that what we set before our eyes shapes us. We become accustomed to what we repeatedly consume. When violence, cruelty, and exploitation are taken in as entertainment, our hearts do not remain neutral.
We may tell ourselves we are just curious. Or that we are interested in justice. Or that we want to understand how evil works. But over time, curiosity dulls into familiarity. Familiarity dulls into tolerance. And tolerance slowly erodes the instinctive moral revulsion Scripture seeks to cultivate.
Paul’s exhortation to dwell on what is true, honorable, just, pure, and lovely is not obtuse legalism or naïve optimism. It is spiritual wisdom. He understood that the imagination is not a neutral space. What we rehearse there forms our desires and calibrates our conscience. This does not mean every Christian must swear off every documentary or news story that includes violence. But it does mean we should be honest about how much we consume, why we consume it, and what it produces in us.
If we are binge-watching stories of murder for relaxation, something is out of alignment. If the suffering of others becomes background noise to our entertainment, something has gone wrong. If we find ourselves more captivated by crime stories than by accounts of God’s faithfulness, mercy, and redemption, that should concern us.
The Bible tells us the truth about human depravity so that we will long for salvation, not so that we will develop a taste for darkness. Its graphic moments function like warning labels, not invitations. In a culture that monetizes evil and calls it content, Christians would do well to recover a holy discomfort with sin. Not a performative outrage, but a genuine grief. A refusal to treat what God hates as something we casually enjoy.
There are enough horrors in the world without us turning them into our evening entertainment. Wisdom sometimes means knowing when to turn something off, not because we are afraid of the truth, but because we care about what that truth is doing to us.
I would encourage you to pause before you hit play. A fascination with evil is fundamentally unhealthy—and displeasing to God.
About the Author: Rev. Josh Reavis is the co-pastor of North Jacksonville Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.
