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A Philosophy of Media Selection in Intentional, Traditionally-Minded Christian Households

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Philippians 4:8

Introduction

The idea for this list grew at the intersection of several long-standing loves of mine. I was born and raised in a Christian household and educated in a classical, Charlotte Mason-inspired Christian school. In recent years, I have become particularly interested in questions of raising children, education, and home life. I read in these areas, I listen closely to the advice of those with experience, and I find myself very passionate about giving children every possible chance to think about and fall in love with things that are “excellent or praiseworthy.”

Alongside this, I have always been fascinated by film and by story in general. I studied Film in college, concentrating on screenwriting and the craft of story. That training sharpened my sense of what makes a story beautiful, weighty, and true, and what makes it thin, manipulative, or corrupting. Over time, like many others, I have become increasingly disenchanted with the modern film industry and its reluctance to produce works that reflect the proper moral order of God’s world, honor basic biblical virtues such as courage, sacrifice, honesty, and repentance, present a healthy family as a gift rather than a problem, resist victim mentality in favor of personal responsibility, and treat America and its ideals of ordered liberty with gratitude rather than contempt.

Yet I do not believe that the right response is to retreat from film. On the contrary, I am convinced that film is the most powerful storytelling medium humans have ever devised. Like all powerful tools, it can deform, but it can also deeply bless. When carefully chosen and thoughtfully discussed, films can work alongside Scripture, worship, and living books to turn a child’s heart toward God’s goodness, the beauty of his world, and the shape of a virtuous life.

Biblical and Educational Foundations

Philippians 4:8 provides a clear standard for the Christian imagination: we are commanded to dwell on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. The implication is not only that we should seek out such things, but also that we should refuse to give our attention to their opposites. If this is the call for adults, it is even more urgent for children, whose affections are tender and easily formed. As Charlotte Mason observed, “Children love what they know.” What we consistently place before their minds becomes what they learn to love.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 describes how God’s truth is to be handed down: his commandments “are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” The immediate reference is to God’s law, but the underlying truth is broader. Parents are called to weave what is true and good into the ordinary fabric of life. Proverbs speaks in the same key when it calls us to “train up a child in the way he should go.” (Proverbs 22:6) Formation is not a single lesson; it is a long, patient pattern of shared attention.

Stories play a central role in this work. Much of Scripture itself comes to us in narrative form. God gives his people truth inside stories about real places, real families, real sin, and real redemption. The Gospels repeatedly show Jesus teaching in parables. In other words, God himself dignifies story as a chosen vehicle for truth. If that is so, then the stories our children absorb in books, songs, and films are never “just entertainment.” They are part of the moral air they breathe.

Charlotte Mason insisted that “children are born persons.” They are not projects to be engineered, but full human beings with genuine thoughts, questions, and moral perceptions. To honor that reality means at least two things. First, we must guard what we place before them. Second, we must resist the temptation to talk down to them or to force upon them our own neat lessons from every story. Adults can and should guide, but they must also leave room for the Holy Spirit to work in the child’s own mind and conscience.

Why This Film List Exists

Most Christian movie rating sites focus almost entirely on the question, “Is this appropriate for a Christian family?” They count instances of profanity, note occult or violent images, and give a verdict. That concern is real and necessary, but it is not sufficient. A film can be “clean” and still train a child’s heart in triviality, cynicism, or self-pity. Conversely, a film might contain a moment that requires explanation (such as a brief, outdated racial stereotype) and yet present a rich, truthful vision of the world.

This list, therefore, has a different purpose. It is not a pile of “safe” options to turn on when the family is tired and needs noise. It is a curated canon of films for families who want the screen to work alongside Scripture, worship, and living books in the formation of their children.

We believe stories shape the heart. The movies we place in front of children should train their loves, their loyalties, and their imagination toward a Godly vision of the world rather than toward the confusion and cynicism that mark our age.

What We Look For

The films on this list are chosen because they consistently do several things. They:

In other words, these are not merely “clean” films. They are “living films,” the cinematic counterpart to “living books.” “Living books” are stories that present people, places, and ideas with such vivid, carefully chosen language that a child feels he has stepped into another world and comes away with his imagination kindled rather than simply stuffed with facts. Living films do the same work on the screen, bringing to life real courage, loyalty, and wonder so that a child leaves the viewing not glassy-eyed from noise and spectacle, but eager to talk about what he has seen, to act it out in play, and to imitate the virtues that moved him.

What We Avoid

We deliberately avoid films that catechize children in confusion about God, man, family, or nation. Some of the titles we commend have flaws that reflect their time or their genre, just as older books sometimes do. The standard is not perfection, but direction. The center of gravity must be sound.

When a film contains an element that calls for explanation or context, we say so plainly. But we do not allow a single scene to swallow the whole evaluation of an otherwise rich and faithful story.

Watching And Talking Together

The way a family watches a film is as important as which film they choose. If movie watching amounts to glazed eyes, passive consumption, and a quiet room, then it would be better to read, to talk, or to play. Screens used in that way are simply a mechanism for distraction.

By contrast, a film can become an occasion for genuine thought and conversation. In my own childhood, we often rated movies together after watching them. Each person gave a score out of ten, then defended it. Why did you like this? Why did you not? Which characters drew you in, and which repelled you? What moments rang true, and what felt false? The disagreements were as fruitful as the agreements, because they forced us to think.

This kind of conversation does not mean delivering a little sermon after every film. Charlotte Mason warns against forcing prepackaged “lessons” onto a child. If you begin a story about the birth of Christ by announcing, “Today we are going to think about families,” you may completely miss what has genuinely captured your child’s imagination: the shepherds, the angels, or the strangeness of God entering the world in a stable. In the same way, to turn every movie into a blunt “gospel illustration” is often to step in front of what the Spirit may be doing quietly in the heart.

Better questions sound like these: What did you think about that character’s choice? Was it right or wrong? Why? Who was the hero and who was the villain? Why? How did the film make you feel about loyalty, or courage, or cowardice? Was the music and imagery beautiful, or merely loud?

Over time, this pattern trains children to watch attentively rather than passively. It teaches them that their responses matter, that their moral instincts are real and worth refining, and that their parents are willing to talk with them as fellow image bearers, not to talk down to them as if their questions were shallow.

In a world that treats screens as constant background noise, we believe film should be rare. Not rare in the sense of once a year, but rare in the sense of deliberate and set apart. A weekly family movie night, perhaps with popcorn and blankets and the lights turned down, is a very different thing from hours of casual viewing scattered through every day. Children should not be parked in front of a screen whenever they are restless or inconvenient. Films plant images and ideas in a child’s mind long after the credits roll, so they should be chosen with care and received as a shared family occasion, not as a quick way to pass the time.

The same principle applies to television. This list will commend a small number of classic series that are safe and rich enough to sit beside the films. Even then, an episode before bed or a single chapter on a quiet afternoon is plenty. These stories are not meant to be consumed in long stretches or binged through as quickly as possible. They are meant to be seen, enjoyed, talked about, and then revisited over time. This list is not a queue to empty, but a pantry to draw from slowly, so that the films and episodes you choose can sink into your family’s common life and become part of the conversations you return to again and again.

“Children Are Born Persons” - Charlotte Mason

A central insight of Charlotte Mason is that children are complete persons. Their questions about betrayal, abandonment, loyalty, or death are no less serious than the questions an adult might ask, and are often more honest. To respond by minimizing those questions or by treating them as “childish” is to discourage the very depth of thought that we say we want.

When a child recoils at a character’s betrayal, that moral horror is as valid as any adult's. When a child asks why a father in the film would abandon his family, that is not a small question that needs to be brushed aside. It is a profound moral and spiritual concern that may open the door to discussions of sin, sorrow, faithfulness, and the heart of God. To honor children as persons means listening carefully, answering plainly, and refusing to talk down.

This is another reason why film discussions matter. To invite a child to speak, to listen to what moved or troubled them, and then to enter into honest conversation, is to take their inner life seriously. To dictate, “This movie is a perfect gospel presentation, and here is what you should think about it,” is to shut that inner life down.

Why We Recommend Building A Physical Library

All of this requires curation. For that reason, we strongly encourage families to build a physical film library instead of relying on streaming platforms. Streaming services surround children with an endless carousel of shallow, chaotic, and often corrosive content. Even if you intend to choose something wholesome, you must scroll through a constantly refreshed buffet of what you do not want forming your child’s heart. It is like dangling the world’s candy in front of them and expecting them not to look.

A shelf of films removes that noise. It allows parents to control the imaginative world to which their children have access, without competing images and algorithms continually tugging at their desires. When a child walks to a shelf and chooses from only good, noble, and beautiful stories, much of the work has already been done.

There is also a practical reason to prefer shelves to subscriptions. To track down even a modest canon of worthy films, parents often find themselves paying for five or six different streaming services, each with catalogs that shift from month to month, while many of the older classics of real substance have quietly vanished from those platforms altogether.

A home library also teaches permanence. The films on your shelves become part of your family culture. They are not rented for an evening and then replaced by whatever trend arrives next. They become shared reference points, revisited in different seasons of life, woven into the family’s moral memory in the same way that well-loved books or songs are.

If we are serious about guarding our children’s affections, we cannot outsource their imaginations to corporations.

One of the clearest examples of this outsourcing is the rise of so called “kids” sections on streaming platforms. Labels like “Kids,” “Family,” or “For Children” simply mean the content has passed through a corporate filter that is secular in its assumptions and driven by legal risk and revenue, not by biblical wisdom. The same companies that openly celebrate what Scripture calls sin, including confusion about identity and sexuality, in their flagship shows are also building the algorithms that decide what appears on your child’s profile. Their aim is not to disciple your son or daughter in righteousness, but to capture as much of their attention as possible. To hand a child an open “kids” profile on Netflix or YouTube is to invite distant strangers with very different loves and loyalties to become the curators of your home. Parents who are called to train up a child in the way he should go should not expect an advertising engine to carry that calling for them.

We must build our own shelves, fill them with what is good, and remove every option that trains their hearts in the wrong direction.

While we believe a physical library is the best arrangement, we also recognize that families will differ in how they build it. In many cases, the simplest and most durable path is to purchase a single 4K disc player, which will happily play 4K discs, Blu-rays, DVDs, and even CDs on one device. Some beloved titles exist only on DVD, others in Blu-ray, others in 4K, but one modestly priced machine can play them all and preserve them for your children.

If a full shelf of cases is not your preference, there are lesser but still usable alternatives.

Purchased digital library

The nearest substitute for shelves is a deliberately chosen digital library of purchased films through a service such as iTunes, Amazon, or Google Play. This can function as a kind of virtual bookcase and may help families with limited space. Yet it still carries real limits. Children must scroll past advertisements and suggested titles. Studios can quietly alter or censor scenes in response to cultural pressure. Above all, you do not truly own what you buy. In practice, you purchase a license to stream a file for as long as the platform and the studio permit it. A film your children enjoy today can be revised or removed tomorrow, with no way for you to preserve it.

Digital rentals

Further from the ideal is the habit of renting individual films as you decide to watch them. There is some prudence here. You avoid a web of subscriptions and still choose particular titles for particular evenings. The cost for a high-quality rental is usually modest. Yet rented films are even less tangible than a purchased digital library. There is no shelf to survey, physical or virtual. Unless you keep a printed list, the “options” live mostly in memory, whatever someone happens to think of on a given evening. That makes it much harder for these stories to become part of the family’s inner library. They are easily forgotten, and there is no gathered company of films that can be pulled down and revisited across the years. And every rental still begins inside the same digital marketplace, scrolling past rows of other titles and recommendations the platform wants to promote before you ever reach the story you actually intended to share.

Streaming subscriptions

The weakest arrangement is dependence on streaming services. Parents may find themselves paying for several platforms at once, chasing favorite titles as catalogs shift from month to month. Many of the older classics of real substance have vanished from these services altogether. Every viewing session begins inside a menu filled with shows and films that you would never willingly place on your own shelf. As a stopgap, streaming may occasionally be useful, but it makes a very poor master, and it should never be trusted to decide what your sons and daughters see.

A Few Notes

None of this means that children and teenagers must never encounter the harder edges of a fallen world or morally complex stories. Jesus prays, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15), and part of Christian maturity is learning to look at darkness with clear eyes and a guarded heart. As children grow, many families will rightly add a second shelf of more demanding films, including stories that portray serious sin or disordered relationships with moral clarity. Seen at the right time and discussed honestly, such works can help older children see how flawed people may still act bravely or sacrificially by the common grace of God, and how real good and real evil stand opposed to one another in this world. This list is meant to serve whole families, giving them films that younger and older children can share, with clear notes wherever a story is better suited to more mature viewers.

It is also vital to reject the common assumption that only films with explicit language, sexuality, or graphic violence are serious or profound. Much of what earns a higher rating in Hollywood adds nothing essential to the story; it reflects a culture that confuses transgression with depth. A film can be artistically rich, emotionally weighty, and intellectually demanding while remaining fit for family viewing. Many of the finest works in cinema show the gravity of sin and suffering without parading it before the camera. For example, films such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Black Stallion (1979), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), and The Green Berets (1968) portray war, suffering, and moral weight with great seriousness while remaining free of explicit content and carrying a G rating. Parents should never assume that a harsher rating signals greater substance; very often it signals a lack of restraint, and that is the last tutor we should invite as we seek to train up a child in the way he should go.

Conclusion

Scripture calls us to think about what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy, and to impress God’s truth on our children as we sit at home, walk along the way, lie down, and rise up. Stories, including films, are one of the most powerful means by which that calling can be lived out in the modern home.

Used thoughtlessly, screens simply drain attention and dull desire. Used wisely, in the context of a carefully chosen library and real shared conversations, they can give our children vivid pictures of courage, repentance, loyalty, responsibility, and joy that are in harmony with the faith we are handing down.

This list exists to help parents who want their children not only to avoid what is corrosive, but to be surrounded by stories that are truly worthy of their love.