The exceedingly popular television show Game of Thrones recently caused intense controversy, even among its fans, for depicting a brutal rape scene. Senator Claire McCaskill and feminist entertainment blog The Mary Sue, among others, averred that they will no longer watch the show because, as the Senator stated on her Twitter account, the scene was “gratuitous...disgusting and unacceptable.”

Did these self-proclaimed feminists miss when a pregnant woman was repeatedly stabbed in the stomach during the infamously violent Red Wedding episode? Women being forced to beat one another and being shot to death with crossbows have also been elements of the show before this controversial episode, and rape is hardly a new storyline for Game of Thrones either. This is in addition to the show’s frequent portrayals of extreme violence against men, exemplified only in part by Ned Stark’s beheading and the revolting torture and sadism exhibited throughout.

While McCaskill and The Mary Sue are right to give up watching the show, their outrage has come much too late and has considerably less force, given that Game of Thrones has been noted for its excessive violence from the closing credits of its first episode.

If they’re truly disgusted with the show, their disgust ought to extend beyond this episode to a wide array of media content, such as the recent film Mad Max: Fury Road, in which an unborn child is torn from a woman’s womb—albeit offscreen—and its dead body is shown to the audience.

But better late than never. Even with a well-developed ability to separate fiction from reality, viewing this kind of gratuitous, over-stimulating content must have some ill effect on the mind and heart. As visual creatures whose senses are intimately connected to our souls, we are never “just watching” these scenes unfold. What we see becomes part of us in a way that we cannot always anticipate and that we can control only by filtering what we decide to take in.

Watching violent films doesn’t necessitate that the viewer will believe such content is acceptable, but one can easily become desensitized to increasingly graphic content through sheer repetition. And it’s clear from recent psychological studies that, while some people might not immediately feel disturbed by soaking in this kind of gore, the images will change the way we think and our perspective of the world.

The Virginia Tech Research Division showed students non-violent movies followed by super-violent movies and results indicated that the violent films led to increased hostile behavior. Both the University of Alabama and Princeton University published studies with similar results. A study conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that violent media had immense short-term effects on adults, among which were aggressive behavior and thoughts. A Loyola University of Chicago study found that exposure to media violence reduces empathy by desensitizing viewers to the emotional experience of others. And this is not to mention the numerous studies showing violent media to have severely negative long-term effects on the development and thought of children and adolescents.

We have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise we’d have to eliminate Snow White and the Seven Dwarves over its poisoned apple scene. The question is where we draw that line. Not everything that falls under the umbrella term “violence” can—or even should—be eliminated from entertainment media. Even extreme violence could be acceptable if exhibited properly and in an appropriate context. For example, the gruesome depictions of Christ’s Passion and death in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ easily fit the category of “extreme violence” and yet it is difficult to call the content gratuitous because of its context.

Consider the slew of war movies produced over the last century or films that center on the brutality of Nazi concentration camps. Are we going to outlaw Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler’s List? No. As blogger Matt Walsh astutely observed, there is some nuance to the way we judge violence as either gratuitous or acceptable. He argues that, in order to be permissible, media violence must be a crucial part of the story and never be stylized or glorified.

It’s not the simple viewing of violent content that affects the mind, but rather when that content so instills, promotes, and exalts violence that it poisons the heart. The gratuitous violence found on our screens drags our gaze down from the things of Heaven and encourages us to revel in the most bestial aspects of our nature. St. Paul insists, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). How are we to obey this command and overcome evil if we allow ourselves to bathe in it as a form of entertainment?

Theologian John Cavadini once remarked that the devil longs for us to stare at his workings in the world and become discouraged by what we see, because when we dwell upon evil we lose faith in our ability to defeat it. Not only do we despair of our own power to resist sin, but also we forget the power of the one who already conquered evil by His death. If we let ourselves fixate on the realities of violent evil that surround us, we lose sight of God and the beauty in the world that points us toward our heavenly home.

Proverbs therefore instructs us to “be not delighted in the paths of the wicked, neither let the way of evil men please thee.” Media producers rely upon gratuitous violence to hold our attention, but the Bible says of evil, “Flee from it, pass not by it: go aside, and forsake it” (Proverbs 4:14-5).

The human soul was fashioned out of and for beauty. We were made to be awed by the exquisiteness of creation. God did not intend us to be entertained by graphic violence and enthralled by explicit depictions of evil.

Exposure to evil is an unavoidable consequence of our fallen nature, but we must strive to glance at it only through the perspective of the lamb who was slain to defeat it. And, given the extreme violence of modern entertainment, keeping our hearts set on Heaven requires a discerning conscience to avoid that which can drag our gaze away from Him. Refusing to watch Games of Thrones would be one concrete place to start.