An estimated 118.5 million people watched Katy Perry’s performance at this year’s Super Bowl half-time show– the largest audience in television history.The pop icon’s parents are Pentecostal ministers who tried, and failed, to shield her from secular influences. Perry began her career as a Gospel singer with aspirations to be the next Amy Grant. But she said that when “it didn’t work out, I sold my soul to the Devil”.

Did Perry mean that literally? Perhaps not, but her life took a definite turn when she signed a deal with Capitol Records in 2007.

At the half-time show, Perry invited lesbian rapper Missy Elliot to sing her first breakout hit “I Kissed a Girl”, a song encouraging sexual experimentation with other women. Elliot’s following medley included her sexually and racially charged hit “Get Ur Freak On”. Perry’s previous performances suggest questionable “dark” influences. At the 2014 Grammy Awards, she appeared as a witch employing satanic symbolism while singing “Dark Horse“.

Perry explicitly states that she is not a Christian. She says she does not believe in heaven or hell, but she does profess to have a relationship with God and occasionally tweets out Bible quotes.

As Christians, we must follow Jesus command us not to judge our neighbor (Matthew 7, 1-5). There is a difference between judging the state of a person’s soul, which Jesus forbade, and judging actions and trends in society, which every rational person must do, rationally. Further, we must make judgments about what is good for our own soul and the souls of others, especially those to whom ties of family and friendship bind us closely.

To be critical of the negative role a person has on the culture is not to hate or judge them. If someone adds poison to the water supply and you alert people that the water is contaminated, you have not judged the person who poisoned the water supply. That person, in fact, may have done so unwittingly without realizing it. As the messenger, all you have done is try and save lives by warning people not to drink water that could make them sick, even kill them. Similarly, we have not only a right but an obligation to warn people about the destructive influences in our culture, including artists and musicians whose performances have a destructive influence on our culture.

Young people are easily influenced by popular icons consciously and unconsciously, as music and art reaches us at a deeper level than mere words. It is fitting, then, to call out these celebrities ‘pop idols’ since they can lead people away from following the one true God. “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22, 37). Anything, especially influences in pop culture, that puts us at risk of idolatry must be identified and condemned.

Though Katy Perry’s parents continue to have a relationship with their daughter, they do not approve of her lifestyle. Her father, Keith Hudson, once wrote in reaction to those admiring his daughter: “I stood there and wept and kept on weeping and weeping. They’re loving and worshipping the wrong thing.”

Katy’s father has asked Christians to pray for his daughter. All Christians should join in praying for Katy Perry. Perhaps she is not aware of the power she is playing with and how many other souls she is leading astray.

At the same time, we must warn others, especially those who are most influenced by her – impressionable young girls – that despite her good looks and obvious talent, she is not a good role model for them to follow.

As St. Paul says in his Letter to the Philippians “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8).