I'll be the first to admit that I probably have a large stake in this, in that there are a lot of things that I enjoy and partake in a lot of pop culture stuff. Thus, maybe it just sounds like I'm trying to justify the things I do in the context of my faith. Maybe. I'll be honest, I'm going to be a little biased about it, but at the same time, I think it is a Biblically sound premise that the idea is to bring God into everything that we do (1 Corinthians 10:31), while certainly there are (sinful) things that we cannot bring God into, at the same time there are things that are neither explicitly for or against God outside of how we use them.
What I hope to accomplish here, is to get us to critically (and theologically) look at how we approach different things and to hopefully spur on Christian creatives to be bold in their faith in their creativity but also to encourage Christian consumers to be wise and discerning in a world of media saturation where certain truths (particularly about life and humanity) are either ignored or consciously subverted.
This isn't something that I think will be conclusively discussed in a single post. Even the little that I engage and know about modern pop culture, anecdotal as it is, couldn't be covered in a single blog post in a manner that does it justice, let alone the entirety of modern culture as we know it. Where I think a good place to begin though, is the modern perceived notion of "Christian" pop culture. I put the word "Christian" in quotes because while I think that the generally accepted definition may be similar overall to my own, and certainly being explored greatly by many Christian creatives, I think that it is something that in this day and age we must clearly define, and thus, the definition of what makes something Christian should be more comprehensively thought out.
Here's what I mean.
I think we can all agree that a broad working definition of the label "Christian" in modern society is something that promotes general "Christian" belief. What are those beliefs? To be honest, that becomes more murky ground (not here to discuss whether or not Joel Osteen is a Christian based the theology of his teaching or pastorate). A clearer way we might understand this then, would be to see how these labels are used. A "Christian" book is a book that promotes a better understanding of who God is in the Christian context (that is the context of the Bible), advocating for a Christian understanding of whatever topic it discusses, be how to live your best life or how to manage your finances or how to raise your kids. "Christian" music is typically music that contains lyrics that sing about God and Jesus. A "Christian" movie is typically either about a Bible story or a story about Christians or how someone becomes a Christian.
Actually, if I look back at that, that actually doesn't really make things much clearer because we keep using that word "Christian." The question is, what does that word mean? Well, the reality is that there are a lot of implications behind using that word. The word is first used in the Bible in the church of Antioch (Acts 11:26) as a label outsiders gave to followers of Jesus Christ, those who believed in the Gospel that has been preached through the previous 11 chapters and the four Gospel accounts preceding that (chronologically speaking). I would argue then, that as a Christian, we cannot label things"Christian" at will because implicit in the label are the four words: theologically sound and Biblically accurate.
What does this mean practically? A movie about Moses or Noah or any historical Biblical figure may not actually be a Christian movie. A self-professing Christian radio station may not actually play 100% "Christian" music (if you actually listen to those radio tags, most "Christian" radio stations actually don't even promise to play "Christian" music). A book that talks about God and Jesus may also not actually be "Christian" though it is found in the Christian section (though now more politically correctly labelled the Religion and Spirituality section) of the bookstore (or in a Christian bookstore in general).
While I end this post here, I hope that this is the start of a series of posts and more importantly a conversation about how we as Christians living in 2019 can appropriately come to understand and engage with an increasingly non-Christian (possibly anti-Christian) culture in our lives. It's important because it's not going away and we're all going to have to deal with it. It affects everything, and it's not always a simple label and party line that we have to hold. This is true not only for politics and family life, but I think it goes into everything down to our Netflix queue. Let's be wise but innocent (Matthew 10:16), particularly when it comes to that label of "Christian" that represents not only us, but the God we serve.
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