The "Christian" Label: How the modern church deals with culture

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.

My Fellow Americans...

I borrow this address of President Johnson not because I think I'm someone special or important, but because I find it the most fitting address. Granted, most people won't read this, and those that do might ask, "Who is this guy? Why should we listen to him?" I don't really have an answer to either of those questions. I'm just another American citizen trying to make sense of everything. Election 2016 was a roller coaster and one that was neither exhilarating or satisfying, but rather nauseating and disappointing.

Love Misunderstood

We don’t get love.

It’s something that’s easy to say and has been said enough that it’s almost kind of clichéd. I grant that point. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any less true. Love is one of those commonly overused words. We sort of intuitively have this understanding that the English language’s limitation to this single word “love” is somewhat insufficient to denote the depth of meaning behind it. Some of us may also know that other languages, such as Greek, have different words for different types of love. Sure, that makes sense. However, that knowledge does not necessarily mean that we have no idea what we’re actually saying when we use the word.

Moral Necessity

As much as we would like to live in a world where moral relativity were a reality, the fact of the matter is we don’t. In fact, as much as we say we would want to live in such a world, if we were to really think about it, we don’t.

I am biased

Some people might be looking at the title and think, "Well, no duh." 

While we all conceptually understand that there is bias in everything, it must be a context that is taken into account with every reading. Why is that? Well if you don't take into account the bias of any given author, you naturally give credence to (or accept) any assumption that the author walks in with before even putting words on a page. That is dangerous. We all learn in school that even journalism, arguably objective reporting, will have bias. A liberal, atheist, vegan will approach everything (from education to abortion to women's rights to entertainment) very differently than a conservative, theist, hunter. We might jokingly say that then all journalism should be only attempted by moderates, but that's not the point. Everyone believes something, and that something colors how they perceive the world around them, and that perceived color will impact how we act.

In this blog, I want to consider a lot of the questions that maybe get overlooked because they are so fundamental. Perhaps because they are so fundamental, they are not really practical to consider outside of a philosophy class or something, because they don't pragmatically get us anywhere. It's difficult to draw on how it immediately impacts our day-to-day. However, just because it doesn't change the ins and outs of our daily lives (e.g. grocery shopping, paying rent, going to work, etc...) doesn't mean that it's not important. I've found that in order to change any of the day to day, we need to begin with a paradigm shift. I want us to be able to flesh out the assumptions that we just naturally assume, why we might assume them, and whether or not those assumptions are valid. It's a simple exercise to explain but perhaps significantly more difficult to accomplish. However, I think we ought not be daunted by that difficulty, rather we should take that challenge to really examine our lives, how we live, and why we live that way.

Say what you mean: What do I believe?

We live in a world of growing contradiction and inconsistency. As much as we would like to think that we are growing in rationality and progressing in reason, if we honestly look at everything that's happening today, it's pretty hard to say that we have. Then again, if we're honest with ourselves, perhaps it's just that there isn't really all that much to progress, there isn't some new epiphany of reasoning or rationality that seems reasonable or rational. That may seem a little dubious to some of us, but one thing I think is rather undeniable is we live in an era of growing "political correctness". I suppose the phrase "political correctness" as the general desire to not offend people. While that in and of itself is a noble goal, carried to an extreme, we essentially are forced to communicate by saying almost nothing, because almost anything can be construed as offensive. Now that I really think about it, the idea of "political correctness" seems rather irrational and unreasonable as well.

In this growing trend of "political correctness" we've often come to mouthing meaningless and often pithy platitudes with a certain amount of sincere insincerity. First, I want to make clear that I'm not here to bash propriety or politeness. I think those are important. We ought to be polite and nice to one another. The point I am trying to make is that we've become so accustomed to mouthing these words that we no longer understand nor really care to understand, their meanings. We say things we don't mean. Frankly, I would argue, we don't really know the meaning of the things we say anymore. That's a problem. A rather big one I would say.

Misunderstandings: We don't get grace

I think we live in a world of concepts. We (especially me) are good at conceptually understanding things and unfortunately, we often fail to realize that it never goes beyond a concept. While with something like math or engineering, that's a very valuable tool to have, unfortunately, when it comes to how we live our lives, our values, our priorities, our morals, our worldview, well, we have applied it here as well, and therefore, while we often purport to hold to certain ideals the way we live our lives is very different. I know I do this. I'm not going to sit here and call everyone hypocrites, that's not my goal, but I think we ought to clearly examine and understand ourselves better. To better know what exactly it is that we are affirming in our professions of belief, in our faith.