Of Bugs Bunny and Beethoven
\nCopyright 2005, 2013 by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n
Pop culture is the \u201ccoin of the realm\u201d in America. Our generation\u2019s shared memories often come from television cartoon shows we watched when we were children and the music we listened to when we were teenagers. In the case of the latter it has occurred to the author that much of his pre-Christian world-view was shaped as much by lyrics from pop songs as anything else. The only \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d that I knew then was the one the rock group Led Zeppelin sang about.<\/p>\n
Much has been written about the effect of popular culture on the church. The usual appraisal is that too many Evangelical Christians have chosen to blithely consume worldly entertainment. It is difficult to argue against that charge, especially when believers gather and the buzz is not about how we have encountered God this week but rather about some new movie with scenes of sex and violence that everyone seems to have seen. The \u201cRated R Church\u201d continues its perilous journey down the world\u2019s road, pretty much condoning at least the occasional walk on the dark side. In fact some like to think of it as a healthy flouting of Legalism. (No one wants to be known as a Legalist because, in many parts of the Church, socially that\u2019s the Christian equivalent of \u201cthe kiss of death\u201d. The problem is that the term has come to negatively refer to anyone who has the gall to suggest that a fellow Christian or Christians might be doing something wrong.)<\/p>\n
What has to be reckoned with is that pop culture is here to stay. The world has become one huge electronic hive in which every kind of communication media incessantly broadcasts what is often the lowest common cultural denominator. Americans now frame their lives by what they see and hear on TV, in movies, and on the Internet. For better or worse this is where people are now finding a significant part of their identity and that is why pop culture is increasingly becoming our primary\u00a0social currency.<\/p>\n
In light of this fact individual believers need to grapple with the question of how to interact with this societal trend while keeping their quest for holiness intact. The Bible tells us to focus on that which is excellent, lovely, beautiful, praiseworthy, etc. Unfortunately it is becoming more and more difficult to do that when the high culture that produced a Mozart, Michelangelo, or Shakespeare has pretty much been relegated to the past. Some advocate the promotion of a classical education for our children through Christian parochial schools or through the rapidly growing home school movement, but one occasionally has to wonder how they will put such an education to use in a world that seemingly could no longer care less about what the composers, artists and philosophers of antiquity had to say about the human condition.<\/p>\n
How then, as Chuck Colson once said, shall we live? First of all not all pop culture is evil just because it wears the label \u201cpop\u201d. There are some excellent TV shows, movies and music out there if we will take the time to watch and listen with some discernment. As in so much of the Christian life part of the answer is to “chew the meat and spit out the bones.” We must take that which is good in contemporary culture and leave the rest. Beyond that perhaps it really is time for some of the 30-50 million Evangelicals purported to live in America to adopt the best and most accessible of classical culture as our own and labor to re-introduce it to the population at large on some level. Of course that would involve what some might call a distraction from preaching the Gospel. What they forget is that the high culture we would be championing often embodied Christ. One thinks of Handel\u2019s \u2018Messiah\u2019, Michelangelo\u2019s Sistine Chapel or Pascal\u2019s \u201cPensees\u201d. We would very often be promoting the Gospel by promoting the works of artists and thinkers such as these.<\/p>\n
They say that in the end a people never rise above the level of their culture. As Christian Americans we need to, at the very least, make sure that we do not give ourselves over to the lowest common denominator and follow the rest of our nation into intellectual, artistic and moral suicide. But an even better scenario would see us be truly\u00a0the salt and light of Christ,\u00a0as a viable and visible counter-culture,\u00a0seeking to set a\u00a0higher bar for all cultural endeavors in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Of Bugs Bunny and Beethoven Copyright 2005, 2013 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Pop culture is the \u201ccoin of the realm\u201d in America. Our generation\u2019s shared memories often come from television cartoon shows we watched when we were children and the music we listened to when we were teenagers. In the case of the… <\/p>\n