Lake Neuron

This is an excellent (but misleadingly-named) essay by Terry Mattingly. The basic subject is whether and to what extent pastors should refer to popular culture in their sermons, referencing and interpreting movies or television shows which shape popular attitudes and mores. But there are a lot of good points even for the layman about the importance of:

a) being aware of popular culture, even movies or other works that we might consider objectionable, and

b) recognizing the true messages of such works and making cautious, prayerful, well-informed decisions about how we as Christians should respond to them.

It all comes down to being “in the world, but not of it.” Some Christians ignore the first half of that equation and choose to shut themselves off so completely from popular culture that they have no common frame of reference from which to understand or approach nonbelievers. Others are such non-discriminating consumers of popular culture that they let it shape their values without realizing it.

Many Christians, and some Christian “watchdog” groups, base their viewing standards purely on superficial factors — rejecting a movie based solely on the number of curse words or what have you — without learning to interpret what a movie is really saying from a deeper, artistic standpoint.

Learning to analyze and respond to popular culture is much more complex a matter than one would think. A Christian needs more than the secular MPAA rating system to be able to judge what is beneficial and what is harmful.

Most things, of course, don’t fall into “beneficial” or “harmful” that easily, and that’s where some discretion and self-awareness comes in. There are “good clean family movies” that carry humanist messages, while there are gritty, earthy movies that, despite their rough edges, compellingly tell the story of a hurting world and its need for redemption.