[The questions I'm about to ask do not come from a place of bitterness or anger. I'm honestly just wondering. Promise.]
Why do we (and I say "we" in the collective sense, not necessarily literally you and me) as Christians feel the need to have a "Christian" answer to everything the world produces? Why do we attempt to counter everything that's part of pop culture with a cheesier version and a Bible verse?
For example:
And this stuff isn't even the worst of it. Why do we do this?
Also, what is our obsession with using the cross the replace the letter 't' in practically everything? (This is a personal issue for me. That, and replacing the letter 's' with 'z'.)
With all this being said, I do recognize that there is some really modern and creative Christian merch (I feel weird saying that) out there. And I do recognize that at the end of the day it's just a t-shirt or bumper sticker or whatever.
Maybe I'm wrong, and instead of saying that this kind of stuff is attempting to counter a cultural fad I should say that we're participating in it. Or not.
What do you think?
Why do we (and I say "we" in the collective sense, not necessarily literally you and me) as Christians feel the need to have a "Christian" answer to everything the world produces? Why do we attempt to counter everything that's part of pop culture with a cheesier version and a Bible verse?
For example:
And this stuff isn't even the worst of it. Why do we do this?
Also, what is our obsession with using the cross the replace the letter 't' in practically everything? (This is a personal issue for me. That, and replacing the letter 's' with 'z'.)
With all this being said, I do recognize that there is some really modern and creative Christian merch (I feel weird saying that) out there. And I do recognize that at the end of the day it's just a t-shirt or bumper sticker or whatever.
Maybe I'm wrong, and instead of saying that this kind of stuff is attempting to counter a cultural fad I should say that we're participating in it. Or not.
What do you think?
4 comments:
so this is where i point out that Sunday night i will have 3 stations of guitar hero set up at church (blog and video to follow).
I'm troubled by the willingness to grab a fad, trend, cool thing and do a poor imitation of it for Jesus. I think we can justify anything. Claim we are corrupting or co-opting for God. There are so many discussion about the church taking on the culture of the world and/or defining our own culture. We have got to draw a line. If as Christians the best we have a parody t-shirt...
but utilizing something trendy like Guitar Hero within the church and taking something like Guitar Hero and changing it to Apostle Hero and trying to make it seem just as with-it are two different things.
two very different things.
I think this is what happens when the Church reacts to culture instead of responding to it -- cheesy knock off t-shirts do very little to INFLUENCE culture, which I think is what happens when we're "in the world" but not "of the world".
After re-reading my last comment, *I* got confused! What I meant to say was that we influence culture when we are in the world and not of the world.
Post a Comment