12 February 2011

Goals and Guideline, 2

As we attempt to Christianly interact with media, I believe we need to strive after the following: finding media outlets and providers which entertain us; worshiping God; living blamelessly; and learning about God and the world he has made.

Seeking Entertainment

I will try to illustrate what I mean by this by contrasting it to a pair of errors. These appear to be related, in that I think that the first error will usually lead to the second.
The first error is a type of asceticism. This is the practice of flogging oneself with the need to abstain from pleasure. Not many Christians in America function as ascetics, but a great many people hold such asceticism to be a Christian ideal, and feel guilty whenever they partake of simple pleasures. This asceticism leads to the second error, that of intentional tastelessness. Working under the presumption that he is already acting unspiritually in entertaining himself, the Christian will form his media diet wholly from the vast stores of junk food presented him. The attempt to develop good taste is useless and possibly ungodly, says this error.
However, I do believe that we ought to look hard for those things which cause us pleasure, and I think that developing good taste in this can help us to keep our brains engaged while watching tv or reading blogs. A gourmet restaurant needs only to serve a small serving of very rich food to satisfy a gourmand, who will then ruminate on that dish's interplay with the wine, its place in the meal, and its development in his mouth. Similarly, we can learn to spend less time turning off our brains with massive quantities of media if we learn to seek out the highest quality of entertainment.
I could note that this is what true Epicureans have always been about. Epicurus did not teach that we should simply fill our lives with excesses of food and drink, but that we should educate ourselves in the very best of life, seeking the most pleasurable moments possible by careful study of ourselves. I believe that Epicurus was right in this regard, though I think he missed the mark when he missed the fact that knowing God himself (and being known by him) is the highest and best pleasure possible. In fact, I think we ought to find that it changes all our other experiences of pleasures, invigorating them with new life.

Worshiping God

The goal of worshiping God should be a part of everything we do. If God is our highest joy and worshiping him is our aim, shouldn't we just listen to worship music and watch sermons? How can we waste our time on secular media?
The answer is that media are not grouped by God into secular and spiritual boxes. These categories are artificial and usually arbitrary. The Christian ought to worship God in everything he does. When he sees a great singer or chef on tv, it should be clear in his mind that all her cleverness is but a reflection of God's creativity on display. If we are reading a Marxist interpret history, we can praise God for his creative use of language and ingenious working of the data, even if we disagree with his conclusions. In fact, the reading of history is a particularly instructive way to partake of media, since we can glorify God in the workings of his providence, we can praise him for the gifts of the historian, and we can even see God's Law working on the conscience of many unsaved historians, as they drive to discover truth and to make moral judgments on the decisions which men of the past have made. In all these things we can worship God while we educate and entertain ourselves. If this is true for history books, I believe we can apply a similar grid to watching sports or listening to music.

Living Blamelessly

This should always be a Christian's goal. We were made (in part) “for good works,” according to Ephesians 2:10. God's grace teaches us to live “soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age,” says Paul in Titus 2:11-12. Peter exhorts the saints to be holy, since God who called us is holy (1 Peter 1:15). A Christian's life is not a life of unrepentant profligacy, but one of growth in holiness. Therefore, a Christian's interactions with media need to be guided by this line (this guideline, if you will) of holy, blameless living. If we enjoy Foxnews, we should critically engage our brains as we watch a little O'Reilly Factor, but if it makes us frustrated with the world so that we kick the dog, we should not watch it.
This obviously applies to the areas of violence and sexual sin in tv, movies, fictional books, and increasingly in newscasts and histories. I would caution strongly against setting rules for other believers to follow in their entertainment choices, but I try to keep a few for my own benefit. When it comes to Harriet Alice Rodgers, I will be trying to shield her from a lot of this garbage until she is ready to set some boundaries on her own (with guidance from her folks, I hope). When our minds are actively involved in media interactions, we will be better equipped to deal with the sinful behavior displayed on the screen or in print. However, it is wise to avoid a steady diet of coarse and careless language (not only cussing, but loud and disrespectful arguing like on all the cable news channels), of violence (even historically-accurate violence can be gratuitous), of sexual temptation (which commercials have to an art, and sitcoms are probably the worst offenders of all, imo), and of blasphemy (an easy one to forget in a pluralistic society, but we need to remember that God takes blasphemy seriously).
We ought to be careful to avoid sin, and we need to know that such attempts are far from the legalism the Bible condemns. As long as we humbly remember that these guidelines do not make us more spiritual than our brother, we will be in good shape to set up rules to help us stay blameless in our interactions with media.

Learning About God and His World

The final goal I lay out for interactions with media is a greater knowledge of God and his world. Every Christian desires to know God better. We can see him most clearly in his Scriptures, which we see as speaking primarily about his Son. However, there is a great deal we can learn about him from the world around us. We can learn about who is (and especially who is not) by learning about other religions and philosophies, and comparing them with Scripture. We learn about what he has done in observing the beauty, grandeur, and intricacy of creation and its history. We can learn a great about the places where the Bible took place by visiting Israel, but we can also learn by watching some of the excellent Christian- and non-Christian-produced programs in that land. Our study of God's care over his church is greatly enhanced as we partake of media surveying church history and its interplay with the rest of world history. We can compare scientific grasping after the great questions of “why?” to the Scriptures' clear statements of God's purpose in his design. And we also see a lot of God's hand in seeing how he has guided mankind's course on the earth. All these things should be seen within the framework of the Bible's teaching about Jesus Christ, and in that framework we can learn even more about God and his World.
So, with these goals in mind, I will attempt to lay out a set of guidelines of interactions with media. I will try to find questions we can ask as we interact, and hopefully this will help Harriet and Amelia and me (and maybe other people too) to critically engage the world around us.

10 February 2011

Goals and Guidelines, 1

When setting Guidelines for Interactions with Media, which I will endeavor to do today, there should be some sort of a goal in mind. Possible goals include: keeping our minds free from the pollutant of sin; learning the culture, so we can reach the culture; or establishing an image (especially with musical media). I will lay out a few reasons why I shy away from these goals and prefer the following: finding media outlets and providers which entertain us; worshiping God; living blamelessly; and learning about God and the world he has made.

What the goal is not

1. The goal is not to be freed from the pollutant of sin.
There is an object lesson that illustrates this idea of sin as a pollutant. If we were offered a cup of lemonade with just the tiniest bit of poop in it, we would not knowingly drink it, because even the tiniest bit of poop makes a glass of lemonade worthless. Similarly, we should not watch a tv show or read a book with the tiniest bit of sin it, since that would taint the whole thing. The object lesson is effective, but is it biblical?
I answer “No!” In fact, if sin were a pollutant in this way, we could never read the Bible itself, since it discusses sinners and even details their sin extensively in several places. When it speaks of sins which we would not usually consider dirty, like self-righteousness, the Word uses word pictures to bring an even clearer understanding of God's view of the dirtiness of such sin. Thus, all our righteous deeds are dirty menstrual rags, according to the prophet.
Another problem with this view is that it would exclude all dealing with sinners whatsoever. If the fictional character's sin is a pollutant, then how much more will the tax collector or prostitute's sin “get on me” if I talk to him? At the very least, we would need to make sure any such interactions would take place on the established basis that I am a much holier and cleaner person, one who knows no language but that of handing out Chick Tracks to the dirty sinner. If that sounds like Christlikeness to you, you probably need to spend a little more time in the Gospels.
I should mention that sin is a terrible thing, that it pollutes us, and that we must be constantly aware of its dangers. However, my point is that sin does not so taint the world that we can no longer interact with it. So, if you are watching something that tempts you to sin, turn it off! Don't let yourself be led away into sin! But the mere fact that sin may be involved in a broadcast, book, or blog does not mean that you will be tempted to sin by it. Rather, if we engage these media with our minds and the keep our hearts attuned to the Scriptures, we can enjoy the world around us in these media. To try to exemplify this view of sin in media: if the football game cuts to the cheer-sluts, I will look away, and look back when the shot is over, but I am not going to watch an hour-long program on the cheer-sluts.
2. Learning the culture, so we can reach the culture.
Another false goal in our interactions with media is posited in evangelistic, even missional terms. It is said that we can only reach the culture once we know the culture. In an extreme form, it seems that some folks think that unless we can sprinkle Eminem, Bono, or Oprah quotes (depending on your class) liberally into our conversation about Jesus, people will not understand what we are talking about. It is supposed that the Scriptures themselves are incomprehensible to folks not familiar with what is called “Christianese.” I have two points of contention with this goal for interacting with media.
First, this is a gross underestimation of both the noetic (i.e. mental) effects of sin and the work of the Holy Spirit in overcoming those effects. It is true that the natural man is not capable of understanding the Scriptures, or “receiving the things of God” (1 Cor. 2), but that is not because Christians are not working hard enough to contextualize the Gospel. It is because the mind of the natural man cannot receive the things of God without the Holy Spirit giving him a spiritual mind. While Christians should attempt to bring the Gospel to others as clearly as possible, it is not necessary to force the Scriptures into the mindless drivel of pseudo-psychiatric platitudes popularized on daytime talk shows in order to reach someone watching such shows. What such a sinner needs is a call out of that mindset, to obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ and trust in him for their salvation from sin's penalty and power.
The second point I have is simply that this goal for interacting with media is simply mercenary. The “contextualizing,” “missional,”crowd has been politically active, leftist, rightest, hippie, bourgeois, down-home, suburban, inner city, un-schooled, and academic elitist in its turns. The leaders have been about 31 theological flavors to go with the many different cultures they are trying to reach. All this sounds more like a presidential candidate on the campaign trail than a man with biblical convictions, secure in his identity in Christ, preaching a timeless message to the dying world. Not only does this divide Christians for utterly foolish reasons and tend to ignore theological questions in favor of arguments about political parties, musical styles, or marijuana, but it also shows the world that a great many peoples' “cultural engagement” is in fact a means to trick folks into coming to Church. (That is the Evangelical version of such mercenary culture-mongering; there are many who just want sinners to accept them and say nice things about them and Jesus.) This mercenary-style interaction will look very phoney to unbelievers who are genuinely interested in various media, and it will look very familiar to “posers,” who are trying to look like they are interested in various media because they think people will like them more if they are. That is goal #3, though...
3. Establishing an image.
The final goal I will try to steer around is that we should engage the culture in order to establish our image as, say, tasteful artist-types with a good sense of humor and irony. I will not deal at length with this, because it is not a goal many people would own up to in their interactions with media. I suspect that many people who claim goal #1 or goal #2 would have a degree of this in the back of their minds. The fact is, we all do (and should) want to belong to a diverse, friendly, accepting group of people. The group that we actually hope for is called the Church. Or, if you are a Dispensationalist, then the Church and redeemed Israel. :) In either case, what we really long for is that community pictured in Revelation, who sing together forever the praises of the Lamb, in the united song of every tribe, tongue, and nation. Since this is a real and deeply-felt need, it is not surprising that Satan attempts to invert it. He gets us (especially as unbelievers, but often as Christians too) to establish our fellowship, not on the basis of our universal adoration of the glories of the Lamb, but on just about anything else. This is the importance of our image. If I'm with the rockers, or the hiphop...ists?, or the gangstas, or preacher-boys, or granola homeschoolers, or jocks, or whatevers, then I have my loving community. I define myself by whatever will get me that “fellowship,” in contrast to any other community's dress, music, or other demographics. This is a very tempting goal in interacting with media, but it leads us very easily to break our fellowship over very foolish issues of media taste, and often to a need to accept freely and uncritically anything that comes out from “our” media outlets.
As we attempt to Christianly interact with media, I believe we need to set these goals aside. Rather than any of these goals, I propose we strive after the following: finding media outlets and providers which entertain us; worshiping God; living blamelessly; and learning about God and the world he has made.

08 February 2011

Guidelines for Interactions with Media

Whenever I logged into the intranet at my last job, the main page had a link called, “Guidelines for Interactions with the Media,” or something to that effect. They were concerned that we lowly factory workers, on being confronted by the next great American news reporter, would soon reveal a slew of company secrets and say nasty things about executives. Therefore, we were told to recite a 100-word description of our operation and direct all questions to a manager.

The Worldly Hydra

I am thinking that is a good title for this post, which will hopefully give me a chance to restart my charge into the world of Video Games. The “media” I have in view are not the Cronkite wannabes that populate 6 o'clock newscasts, but rather the varied heads of the worldly hydra which poke into our homes every day. These heads are prominently represented in my circles by:
  • Blogs
  • Foxnews
  • Movies
  • Books
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Sermon Downloads
  • TV series
  • Planet Earth
  • and Video Games.
I suppose that to call these things “heads of the worldly hydra” is a little intense. I will admit that the “world” here is not the evil world of Satan's designing, but merely the world outside the Christian family, containing positive and negative influences all around. So, the hydra in this metaphor is not to be viewed too harshly. He's just a hydra, doing his thing. Some of his heads are speaking nonsense and lies and filth, some proclaim the truth, and all of them need to be engaged by an active Christian mind in order to make the interaction with the hydra worthwhile.

Cutting off Heads

To abuse the metaphor a step farther, I will say that cutting off the hydra's heads is a mistake of mythic proportions. Though an individual Christian could possibly cut himself off from the rest of the world for a time, each time he cut a head off, he would have new ones to deal with. Not only is it virtually impossible for an individual to keep his life media-free, but this hydra will still be hanging around when the next generation of that individual's family are growing up, and they will have no ability to interact cordially with him. Succeeding generations will be forced to choose between the Herculean task of head-chopping, or just taking everything that the media-heads say without engaging their minds in their listening. It does not take long in a Christian community to see this trend, as a couple of separationist Christians rear a litter of worldlings with no ability or desire to critically engage the media surrounding them, but who rather become more un-Christian than a child brought up in a pagan home.

Critically Engaging Media

I have some hope that this is not a typical Christian home. I was not brought up chopping off hydra-heads. Neither was my wife, though our parents were all more or less separatistic at times during our upbringing. Still, we were taught to critically engage both new and old voices speaking to us through various media. Therefore, I am endeavoring to teach my daughter Harriet (and any other little folks God may give) to use her little noggin when she interacts with the hydra. We will not be screening everything in our house according to some arbitrary standard (e.g. “no Rated-R movies” - as if the movie raters have any clue what my kids should watch...), but we will be trying to give her an ability to exercise her mind. Of course, there ought to be some guidelines when approaching such a powerful beast, and I hope here to begin to establish a few.
So, we will seek some Guidelines for Interactions with Media.

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