A few old posts and quotes popped up this week from a year ago, reminding me it’s been about a year since I re-launched my blog. I got a new set-up, new color scheme, and new goal- to not only talk about movie and music, but to talk about the workplace as well. My new goal would be to help people walk through the difficulty that is faith in our careers and our schooling for those careers. But I continued to also throw some movies and some cultural topics in with the blogs about learning how to think of our job as our missions field. And I will continue to do so, because I think cultural awareness is so key to our churches changing their influence in the world.
The posts that popped up were pictures of the animated movie Inside Out, a quote from Suicide Squad, a post about the Avengers, and a great pictures about how music should matter to professionals. And it reminded me that as much as I talk about faith in our workplace, I am doing you a disservice if I don’t also talk about our faith in our culture as well. They honestly go hand in hand. Being able to see the reflection of God in between the lines of a movie is just like being able to see the reflection of God in your classmate, in your business deal, in that new marketing strategy, and in the E.R. It’s usually not hard to find him at church, but when you leave the building, you have to look more carefully and more proactively to see Him at all.
I have been on the outskirts of several outreaches where churches banned certain music, discredited our current movie culture, or burned books. And I while I understand it entirely, I also find it impossible to live by. I think the main goal of each of these movements was to take something that was a clear idol in the culture and try to get Christians not fall under that same spell by avoiding it completely. In actuality, it just makes me unaware of the problems in the culture I live in, pushing away the glimpses of beauty and promise that are there, and avoiding the very people I was meant to serve and love. How can you change something that you refuse to admit exists?
I think as Christians, especially those in the universities and marketplace that are “overrun” with our culture, we need to learn to take off our blinders. Art really does have an incredible power to shape our views and determine our steps. But we’ve got God’s power which is another force entirely. We have to learn how to actually stay in the midst of the current and stand until we change the tide. We’ve got to learn how to see in between the lines of the things we hear and see and live in and find the glimpses of light and put them up on a stand for all to see. We’ve got to make it a goal to value the beauty and creativity and unique aspects of the culture we live in. God didn’t put us on this Earth to run, but to redeem. Are we living like we’ve been called to more?
There’s a very fine line between “in the world and not of the world” and running away from the very world you live in. Are we aware or are we afraid?