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Friday Rant!
Godtube.com
Why?
WHY?
From MSNBC
GodTube is the best example of a new group of Web sites that aim to do the same things regular Web sites do, but with a Christian (or Christian conservative) point of view. Like the idea of MySpace, but hate the thought of your children as prey? Try Famster, a secure online community for families. Like Wikipedia, but chafe at what you see as its liberal bias? Read On.
Somewhere along the way someone has a brilliant idea. Let’s take an element of culture and prop up the word Christian in front of it. Then it is now safe for people of faith to participate in culture.
A Christian MySpace, a Christian music genre, a Christian movie, a Christian email address, a Christian bookstore.
So we separate from culture and live in a Christian gated community.
If there is one skill I REALLY want to impart to generations of children growing up right now around the world is how to engage culture… and FILTER it. What is bad, what is good? How can I tell the difference between art and obscenity?
Let’s teach kids how to make decisions on what media they consume, instead of training them to retreat from culture and build a Christian theme park.
Let’s be honest… the creation of Christian cultural ghettos are usually tied into profit.
It may be impossible for me to protect the children in our ministry from viewing pornography at a young age (average age is 11)… although I will fight to keep our kids pure.
But teaching, training and inspiring our children to make the right choice is my plan to populate the world with Godly adults who move from being just consumers of every cultural wind to creators of profound/Godly/entertaining/moving/beautiful works of art.
Slavery may still be with us (in the West) if William Wilberforce had decided to create a Christian Shipping Company instead of engaging the political arena actos 15 mg and standing up for justice… and for Christ.
UPDATE: Here is another article on a similar theme. Link
Christian gated community is a good term for this kind of thing. We’ll never be able to keep children away from these things- they’ll always be one step ahead. I wonder what kids think of us when we close parts of the world to them instead of teaching them to make good decisions, and setting examples by our own way of living.
I do agree with you. My only additional comment is that in order for kids to be able to filter what is right and what is wrong, their parents need to model it, and this is something relatively few parents actually do these days. It absolutely astonishes me what kids in my church are watching and listening to WITH their parents – seven year olds are watching movies I don’t think ANYONE should watch, and these are families who are, in all other ways, good Christian role models who’ve been at the church “forever”. Until we are able to teach adults the importance of screening and filtering their own entertainment so that they can instill those values in their children, I think it is better to have “Christian” things available to at least help kids sort out the difference. Ideally, it wouldn’t need to be that way, but we are far from ideal right now!
Dave,
Totally with you on this one! One of the things that makes my blood boil is the idea of that we should set up schools, TV, movies, and so on as…”Christian.”
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the fear and reasoning behind it. However, Christ never called us to retreat to our own “Christian schools” or “Christian TV.” BUT He did call us to get in the culture and INFECT them with WHO HE IS!
We are called to INFECT the culture so much with Jesus that Hollywood isn’t something we look to for creative ideas, but they look to us. Disney should come to us and ask…how do you do that? How do you engage kids like you do?
Its all about influence! We have to be the greater influence (the church) then our kids get the idea (as do their parents).
pudge
Great comments!
Jessica: It is crazy what kids are allowed to watch. It is THE biggest challenge to communicate to parents their responsibilities and vital role they play in their kids lives.
Pudge: INFECT, love it. Make like a virus!
terrific insight!
thanks for helping us remember that we are called to be in the world not locked away at a safe distance
Amen!
OK I don’t see waht the big deal is. I know tons of people who are not Christians that watch Veggie Tales and are impacted in a positive way. Christians can imapct by producing Christian things. In fact the idea of the new testament church was not primarly a vehicle to impact the lost but to allow Christians to encourage each other. Kids do need to learn about making good choices in media and other life choices, but the good choices have to be provided for them. What if William Wilberforce simply decided to be a good example to the slave traders and work on a ship trying to influence the slave traders to be nice?
So Christian Schools are a bad idea?? Talk about sticking your head in the sand. Maybe there are other reasons besides fear to have a Christian education. I don’t think Jesus said anything about not having Christian schools and to use those arguments about education are spurious. There are a dozen other reasons besides fear. To shame parents for choosing a Christian education is wrong. First of all if you are going down the imitation trail you have to realize that most of the first schools in America were Christian schools. Harvard, Yale, Princeton were all seminaries. They were imitated and then mutated. So to say Christians have to send their kids to mutations of their former selves is limiting at best.
It is also faulty to think that Christians have to always be the innovators. There is such a thing as making a good thing better or redeeming a bad thing. Do you think it is better to go to a garbage dump to find dinner or to a restaurant that serves good food? There comes a time you have to rescue people from eating in the garbage dump instead of eating the garbage yourself. You can’t point them to fine restuarants if they don’t exist. The sewers and garbage dumps we call havens of entertainment are just that sewers and garbage dumps. It’s one thing to go in there and be a light in those areas, it’s another to ask me to ask my kids to eat the stuff.
Any infection I’ve ever received hasn’t been welcome.
I don’t think it’s posisble for me to agree more with you. You present this is such a logical way, it’s hard to imagine that people can see things any other way. I think in some cases, people are afraid of culture, afraid that they’ll get sucked up by it. Also, I don’t think people are really trained too well on how to impact culture in a positive way. Creating a “Christian gated community” is indeed often a play for profits, but it’s also an easy solution for people.
I am a professional speaker, and we’ve made a point of trying to reach people where they’re at. To be relevant, real, and yet challenging. What I find too often is that we are criticized for not being “Christian” enough. (Whatever that means.) In some cases, that has limited our opportunities. Sad to say, it’s a lot easier to make money and appeal to certain people when you simply slap a bible verse on something.
Kudos to you for challenging yourself and others to truly ENGAGE culture.