Some older posts ...
Maybe you've seen this video or the others in the series. These parodies of the Mac/PC commercials pit a stereotypical conservative Evangelical-ish Christian in suit and tie against a jeans/t-shirt/hoodie clad "Christ-follower". Obviously one is cool and one isn't. Now, I am sensitive to insulting people who aren't "cool" - and the video series does bug me a bit in that regard. However, the point I want to cull from this video is important - at least in my opinion.
Here's the deal. I think it is our tendency to create false dichotomies. We make two piles when there could be many. We limit ourselves to two choices, when there may be...oh...at least three.
But what troubles me is when we pull this tendency into the arena of faith and religion - specifically, the sacred/secular dichotomy. Who draws the lines? Do we have to draw lines? I have a friend, Jewish by birth and culture, who had a spiritual awakening sitting in his car listening to U2 in his high school's parking lot. My husband found God on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. My life as a Christ-follower has been shaped by Pulp Fiction and Crash - two movies that might not pass muster in many a "sacred throng".
I am sure that MY life has been most influenced by the Bible and the discourse I've been a part of in church communities and relationships with other Christians. But what I don't buy into this idea that God is restricted to "sacred" media. I can't say "everything is sacred" - I have a hard time finding anything uplifting in pornography for example. But I'm leaning hard toward beauty - whether art, music, or my sons large yet perfectly proportioned four year old hands - as an echo of divine wonderment. Wouldn't our lives be richer if we looked for Truth and Love in every nook and cranny of existence?
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2 comments:
AMEN! I think this perspective is just having a strong theology of the incarnation. God isn't confined to a little heavenly box, nor does He fit into a Jesus-shaped hole in my heart =) I'm not talking about pantheism here or panentheism or whatever, I just want to affirm that all of creation lives and moves and has it's being in God. And that God is all out-going love. One thing Jesus' death means is that there is no longer any place in all of creation where God is not. God has been to the realm of the dead and back, you know? AND God's holiness is not tarnished by touching "unclean" things; no, God's in the business of sanctifying things by His encounter with them. All of these wandering thoughts are why I heartily embrace art, music, beauty, etc. everywhere I see it.
ALSO, why are we Christians SO deathly afraid of being contaminated! I really think fear is at the root of "Christian" culture. Why don't we instead have this all consuming vision of mission that sends us out everywhere, not afraid to touch anyone with the love of God. That's what I see going on in Jesus' life.
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