The Need for this Discussion⤒🔗

Here are some facts which, taken together, indicate why we Christians should be talking about how to have fun:

• there are over one billion television sets in use around the world

• MTV reaches over 257 million home in sixty-eight territories on five continents

• a 1990 cover story in Fortune identified America’s hottest export to be pop culture, explaining that taken together, American movies, music, television programs and home videos generated an annual trade surplus of nearly $8 billion

• the pop culture entertainment industry has become the battleground for so-called “culture wars,” with new alignments emerging to fight for “family values,” ratings systems, and more policing of the airwaves.

Debates continue to rage today concerning adequate definitions of high art and entertainment. Is entertainment truly art? Is one of art’s functions that it entertain? Do art and entertainment have distinct social functions? Careful studies are now showing how popular culture affects the way people perceive reality (studies like Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1989). Among the most foundational philosophical studies of the cultural impact of television is Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman (New York, Penguin Books, 1985). Postman describes the shift from print to visual media in terms of how we know what we know, and observes that “as the influence of print wanes, the content of politics, religion, education, and anything else that comprises public business must change and be recast in terms that are most suitable to television” (p. 8). Clearly something is going on here that is worth Christians talking about.

The title of this essay, “How Do Pilgrims Have Fun?,” selects from the range of Biblical word-pictures the metaphor of pilgrim, because I believe this one best captures the relationship between the church as God’s called-out, redeemed people, and the world which is comprised of that set of relationships and values dominated by that fleshly, old-nature existence which dwells in enmity with God and comes to cultural expression, especially in the communication media. And I have narrowed the focus to one area of cultural interaction, that of leisure. For it is this particular area that seems to pose the greatest challenge to Christian conscience, where issues of Christian liberty and participation are most pressing.

Let’s clarify expectations before moving further. In this essay we probably won’t be able to answer all the questions about whether teens should watch MTV or attend heavy metal rock concerts or whether Beavis and Butthead will help us think better. But our priority must be to construct a platform, a context of understanding, an awareness of the function of entertainment in modern culture.

So we ask first: What is a pilgrim?, and find an answer in two directions: the status of being a pilgrim, and the ethic corresponding to the pilgrim status. We move next to ask, What is leisure?, specifically discussing its role in modern popular culture. Then we are prepared to answer the question, How do pilgrims have fun?

The Status of Pilgrims←⤒🔗

Abraham is the classic example of a “pilgrim and sojourner.” He was a sojourner in Egypt (Genesis 12:10) and in Canaan (Genesis 17:8), and though he was very rich, he owned no land except a grave for his wife Sarah. Even Israel remained throughout the Old Testament period a pilgrim people in Canaan, a mere tenant and sojourner before the face of God (Leviticus 25:23). Psalm 39:12 is to the point: “Hear my prayer, O LORD, / listen to my cry for help; / be not deaf to my weeping. / For I dwell with you as an alien / a stranger as all my fathers were.”

In 1 Peter 1:1 and 2:11, the word “sojourner” is used to refer to believers who have no country of their own on this earth, but live as temporary residents. In light of their status, they are not to permit themselves to be shaped by the values and views that determine life in this age and on this earth.

The metaphors of aliens, strangers, and foreigners are used within the New Testament in two distinct ways. First, the non-believer is pictured as a foreigner in relation to heaven, as someone who has no part in the community of God (Ephesians 2:12, 19; 4:18; Colossians 1:21). The Christian, by contrast, is an alien in relation to this present world (Philippians 3:20; Ephesians 2:19; 1 Peter 2:9-11). In terms borrowed from Roman citizenship, in this present world enslaved to the principles of the fleshly existence, Christians belong to a sub-community that has its own rules. They are not fully integrated into the surrounding culture, nor do they feel at home there.¹

The New Testament writer to the Hebrews views the lives of Abraham and other Old Testament saints as being typical for believers, who throughout history are never really possessors, but only heirs, maintained by the promise (Hebrews 11:13-16). This status of heirs is described by Paul: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory” (Romans 8:17; cf. 4:13; Titus 3:7; Hebrews 9:15). Possession of the inheritance is a matter of hope and expectation. ²

It is important to distinguish between the pilgrim who was a “wandering foreigner” and the pilgrim who was a resident alien. In this speech, I am using the word “pilgrim” with the latter meaning, which I believe better avoids the connotation that the contact between believers and their surroundings is merely superficial. Our objective is not to travel as quickly as possible through this world to get to “the other side,” but to persevere within our vocation until Christ returns. ³Remember, then, that for our purposes, “pilgrim” means resident alien, or someone living temporarily in a land, though being a citizen of another country.

The Ethic of Pilgrims←⤒🔗

This pilgrim status has a corresponding pilgrim walk, a describable lifestyle, as the apostle Peter observes: “Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear” (1 Peter 1:17). More clearly still, he writes: “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:11-12).

Here are several features of that pilgrim style:

1. Pilgrimage Involves Antithesis.←↰⤒🔗

The resident alien does not feel at home among the godless and arrogant. He meets opposition because of his love for God’s commands and precepts (Psalm 119:19, 54). Those whose citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20) experience a sense of alienation in the present culture. Because the people of God are “the called-out-ones,” their life in the world is “a sojourn.” The first term has reference to God, the second to the world.⁴ Divine election brings with it the antithesis. Foreignness is established by believers’ past election, and shaped by their future inheritance. ⁵ As 1 Peter 1:1-2 indicates, the status of sojourner results from election, since those called by God are differentiated from those not called.⁶

This alienation or uneasiness arises because present culture is dominated by a life-principle alien to the life-principle governing the believer. The child of God is born of the Spirit, from above (John 3:3, 8). People who belong to this present age are “from the world” (1 John 4:5). This antithesis is a natural correlate of one’s pilgrim status. This antithesis is both temporal (the believers is alienated from his former way of life) and latitudinal (those born of God are alienated from those not born of the Spirit).

2. Though as Pilgrims we Never Feel “At Home” in Modern Culture, we do Recognize Our Place and Calling within the Present Culture.←↰⤒🔗

Christ has not yet returned to distribute His inheritance. Therefore, we work while we wait. Earthly relationships are the arena of our labor, created by God to be good and to be received with thanksgiving. “We are sojourners, but then still in a world standing under Christ’s lordship and in which He gives us a task. So, although we are not yet “at home,” we are nevertheless in our element. The proclamation of the gospel and the gathering of Christ’s church is not yet complete. Until then, the Christian has his calling in these earthly relationships.” ⁷

This phrase “until then” describes the eschatological orientation of Christian living. We work while we wait. All of life is governed by divine promise, such that our status as sojourners is never a permission to desert our posts.⁸

3. The Church of Jesus Christ both Lives amid Suffering and Deprivation (although she is Heir to Everlasting Life and Blessedness) and already now Enjoys a Foretaste of Eternal Joy Enabling her to Delight in God’s Good Creation.←↰⤒🔗

Because the fullness of life is still coming, believers can do without a lot of things here and now; they can let go of much that the world pursues. Yet, believers rejoice heartily in their Creator and His creation. With mouths wide open, they praise His glory and wisdom; their eyes sparkle with delight as they enjoy His goodness and gifts, here and now.

The dimensions of Christian pilgrim-hood, then, reach back to creation and forward to the new heavens and the new earth. That future dimension that we describe with the word “foretaste” occasions so much tension in our sojourning lifestyle. Already now we possess in Christ so much, and still, the fullness and sinlessness of that possessing is not yet ours. This “already-not-yet” character of pilgrim existence belongs to Christian existence, to history itself, and to the church’s identity throughout the present age, until Christ returns. Christians have tried to “solve” this tension, either by viewing the “now” as final (so that we’d better grab all the gusto we can) or by denying any possibility of genuine enjoyment in the “now” (postponing all fun until we get to heaven). These attempts effectively remove any tension between this world and the world to come, so that any real meaning to living as pilgrims here and now evaporates.

What is Leisure?←⤒🔗

With this brief background sketch of the nature of Christian sojourning, we turn next to the matter of leisure in the Christian life. But before we can answer the question, How do pilgrims have fun?, we must consider the nature and place of leisure in modern life.

In his very useful book, entitled Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure (1995), Leland Ryken writes his analysis of leisure right alongside an equally developed discussion of work. He combines what for most people live in separate compartments, namely, work and leisure. In fact, work and leisure derive much of their meaning from one another rather than by themselves. They obviously influence each other significantly.
Leisure can be defined in several ways (cf. Ryken, 23-28).

1. In relation to time, leisure is simply free time. It is nonwork, in that it does not answer to a sense of duty or obligation. The “freeness” of one’s leisure is often determined by subjective factors, such as personal enjoyment and delight in the nonwork activity.

2. But to say that leisure is nonwork does not mean leisure is inactivity. In fact, leisure consists often of pursuing very specific activities. Think, for example, of cultural pursuits, recreation, hobbies, social relationships, and entertainment.

Leisure’s Function as Part of Culture←⤒🔗

Leisure enhances life. Leisure yields benefits like satisfaction with living, personal enrichment, receptivity to beauty, celebration, and cultural development. People speak of leisure in terms of rest, relaxation, recovery from fatigue, cultivation, and the like. Just as one’s work serves to fashion a person’s identity in the world, so too one’s leisure activities fulfil a psychological and social role in personal self-realization. Perhaps our inability to readily perceive this truth is an indication that we haven’t devoted enough responsible reflection to the development of leisure activities.

An important social function of leisure is the maintenance of communities. Think, for example, of the family. Family vacations create memories which, whether or not they are handed down to the next generation, can fashion intergenerational identity. The industrial sector has come to realize the significance of leisure activities, as a source of interpersonal bonding and a means of enhancing collegiality within and across strata of responsibility within a corporation.

Ryken helpfully identifies several ethical viewpoints that are hostile to leisure, that make having fun a suspicious endeavor. I mention them because I think one or more of these viewpoints may be functioning within our particular subculture.

The enjoyment of leisure is opposed, for example, by a utilitarian ethic, which values only those activities that have a measurable, observable, tangible payoff: better health, more income, increased fitness for work. People with a strong work ethic tend to justify leisure only in terms of its usefulness for increased productivity. But leisure’s genuine effectiveness lies in going beyond the requirements of life and labor, reaching for a kind of gratuitous delight.

Another moral impulse hostile to leisure is the ethic of self-abasement. (We don’t have the time or space here, but it is important to refine Ryken’s point here by distinguishing self-abasement from self-denial.) This ethic of self-abasement has no room for pleasure. But pleasure is intrinsic to leisure; feeling good is an important element in fun. In an ethic that denies any room for pleasure, leisure and play become its first victims.

In summary, to understand the role of leisure in culture, we might describe culture as an ever-changing set of objects, institutions, fashions, relationships, tastes, habits, and loves, all embodied in people and associations, in buildings and books, in humor and art, in food and fun. ⁹Leisure “flourishes only when people believe in the goodness of pleasure and human fulfillment. It withers when people are lazy, preoccupied with what is useful, or given to self-(abasement).”¹⁰

Leisure and Popular Culture←⤒🔗

But there is another, much more pervasive challenge being mounted against leisure in our day, in the form of what has come to be called “pop culture.” In his engaging description of how popular culture influences modern society, Kenneth Myers describes the novelty of pop culture in distinction from, say, high culture or folk culture.

Both high culture and traditional or folk culture, says Myers, are mediated by conventions that require discipline. To participate in these kinds or levels of culture, you must be familiar with and submissive to their traditions.

By contrast, popular culture provides instant gratification without the need for discipline or familiarity. The messages and modes of pop culture, whose idiom is rock ’n roll and whose medium is television, require little activity or effort. This fact accounts for the power and the pervasiveness of pop culture in modern society.

Popular culture is far more than the latest in a series of diversions; it is essentially a culture of diversion. The Industrial Revolution of the previous century has yielded the benefit of more free time, along with increasing boredom needing to be overcome by more powerful forms of distraction. The forty-hour workweek has left us with time and money, so-called “discretionary” time and money. The apparatuses of popular culture – the TV, VCR, CD players, boom boxes, graphic equalizers, computer games, and cablevision – all provide us with unending, instant newness.

Within modern pop culture, leisure is filled by entertainment. Television, music, and cinema have come of age to deliver the new and the now. Such entertainment/leisure relies on instant accessibility and it appeals to sentimentality. It is market-driven and therefore highly individualistic and vigorously egalitarian. The moral message of popular culture tends toward relativism. Its expressions can only be used rather than received (in contrast to high culture, which requires self-exertion to understand and appreciate). Popular culture has become the great equalizer: Madonna’s perspective on the current environmental crisis is just as valid as that of any scientist at M.I.T., and Elton John is as significant a symbol of national virtue as Winston Churchill.

The single most significant medium of shared reality in our entire society today is the television.¹¹   In television we live and move and have our being. Modern culture accords to TV the role once reserved for God, namely, that of defining reality. The Image rather than the Word has become the basic unit of communication. But the kinds of knowledge they communicate are very different. Image-knowledge is intuitive and immediate. Word-knowledge is abstract, analytical, linear, and logical in form. One simple way to understand this is to realize that an image cannot be true or false. Images can present only a story, never an argument. Images are pervasively non-judgmental and non-demanding.

It would be unfair only to condemn and speak negatively about television, however. Because it has become such a powerful tool of communication in modern society, it has other purposes than entertainment. We need to learn how to understand its power, its limitations, its messaging capacity. Every invention brings advantages and disadvantages, and just as with every scientific discovery, this piece of technology places great responsibility on us.

How Do Pilgrims have Fun?←⤒🔗

How can we enjoy pop culture in a way that is consistent with the Christian worldview? Isn’t this the real question behind the plea for help being made by Christian parents who know they cannot – and should not – control their children’s behavior twenty-four hours a day? Isn’t this the real need, namely, that we equip our young people so that, because they know the antithesis, as they come to understand the pilgrim lifestyle, they will be able to continue the journey after we’re gone?

If we were to ask the same question with regard to sexuality (How should Christians enjoy sexuality?), we would not be satisfied with adopting a catalogue of permissible sexual behaviors. Rather, we must understand sexuality within the context God gave for it. Admittedly, this kind of answer won’t satisfy the adolescent cry: “But how far I may go on a date?” Similarly, in our evaluation of pop culture today, the approach we must take is not to develop a catalogue of permissible musicians or movies. It is to cultivate moral discernment about the function and power of entertainment within our culture.

At this point Christians have faced, and continue to face, one very grave danger. You will recall our description of “pilgrim” to mean resident alien, someone who lives temporarily in a land, though having citizenship in another country. The most serious danger confronting us as this kind of pilgrim, in relation to our surrounding culture, is the temptation to disconnect these two words, these two notions, or “resident” and “alien,” and to choose or prefer one over the other.

This disconnection or separation can be done in one of two ways.

• One mistake is what I would term cultural avoidance, and occurs when Christians come to prefer alienation over residency. This leads to a cultural ethic of moral maximalism, which argues for clamping down, monitoring pop culture, policing the fences, and the like. Such an impulse arises from a desire to shelter our youth and ourselves from the prevailing culture, from an overestimation of our ability to avoid contact with evil in modern society. At the same time, because it emphasizes alienation within modern culture, cultural avoidance underestimates our calling to be of service within this present world. Moral maximalism eliminates the tension of living as resident aliens by denying that we are residents in this culture, by deserting our calling to render the service of salt and light within the world.

• The other mistake is what I would term cultural immersion, and occurs when Christians come to prefer residency over alienation. This leads to a cultural ethic of moral minimalism, which basically says that each is on-his-own, and each has to find his own way. Ironically, this view can easily arise from the faulty notion that since we’re going to be redeemed “out of” this world anyway, it doesn’t really matter what we do in this world. The apostle Paul dealt with this kind of moral carelessness in Corinth. Another source of moral minimalism is the notion that since we’re victors in Christ, all things are ours to enjoy. Paul dealt with this line of argument in Corinth as well. Moral minimalism eliminates the tension of living as resident aliens by denying that we are aliens, by accommodating to modern culture as something basically good.

Now, what we need to see is that both mistaken approaches eliminate the antithesis which is essential to the identity of pilgrims as resident aliens. The antithesis belonging to the pilgrim lifestyle, resulting from election, lying at the heart of the gospel, lies not in one or the other of those words, but in their very connectedness. Both the “sheltered” approach and the “immersion” approach disconnect residency and alienation, and thereby effectively destroy both the status and the ethic characteristic of pilgrims.

In answering the question, How do pilgrims have fun?, I would offer three positive suggestions for your reflection.

1. The Role of Thanksgiving←↰⤒🔗

The more experienced I become in studying the Bible and Reformed confessional truth, the more significant I find the Biblical and catechetical emphasis on gratitude as the essence of Christian responsible living. Among the many functions of thanksgiving in the Christian life, I believe one of the most important is that by giving thanks – for food, for each other, for the gospel, for fun and leisure – we consecrate to God, we set apart and fence off for godly service our substance, our relationships, our activities. With regard to the matter of this essay, the question becomes: How do Christians give thanks in their leisure?

Let me begin to sketch an answer, very briefly considering a few New Testament passages relating to the believer’s use of the creation and participation in culture.

The first passage we note is Romans 14:5-8. The apostle Paul is giving advice to the congregation in Rome which is suffering from disputes and disagreements between the “strong” and the “weak.” Without commenting in great detail on the precise nature of the disagreements, and the flow of the apostle’s advice (for which see Kloosterman 1991, 30-43), we wish to observe that both groups within the church, both the “strong” and the “weak,” act from a religious motive in that both “give thanks to God”: “He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks” (Romans 14:6b). Our modest point is that thanksgiving is that mode whereby we direct to God either the enjoyment or the renunciation of our Christian liberty with regard to the creation. But this gratitude is a far cry from the subjective attitude of “I think I can thank God for this.” As the Heidelberg Catechism makes clear, gratitude is expressed in good works, which must arise from true faith, conform to God’s law, and seek His glory. All of this is why the apostle urges both “strong” and “weak” in Rome: “Let each be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). Gratitude is the fruit of conviction.

Thanksgiving to God in our use, or non-use, of creation is discussed also in 1 Corinthians 10:30-33. The apostle Paul had just appealed twice to the same Bible verse (Psalm 24:1) to advise the Corinthians both to eat whatever was sold in the market and not to eat that same food if someone identified it as idol-food.¹² 

But merely being able to give thanks to God is inadequate ground for proceeding. Giving thanks, you see, must include my weaker brother, so that I don’t cause him to stumble if he should violate his conscience and follow my example. “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God, just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.”

A third passage relevant to the role of thanksgiving in the Christian’s relation to culture is 1 Timothy 4:3-5: “...forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” The context of these verses involves false teachers forbidding marriage and certain foods which God had created to be received with thanksgiving. Now, we must be careful not to equate “every creature of God” with “every product of culture,” for the latter obviously entails what people have done with the creation. In other words, we should distinguish between created things and cultural products, i.e., message- and value-embodying phenomena that employ (aspects of) creation.

With that distinction in mind, these verses offer several helpful insights for our interaction with modern culture. We hear once again the exhortation to “receive with thanksgiving,” but this gratitude finds its boundaries within what I would call covenantal concourse, consisting of God’s Word and our Word-guided prayer. Evil does not reside in the creation, nor in “things” of creation, but in the human heart. This means that by giving thanks, God’s Word of blessing and our grateful prayer sanctifies, sets apart, consecrates for service to God any created gift.

Enjoying the creation and its cultural uses with thanksgiving means, then, that we are able to “get a fix on them” in relation to God and to our neighbor. This means, among other things, we are scared to death of idolatry. Whether it be the idolatry of sports figures or stars of the silver screen, or the idolatry of form and beauty, or the idolatry of power and money, gratitude to God fixes limits and boundaries to our enjoyment.

Enjoying the creation and its cultural uses with thanksgiving also means that my neighbor’s wellbeing always has a claim upon me, whether that neighbor be my tennis opponent or my fellow church member, my adolescent child or my spouse. Christian liberty serves neighbor love.

There is nothing wrong with frivolous activity as long as life isn’t devoted to frivolity. We who are believers in Jesus Christ need not fear the cultural idols of our day as long as we don’t reverence them. However, many of the signs around us within the church indicate that Christians are not being very successful in keeping pop culture in its place. Think of the “contemporary Christian music” movement; consider the market-driven, pop-culture Mc-Churches known as mega-churches; notice the resurgent interest today in incorporating the visual and the dramatic in preaching and worship. Most distressing of all is that these phenomena are accompanied by a “dumbing down” in doctrine and truth. As Myers puts it, evangelicalism has become not so much a community of orthodoxy (right doctrine), as a community of orthopathos (right feeling). Especially the church’s worship is being sentimentalized as a result.

Part of the problem is that Christians have often been critical of the content of pop culture (nudity, profanity, blasphemy, violence), but oblivious to the power and function of its form. When the Christian faith is marketed as a “natural high,” offered as a rewarding lifestyle option, or sold as the key to health and wealth, then preachers are accommodating the gospel to the culture rather than helping people evaluate the culture with the gospel. In point of fact, the forms of contemporary popular culture, with their emphasis on the new and the now, cannot sustain a message of a God who judges, of a God who demands repentance and self-denial.

You can enjoy popular culture without compromising your Biblical principles as long as you are not dominated by the sensibilities of pop culture, as long as you are not captivated by its idols (Myers 1989, 180). But this enjoyment requires awareness of the moral and intellectual pick-pocketing going on during entertainment encounters.

Parents have a great obligation to establish a cultural sensibility in their children. Home life must be characterized by a culture of transcendence, that is, a culture whose central values of integrity, service, and cultivation arise from love for God and His Word, and love for our neighbor. We must teach our children that having fun is real work of a different sort, work of a cultural sort, the kind that reads between lines of poetry, looks beyond the canvas, listens above the music, and sees more than what the camera shows.

2. Avoiding the Poison of Abstraction←↰⤒🔗

A second suggestion I would offer is that we avoid the poison of abstraction. By this I mean that we simply cannot abstract an item of culture from its context for analysis with the Bible in hand. I am not saying that we cannot analyze our culture with the Bible in hand. Rather, that we cannot isolate from its cultural context, function, and place, any particular element or phenomenon.

For example, what is the Bible’s judgment about eating “on the run?” It would do us little good to pull out the concordance and do a Bible study on “meals.” We must analyze the role of the automobile and highways in modern society; we should know something of modern views of time and convenience; and we really need to think about the pressures relieved by fast-food restaurants and microwave cooking. Scriptural teachings about time and about stewardship will get us further, because now we are incorporating this single element into a cultural matrix or set of relationships.

We must observe, and draw necessary implications from, the fact that young people never go to see movies. A young person goes to see a particular movie. This means that a certain young person, with his or her emotional, intellectual, and religious abilities, sees a particular movie, which communicates a specific worldview able to be evaluated by objective standards of truth and beauty in terms of its moral, economic, political, and cultural message.

The poison of abstraction belongs to a pattern of cultural analysis that has become all too familiar. Imagine studying the permissibility of dancing without considering the context of rock music. You grin? It’s been done. Developments in pop culture and advances in entertainment technology tend to be viewed as neutral, neither good nor bad, evaluated apart from the purposes they originally served. Little attention is given to the “message” embodied in the medium, to whether the values of a secular worldview are being preached. Especially prevalent is the refusal to analyze various contexts for encountering views of reality portrayed by the entertainment media.

Such abstraction is dangerous because nothing exists “as such” or “in itself.” What I mean is this: television “as such” doesn’t exist, so we cannot render a moral judgment about television “as such.” A movie “in itself” is a non-entity. Cultural products always come with a context, embodying values, making appeals, communicating messages. Evaluation of cultural products, therefore, must deal with this entire context.

3. Arming our Youth through Guided Confrontation with Culture←↰⤒🔗

The problems we face in terms of what popular culture presents to us are similar to those faced in the Christian school classroom when teachers introduce students to certain books that present a non-Christian, perhaps even an anti-Christian, worldview and message.

You might be asking: Is there not a danger of bringing the world inside the school, by permitting students to read such literature? Is there not a danger of bringing the world into our homes by having a television? Yes, there is that danger. But there is also the possibility for students in school and children at home learning how to interact Biblically with the culture of the modern world. And that opportunity arises with guided confrontation.¹³

By guided confrontation, we refer especially to teachers guiding students in their confrontation with texts or images that conflict with what is legitimate within their own Bible-formed worldview.

Confronting students with slices of life that are evaluated in terms of Biblical principles and the Christian worldview must be designed to make the antithesis visible and to demonstrate the conquering, liberating power of the truth in terms of modern culture.

Such formative guided confrontation is a blessing in a day such as ours, when our children and young people encounter numerous pressures and experiences that we, their parents and grandparents, never encountered.

But this guided confrontation must then deal honestly with cultural expressions that violate more than the seventh or the third commandments. There are many forms of blasphemy and profanity that are not four-letter words! There are all kinds of infidelity just as sinful as sexual promiscuity. Books and films communicating a non-Christian message are like aspirin pills. The pills are good for some things. Some non-Christian authors use language very well, and their work can provide a mirror of modern life, even modern empty life. But aspirin pills that are good for “something” can also be deadly if little children ingest them, or if grown children fail to read the instructions for using them. ¹⁴ The dosage level of guided confrontation is important as well. Children don’t need very much; collegians can deal with more. But in any dosage, the aim is to arm our children and young people for the battle out there known as the Christian life.

Our youth need guided confrontation that fulfils two purposes. First, they must be helped to discern and identify the messages being communicated by pop culture.

Let me tell it in parable form.

One night I went to the heart of downtown to do a study of human nature. You can imagine the scene: neon lights flashing their messages, doors squeaking open and slamming shut somewhere in the dark of night, sirens in the distance. I stood for a time in the shadows, out of range of the streetlight, yet close enough to see a group of young people walking down the street, laughing, joking, jostling one another. In the group was this lad, slender, mild mannered, soft features, but obviously a “babe in the woods.”

At one point I noticed that the lad had separated from the group. They had gone on down the street, while he had turned the corner, and had fallen into conversation with a prostitute. I began to watch more carefully, straining my ears to hear the conversation.

I could hear her loud and bawdy slurs, her lewd yet disarming invitation to join her in the bed she had prepared for her next customer. She assured the lad, who by this time had gotten control of his nerves and his curiosity, assured him that her pimp had left town for the night, so he need not fear getting rousted from his sexual pleasure.

As I said, he was a “babe in the woods.” He followed her like a dog follows its mistress, eyes down, shoulders stooped, like a prisoner going to his punishment. So stupid was this kid that he didn’t know his folly would cost him his life.

Incidentally, you’ll find the real story and its warning in Proverbs 7:1-23.

Why do we need guided confrontation with the messages of pop culture? Simply because our youth are babes in the woods, and because we’re losing these undiscerning, unsuspecting, unprepared youth by the hundreds to the whores of modernity.

But a second, equally important function of guided confrontation is to equip them with the answer and the power of the gospel. Pop culture screams, “Self!”; the gospel answers: service. Pop culture sings, “Now!”; the gospel says: later. Pop culture whispers, “Enjoy!”; the gospel says: obey.

I emphasize that both functions of guided confrontation are essential, even correlative. Without explaining the messages of modern culture, the gospel of Jesus Christ is irrelevant to daily living. Without equipping with the answers and power of God’s Word, the gospel is impotent for daily living.

We may hesitate to adopt this approach because of the problems we have faced in North America, where religious cultural confrontation has given way to cultural accommodation. What began as antithetical confrontation of modern culture, armed with a Biblical worldview, appears to have mutated into full-blown capitulation to modern culture. Within evangelicalism today, the rules of cultural engagement are changing radically. Pluralism is the watchword; access to the public square is the prize; the respect of intellectual peers is the pathway to “influence.”

But in my judgment, the seductive attraction of the media and forms of entertainment can be curbed, if not disarmed, by demythologizing the media and pop culture. Rather than limiting our critique to pop culture’s exploitation of sex, violence, and profanity, we need to expose the spirits of modern society and the way popular culture sells them.¹⁵ Most believers are not equipped to analyze and evaluate the modes and messages of popular culture with a Christian apologetic and worldview. We must begin by raising the level of doctrinal literacy within the church, by building within church members this Christian worldview, and then go further to apply that worldview to issues of contemporary culture. We who are preachers, parents, and teachers need to go beyond moaning and groaning about the competition pop culture is giving us, competing for the heads and hearts of our youth. Let’s fill their heads and hearts with a vision of the Christian life in contemporary society that is antithetical, yes, but delightful too. Address from the pulpits and in the classrooms the implications of living in the television age.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

Christians live alongside non-Christians within an ever-changing culture, but they belong to another world, the kingdom that is coming. This means that, on the one hand, Christians must learn to sense the distance between themselves and non-Christians, while on the other hand, they must learn to understand their daily participation with non-Christians in the shared realities of culture.

As a citizen of two worlds, the believer will never really possess unimpeded enjoyment. The tedium and toil of work will be there, after the toys have been put away. But the glorious reality for Christians is that even in their leisure, even while they’re having fun, they are preparing and cultivating themselves for effective service in today’s world, a service whose fruits will last into eternity.