So lately I’ve been thinking about the culture in our nation and world. Juxtapose Christian culture with our nation’s culture. Is there any difference? We are called to be holy as God is holy (cf. 1 Peter 1:15-16). To be holy means we are set apart for religious purposes. Personally, am I really set apart from the world and corporately are we set apart as a church? Now, I’m not claiming as a church we should all leave our present lives and join a cloister, renouncing every part of our lifestyle. But have we been so caught up in our culture and world that we don’t live for the gospel the way we should. Acts 2:42 records that the church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.” A few verses later it says that they gathered everyday for this. Where is such devotion today? Why does the church seem nearly (not entirely) void of living in this manner? I fear we’ve become merely cultural Christians. We go to church on Sunday, maybe even read our Bibles a few times during the week, thus fulfilling our duties to be “good Christians” but then we go and submerse our lives into a culture void of Christ and Christian morality. Engaging such a culture wouldn’t be a bad thing if we actually let the light of Christ shine in our lives, but we can be just as bad if not worse than those who don’t believe. We, Christians, do not act in love for God in our culture, we act according to the love of ourselves. Living a true love and reverence for God in daily life is what we need to do. If we started engaging everything we did according to our love for Jesus Christ, how would our lives change? What would we do different? What would we stop doing and remove because it doesn’t show God love? The issue in which this relates that I’ve been thinking about is how we entertain ourselves. The early church Fathers condemned what was to them modern entertainment—the Roman coliseums and theaters for their violence and immorality. Has entertainment changed any? Movies and T.V. shows are rated according to their violence and immorality. William Wilberforce has an interesting note to add “Much of the content of popular entertainment contains elements the Bible expressly forbids. Somehow, when it comes in the form of entertainment, we find it less offensive. In reality it is all the more dangerous. We often let our guard down when engaging in certain types of entertainment. I fear we have been conditioned to accept such things in much the same way that a frog learns to accept ever-warming water, until eventually it is boiled to death without even noticing the changes in temperature. Such is the influence of the entertainment industry in our time.” (Real Christianity. Revised and updated by Bob Beltz. 2006). How we spend our time, how we use our day, do the activities display a love for God or do they subtly feed and please our sinful nature?
There is possibly a middle position to this that I’m not certain about. Romans 14 speaks of strong and weak Christians referring to their strength in the faith. Could it be the case that stronger Christians are able to watch the violence, etc…, without its effect spiritually? Paul writes the Corinthians in his first letter to them saying “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial”. Maybe activities in life should be judged according to how beneficial they are to our’s or others’ lives?
With regard to the Roman colosseums, a key difference is that they killed real people while television shows are virtual. So then one would need to establish that virtual violence is wrong to watch. Our society today doesn’t watch real people get killed, at least the majority of people don’t. It seems clear that playing Grand Theft Auto isn’t morally equivalent to actually doing the things in real life. The question then is about virtual violence, where things aren’t so clear cut. In my case, if they did start showing shows on television where real people were getting killed, then I wouldn’t watch it. I remember in my Ethics class Dr Hubin gave a presentation on virtual sin, which was very interesting. Anyway those are hard cases.
Comment by Zach — May 22, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
The idea of anything virtual is that it is supposed to simulate the real thing. Claiming the void of sinful actions in virtual as opposed to real life places the morality of the issue in the real action as opposed to the idea of the action which leads is to Utilitarian vs Kantian understandings of morals. Now a porn flick is virtual reality of having sex, but we uphold that watching a porno is wrong morally. The reason being is that it stimulates our sexual drive in an unholy manor. Watching a person be murdered virtually doesn’t (very frequently at least) stimulate a person to have desires to murder, and so it would seem to be a different case. But when we see real life tragedies, i.e. a car crash, we don’t turn away, we watch attentively. There is something about the carnage that makes us look, that keeps our attention. Its this part of our nature that is attracted to carnage that virtual violence feeds. But I don’t know how to identify it, categorize it, deal with it, etc… Is it a part of our sinful nature that attracts us to watch violence and carnage? I don’t know, part of me says yes, part of me says “I still don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Comment by Miah — May 27, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Scission.
Comment by Scission — June 18, 2008 @ 8:09 pm