Christianity and Popular Culture Essay -- Religion God Jesus Papers

rescuerianity and familiar Culture In his classic work Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr asserts that the relationship among earnest followers of Jesus Christ and human gloss has been an abide problem.1 How should believers who are disciplining themselves for the purpose of godliness (1 Tim. 47) relate to a world whose culture is dominated by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the cock-a-hoop pride of life (1 John 2 16)? Culture is Gods gift and p occasiontariat for human beings created in His image and likeness. At creation humanity fork over a cultural mandate from the sovereign Creator to have ruler over the earth and to cultivate and keep it (Gen. 126, 28 215). But sins effects are total, and culturewhether high, popular, or folkhas been misdirect thoroughly by rebellion, idolatry, and immorality. How, then, should Christians, who have been redeemed, not with perishable things like fortunate or silver . . . but with precious blood, as of a lamb, faultless and spotless, the blood of Christ (1 Pet. 118-19) live in relation to culture? According to Jesus in His high priestly prayer, believers are to be in the world but not of it (John 1711-16). But in what way? How do believers act in and interact with the crooked and intractable generation (Phil. 215) that surrounds them and of which they are a part?This is not an comfy question, and yet the Church cannot avoid responding to it. Over the centuries, various Christian communities have developed alternative perspectives on this very influential Christ-culture connection. In the extreme, any(prenominal) believers have advocated a complete rejection of culture (Anabaptists, fundamentalists), while others at the oppositeness end of the ecclesiastical spectrum ... ...se two extremes. It serves as an alternative to both role and meaninglessness. It is an agency of common grace. Since TV manufactures audiences to sell products to, they cannot be manipulated as machines. They c annot be told that life is nihilistic. Rather, they must be entertained. So Jacobson sees a redemptive role for popular culture as an antidote to the present cultural mess. His advice is unmatched Turn your TV back on. You will find things worth watch and thinking about. He tells readers what to look for in a variety of programs, and as yet shows how expressions of grace can be found in Bufy the Vampire Slayer.Notes1.H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York Harper and Row, Publishers, Harper Torchbooks, 1951), chap. 1.2.Richard J. Mouw, He Shines in All Thats middling Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 2001), p. 9.