I've heard people complain about how movies and television are full of immorality. Many Christians in particular are disgusted, and cite Psalm 101:3 ("I will set no vile thing before my eyes") as reason not to have cable, nor let their children see "R" rated movies. From listening to my elders, I have come to a realization: where media used to be a tool to reinforce common decency and morality, it is now more than ever an escape from reality--including moral behavior.
The operative word in media is fantasy. Fantasy, of course, has two common uses. The first use is in the sense of the term "fantasy violence," it's a grown-up way of saying "make-believe." The second use is to express a deep desire that someone imagines and dwells on but doesn't expect to live-out in reality.
When media becomes a means of escape (as opposed to mere entertainment), it fulfils both definitions.When someone watches a movie purely for entertainment, they engage in an act of make-believe. When someone watches a movie to escape their reality for a while, they engage in the second form of fantasy whereby they pretend to live out what they see. Rather than enjoying a story, the viewer lives vicariously through the characters and pretends to live another life, distant from what they know and experience on a daily basis.Media as escapism is not inherently bad. Everyone needs to get away for a while, and it's cheaper to go to the video store than it is to fly away on vacation. Where we get into trouble with escaping through media is when we escape to a world whose morality does not reflect reality. To the Christian, morality is best defined in God's Law, and especially in the Ten Commandments. Even an atheist sees the merit of morality and the value of the Ten Commandments as a moral document. Nevertheless, we find that morality is forsaken in many of today's story lines. We are left to question why this is.
While media have been used as propaganda for morality (yes, it is propaganda; no, propaganda is not always bad, despite the stigma surrounding the term), today's writers largely rely on society apart form media to enforce morality and use their stories to offer alternative realities. Where we used to look for the moral to the story, we now hope the immoral protagonist escapes the consequences of his or her actions and continues to live out our sinful fantasies. Whether art imitates life or life imitates art is a question for the philosophers, but when fantasy becomes reality, what will the world look like?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Of God and Concepts
God is a just God. God is also a God of love. Most people, Christian or otherwise, believe in these characteristics of God. We believe with good reason. Deuteronomy 32:4 says of God, "He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He." Likewise, 1 John 4:8 tells us that "God is love." As Christians, it is wise for us to consider what Scripture tells us on a deeper level than understanding at a glance.
God's justice is something we tend to minimize in the church, in my experience. I think a great summation of our view of God's justice is found in a Reliant K song, "The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair." We know that God's justice is tempered with mercy and grace. Mercy is not getting the evil you deserve, grace is getting the good that you don't deserve. Nonetheless, there are a couple of things we need to get straight about God's justice.
First, Psalm 7:11 says "God is a just judge, And God is angry with the wicked every day." It's 7:11 because it's always open for business. I've explored the fear of God recently, so I think I've laid enough groundwork to say that God is still going to have the final say, with justice, and leave it at that. Second, even though we believe in mercy and grace as well as God's justice, we still cry out to God that something "isn't fair." It is good that we bring our feelings to God, but it is wrong to hold something against Him in our own heart because somebody else gets what we want. How many times has God given you what someone else wanted? Chances are that the person who gets what you want doesn't know how it's affecting you, just as you probably have no clue how many people are affected by your getting what they want.
Let's take a look at God's love. This is the source of mercy and grace with which God's justice is tempered. Countless people have asked "if God is a loving God, then why do bad things happen?" This is a challenging question, not because it's so complicated (although I wouldn't claim that it isn't), but because our role in understanding the way God works is very simple.
I've heard a few preachers say that when Jesus was crucified, it was the nexus (the meeting point) of God's love and justice. Some go so far as to gesture that one crucified arm represents God's justice (usually the right hand, I think) and the other represents God's love. We can symbolically say (of the symbols just described) that God put justice and love on the cross. Why would I say that? Because it illustrates my main point: God is bigger than concepts.
We cry out that God isn't being fair, as if we could appeal to justice as something God Himself must bow to. We ask how God can be love and still let bad things happen. Hebrews 6:13 says "For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." If justice or love were bigger than God or above God, wouldn't He have sworn by them? But the scripture says "because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." God is God! Not justice, not even love, just God! Within Him, justice and love are in their completeness, yet God is still bigger than the both of them! Because He is God, everything He does is automatically right! God doesn't have to answer to anyone, least of all man, who was created in His image, and not the other way around! God isn't being fair? God invented fair! How can God love us and still allow evil? God is love, but love isn't God. He expresses the fullness of love to us in the cross of Jesus Christ, and there's still room in Him for other things! That's why the answer to the question "how can God love us and let bad things happen" is so hard; it's hard because it's simple. God is God, I am not, He can do as He pleases, and as harsh as it sounds, I should be thankful that He even gives me a hint that He might exist, let alone send His only Son to the Cross for the likes of me!
Read Isaiah 40. Read Job 38-42. Read all of those chapters, and think about them the next time you want to sit in judgement of God.
God's justice is something we tend to minimize in the church, in my experience. I think a great summation of our view of God's justice is found in a Reliant K song, "The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair." We know that God's justice is tempered with mercy and grace. Mercy is not getting the evil you deserve, grace is getting the good that you don't deserve. Nonetheless, there are a couple of things we need to get straight about God's justice.
First, Psalm 7:11 says "God is a just judge, And God is angry with the wicked every day." It's 7:11 because it's always open for business. I've explored the fear of God recently, so I think I've laid enough groundwork to say that God is still going to have the final say, with justice, and leave it at that. Second, even though we believe in mercy and grace as well as God's justice, we still cry out to God that something "isn't fair." It is good that we bring our feelings to God, but it is wrong to hold something against Him in our own heart because somebody else gets what we want. How many times has God given you what someone else wanted? Chances are that the person who gets what you want doesn't know how it's affecting you, just as you probably have no clue how many people are affected by your getting what they want.
Let's take a look at God's love. This is the source of mercy and grace with which God's justice is tempered. Countless people have asked "if God is a loving God, then why do bad things happen?" This is a challenging question, not because it's so complicated (although I wouldn't claim that it isn't), but because our role in understanding the way God works is very simple.
I've heard a few preachers say that when Jesus was crucified, it was the nexus (the meeting point) of God's love and justice. Some go so far as to gesture that one crucified arm represents God's justice (usually the right hand, I think) and the other represents God's love. We can symbolically say (of the symbols just described) that God put justice and love on the cross. Why would I say that? Because it illustrates my main point: God is bigger than concepts.
We cry out that God isn't being fair, as if we could appeal to justice as something God Himself must bow to. We ask how God can be love and still let bad things happen. Hebrews 6:13 says "For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." If justice or love were bigger than God or above God, wouldn't He have sworn by them? But the scripture says "because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." God is God! Not justice, not even love, just God! Within Him, justice and love are in their completeness, yet God is still bigger than the both of them! Because He is God, everything He does is automatically right! God doesn't have to answer to anyone, least of all man, who was created in His image, and not the other way around! God isn't being fair? God invented fair! How can God love us and still allow evil? God is love, but love isn't God. He expresses the fullness of love to us in the cross of Jesus Christ, and there's still room in Him for other things! That's why the answer to the question "how can God love us and let bad things happen" is so hard; it's hard because it's simple. God is God, I am not, He can do as He pleases, and as harsh as it sounds, I should be thankful that He even gives me a hint that He might exist, let alone send His only Son to the Cross for the likes of me!
Read Isaiah 40. Read Job 38-42. Read all of those chapters, and think about them the next time you want to sit in judgement of God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)