The Bible Vs. Popular Culture

Christian Parents Can Use Music, Movies, and Role Playing Games as Teaching Tools

Remember back in the day when even the mention of Christian rock music brought shudders to most adult Christians? and then there was a whole other group of Christian Fundamentalists who considered this music to be demonic. Their argument ran something like this: If you'd lived in the puritanical Fifties like we had, and you saw Elvis-the-Pelvis move like that, you'd have crossed yourself with holy water.

Given the times, I probably would have.

Now flash forward to the 21st Century . . . not only do singers like Amy Grant and Steven Curtis Chapman sell millions of CDs to the Christian market, their videos are shown in churches across North America as a regular feature! Has their music changes? not really. Christians have come to realize that artists can use a variety of talents to glorify God.

This is a different millenium. Every television two-minute-commercial-break, North America is spammed with sexually-explicit-cubed. Our animated-G-rated "children's" movies are seeded with adult comments once-per-minute, yet we're trying to raise a new generation of ambassadors from Heaven in this place? We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God was making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God (2nd Corinthians 5:20, (NIV)). Me-thinks that if there were a New-World to which we could all sail and start anew, most would be packin' even as I type.

But we're fresh outta' new worlds. We can no longer flee the Biblical command to be in the world but not of it. Since we're stuck here, what do Christian children think when we allow them to watch Cinderella, Snow White, and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, then curse Harry Potter? Why is Star Wars okay, but Isaac Asimov bad, and why on earth do Christians file Role Playing Games in the same mental box as Ouija boards? With this kind of confusion, how will they be equipped to make proper distinctions when encountering the mysterious?