The Medium is the Message

"Be in the world, but not of the world." Johnny Dee makes the point in two posts, here and here, that Christians cannot simply adopt pop media styles and change the words in the hope of finding an easy way to get their message out. He's right about this. Most people I know, including me, find Christian pop music to be quite boring and not in the least inspirational. John's table is a quick look at how the medium alters the message. Anyone familiar with the work of Marshall McLuhan will recognize this theme and its truth right away. Christians must be willing to stand for their faith, both in its words and in its forms. When people tire of the pop experience, they will look for a truer, deeper, safer mental space, and we can and must be willing to provide it, although this is not an easy thing to do. We need to critique the pop world and stand tall in the face of the flak this will inevitably bring. The Catholic faith has a nice phrase for this - it says we need to be "in the world, but not of the world." We must be willing to stand apart, to resist the crowd and to speak the truth as best we can. That would be a powerful message, coherent in both content and form. The Christian pop approach is only a pale reflection (not pop, not Christian) and people seem to instinctively know it.