"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.
Ecce Homo I haven't done a quote from Pope Ratzinger's Introduction to Chistianty in a while and even though I have finished the book there are still one or two passages I want to share, including - perhaps even especially - this one. When I first began to look over what Christianity teaches, to look at the gospel story and to try penetrate why it has been so compelling to so many for so long, this was one of the things that leapt out at me. I was happy to see our Pope confirm it. Expanding on the Apostles Creed where it says "... suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried," Ratzinger writes: The fact that when the perfectly just man appeared he was crucified, delivered up by justice to death, tells us pitilessly who man is: Thou art such, man, that thou canst not bear the just man - that he who simply loves becomes a fool, a scourged criminal, an outcast. Thou art such because, unjust thyself, thou dost always need the injustice of the n...
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