Signs Of Life: Finding The Good, True & Beautiful In Popular Culture

by Josh Jackson and Nick Purdy

But keeping ourselves safe isn’t really supposed to be our highest priority. Our role as Christians isn’t to find some quiet, comfortable spot to hide from the rest of creation until God calls us home. We’re called to be salt and light in the world. And salt isn’t very effective—or tasty—by itself. We have to actually engage in the messy, dangerous world around us, and living in the developed world of the 21st century, pop culture is a part of that world. It’s as ubiquitous as the air we breathe.

LEARNING FROM CULTURE

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” —1 Corinthians 13:12

The sanitized approach to culture assumes that Christians have some sort of monopoly on truth, and—more preposterously—that we indeed understand all truth. If we approach culture with a presumption that we have nothing to learn from it, it’s natural that our efforts will only be able to keep out the bad stuff rather than to search in earnest for the good. Our priority will be to expose ourselves to media that’s “safe for the whole family,” rather than that which challenges us to understand and love our neighbor.

But when we start from a position of freedom, we recognize that every human still carries the image of God and we embrace the reality of His common grace—that God’s truth and goodness is made evident throughout his entire creation, even through people who don’t believe the Apostle’s Creed. A cursory glance at our culture reveals plenty that’s admirable and excellent and worthy of praise, from people with a variety of worldviews. Take a nearly perfect song like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as performed by Jeff Buckley in 1994. Neither individual held to the tenets of Christianity. But listen to the quiet, haunting first strums on electric guitar, then the lines:

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord,
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?
Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall and the major lift,
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.

Buckley’s voice rises into an immediate climax to be revisited and surpassed time and again during the next six minutes. It’s beautiful and strange and sad in its imagery, but it’s a hymn to the hymns, a celebration of celebration. Listening to it invariably becomes a prayer, and not because of the invocation of Biblical language. It’s full of melancholy and mystery and feels more like God’s presence than a dozen church worship songs.

Of course, oftentimes the goodness, truth and beauty are all mixed up with badness, lies and ugliness. So what then? Fortunately, God has provided us with the gift of discernment—a function of both the mind and the spirit. First, our critical faculties must remain fully engaged. We don’t simply welcome whatever comes across the transom; we develop a kind of cultural radar that enables us to recognize goodness, truth and beauty when we see it. We do this by reading Scripture, studying the humanities—literature, art, history, philosophy, logic—and through this intellectual development, we learn to separate the wheat from the chaff in arts and entertainment. You don’t need a liberal arts degree— but approaching pop culture with an active, critical mind is extremely helpful when it comes to exercising discernment as you choose what to consume and what not to consume.

But second, and more important, discernment is a spiritual discipline. As we soak ourselves in Scripture and prayer, welcoming in the Holy Spirit, our souls usually become increasingly sensitized to sin—and to goodness. This makes sense if we consider God’s word to be “living and active.” We’ve marveled at preachers who have the ability to pull devastating illustrations of Gospel truth out of wildly unexpected and disparate pieces of pop culture. One pastor managed to find the gospel in Das Boot—a film that grotesquely portrayed the filth, terror and claustrophobia on a WWII German U-boat—the children’s story of Raggedy Ann & Andy and The Blair Witch Project, all to great effect in a space of about six months. He had a gift for knowing the nuances of the story of creation/ fall/redemption so well as to be able to find its echoes, however faint or strong, through the cultural creations of our modern society.

An R-rated movie like Fight Club is by no means a “Christian” film, but nonetheless displays deep understandings of the sin that resides within us and does a masterful job of showing the audience the seamy underbelly of consumerism (a sin we Americans tend to ignore). The message of the movie is certainly good. And it proclaims a universal truth—that selfishness is bad.

Watching Fight Club or listening to Jeff Buckley, the reason for wanting to discover signs of life in culture seem self-evident. One of the miracles of the human experience is our capacity for originality. We’re made in the image of our Creator and we’re made to enjoy the wonders of creation. Our creations are also extensions of His and can give us insight into His divine attributes. Sometimes the creation of our fellow fallen humans arguably surpasses that of God’s natural creation: a Monet more interesting than a pond; a Frank Lloyd Wright house more dazzling than a cavern; the statue of David more majestic than a slab of marble; and “Hallelujah” more beautiful than a songbird. Each of these human masterpieces brings glory to the Creator.

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Comments

Bryant Owens

Goodness, truth, and beauty are all divinely created attributes originating in God. Subsequently ANY evidence of goodness, truth, and beauty in human culture will reflect God's image simply because He is by His nature, good, true, and beautiful.

These ideas did not originate in Greek philosophy. Their source originated with God, and thus are uniquely Christian.

Even in Hinduism, Buddism, or Marxism, what is considered good, true, or beautiful originated with the one true creator God of all creation and is thus solely Christian.

What is expressed in any art form, whether distinctly Christian or blatantly anti-Christian, will reflect what God created...goodness, truth, and beauty. Only he will receive the glory.

Martin Tampier

Very enjoyable piece, and well written. I liked your perspective, and it's very necessary to clarify that good things can come from outside Christianity. Actually, so-called Christian art is often frowned upon because of its inferior quality. I don't even think there is such a thing as Christian art. It's art, and may carry a Christian message - or as you say, something that is truthful with a small 't'. Lots to explore still in terms of how to evaluate, incorporate and reject elements of popular culture. I hope you continue to contribute to this discussion!

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