In talking about Christ and pop culture, we should always remember the basic options. Among them would be a basic distinction that appears to be beyond many afficianados of pop culture. It is this: you are either persuading or being persuaded. And watching evangelical Christians try to act like a “Christian worldview” is an all-purpose Lysol disinfectant is an exercise in watching evangelical Christians getting themselves persuaded, like Lot in Sodom.
There is something pathetic about how many Christians try to relate to the worldliness and supposed urbanity of pop culture. Many of the Church’s current problems in doctrine, ethics, theology, philosophy, and cultural analysis really amount to this — a deep ache for respect from the world. And the way people try to get respect when they have this problem is through fawning and flattery.
Say they want to review a movie — as Christians they have to do something about the crud in the movie, but in order to prove their sophistication to some mysterious but unnamed observer they have to act nonchalant about the grime in the movie. This means they can mention it, but only in passing, and only if they act like they disapprove of it only because they are Bored with it and Above It All. This is how Christians act when they are hungry for the world’s respect.
But if I were a restaurant critic, and somebody brought me a salad with some slugs, weevils and caterpillars in it, I would not write a review that commented on how 93% of the salad was outstanding, and how this restaurant is still where all the important people eat. I wouldn’t know what 93% of the salad was like because after the first caterpillar I would not have eaten any more of it. And I would not have written about the critters in there with anything that looked like I was trying to put this particular dining-out fiasco in a positive light: “The whole salad was organic.” “A realistic portrayal of what life in a garden is really like.” “Stark. Riveting.”
But mark it well. The problem is not that we have too many Christians with a thorough-going Christian worldview watching godless movies. The problem is that we have too few. But if we had more genuinely biblical reviewers, we would have far more savage reviews. Christian reviewers who can wade through the sewage that they generally watch — without declaring war on virtually the whole enterprise — are reviewers who are in the slow, certain, sure process of getting themselves domesticated. And once domesticated, all the worldview critics can move to Christian Worldview Kennels, right outside Hollywood, with a full bowl every morning.