ELBOW & ALBOW

The O'Nan Family Blog

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Positively Affecting Culture

Over the summer, I read a book by Bob Briner called Roaring Lambs. It was a quick read, but extremely challenging. He talked about the tendency among conservative Christians to criticize the culture and approach culture negatively. He gave an example of Christian organizations who spend huge budgets on screening movies and television shows, and then publicizing material to inform Christians how many times the actors used obscene language, how many times violence was portrayed, how many time sexual scenes were shown, etc. Briner's argument was that Christians are called to be salt and light - positively affecting the culture. Instead of spending money on listing all the sin portrayed in movies (as if we don't alreay know its there), why not put that money toward the type of movie we as Christians would like to see in the theater? Now I'm not talking about "rapture movies," movies that evangelize, or have an overtly Christian message. I am simply talking about good movies - such as The Lord of the Rings, Radio, etc. - movies that reflect Christian values of good conquering evil, of kindness toward the less fortunate, of men acting as the husbands and fathers they should be (such as in Cinderella Man). I agree with Briner that this method would be far more affective and would look quite a bit more similar to Jesus' idea of being salt and light. Any other ideas?

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