Christianity and Popular Culture Essay -- Religion God Jesus Papers

deliverymanianity and frequent Culture In his classic work Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr asserts that the relationship surrounded by earnest followers of Jesus Christ and human cultivation has been an stomach problem.1 How should believers who are disciplining themselves for the purpose of godliness (1 Tim. 47) relate to a world whose culture is dominated by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the cock-a-hoop pride of life (1 John 2 16)? Culture is Gods gift and trade union movement for human beings created in His image and likeness. At creation humanity select a cultural mandate from the sovereign Creator to have normal over the earth and to cultivate and keep it (Gen. 126, 28 215). But sins effects are total, and culturewhether high, popular, or folkhas been change thoroughly by rebellion, idolatry, and immorality. How, then, should Christians, who have been redeemed, not with perishable things like halcyon or silver . . . but with precious bloo d, as of a lamb, accurate and spotless, the blood of Christ (1 Pet. 118-19) live in relation to culture? According to Jesus in His high priestly prayer, believers are to be in the world but not of it (John 1711-16). But in what way? How do believers act in and interact with the crooked and obdurate generation (Phil. 215) that surrounds them and of which they are a part?This is not an user-friendly question, and yet the Church cannot avoid responding to it. Over the centuries, various Christian communities have developed alternative perspectives on this very influential Christ-culture connection. In the extreme, some(a) believers have advocated a complete rejection of culture (Anabaptists, fundamentalists), while others at the confrontation end of the ecclesiastical spectrum ... ...se two extremes. It serves as an alternative to both exercise and meaninglessness. It is an agency of common grace. Since TV manufactures audiences to sell products to, they cannot be manipulated as machines. They cannot be told that life is nihilistic. Rather, they must be entertained. So Jacobson sees a redemptive quality for popular culture as an antidote to the present cultural mess. His advice is strange Turn your TV back on. You will find things worth reflection and thinking about. He tells readers what to look for in a variety of programs, and hitherto shows how expressions of grace can be found in Bufy the Vampire Slayer.Notes1.H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York Harper and Row, Publishers, Harper Torchbooks, 1951), chap. 1.2.Richard J. Mouw, He Shines in All Thats amusement park Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 2001), p. 9.