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Focus on Christian Culture: The Series Introduction

Today the Church comes up against a bevy of problems. As a community, we are experiencing the large scale overshadowing of our doctrine and fundamental principles by the influence of the world. This is revealing itself in various shades of pharisaism and liberalism, and there seems to be a special blend of the two that each community within the Church must fight against. We are also battling against forces that seek to destroy Christians or anything even associated with us or our values. Naturally, then, we must triage by setting aside the role of the Church in the arts and design in order to focus on the delivery of doctrine, right? After all, it does not matter what the aesthetic or artistic values of Christian art or design are as long as the correct message is appropriately conveyed by the creator and received by the audience.

            Actually, this is dangerous thinking. Beauty and creativity actually matter. People of all tastes in art and design, as well as all ideologies, tend to flock to whatever satiates their craving for these things. The Church has a strong opportunity here to minister to various audiences by earnestly creating works that are Scriptural, beautiful, and creative. The problem is that the Church has had a largely mixed approach to this over the last century after being, for the most part, heavily involved in the creative and artistic elements of wider culture. This is especially problematic because of the drastic changes in the spreading and adoption of culture. Culture has become nearly completely globalized due to the mass availability of multiple recorded media (paper, film, audio, digital), quick and easy transportation, radio waves, and the internet. The rise in fundamentalism in the United States saw certain members of the Church rousing fear and contempt of the arts and design. The most loathed of the arts have been music, storytelling, and decorative ornamentation- the most commonly referenced art forms in the Bible. At a time when American art became the most prominent in the world, the American Church decided to withdraw from art and design and focus exclusively on creations that were edifying and educational without an emphasis on beauty or creativity. Even as Christians have sought to amp up cultural relevance through the formation of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and the creation of popular literature and movies, the efforts have largely fallen flat due to a stronger urge to emulate trends in the larger culture than on originality. Original Christian artists and designers exist, but they have clearly had difficulty being promoted in Christian culture over the years, as the most successful creators have largely been emulators of secular makers. The overall impact reduced evangelical impact and permitted widespread ignorance of what Christianity, Christ Jesus, and Christians even are to begin with.

            Throughout this multipart series Focus on Christian Culture, I will explore the present nature of Christian art and design, how we got to this point, what the impact is, and what we can do moving forward as a Church.

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New Testament Scripture Notes Theology

Notes on the Samaritan Woman

The time when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan Woman at the well, described in John 4: 1-42, is one of the most significant acts of evangelism in the Gospels. The Samaritan Woman, being of her background, was not someone who a Jew such as Jesus would speak to at all, so Jesus’s choice to speak to her was puzzling to her. It also turns out that she had been married five times and lived with a man who she wasn’t married to, but she was the first one Jesus chose to minister to in Sychar, Samaria.

            It is only on the surface that the Samaritan Woman would be a strange person for Jesus to evangelize to this way. She was effectively chosen to usher fellow Samaritans to listen to Jesus, and many believed. What stood out about her was that she loved truth. She kept wanting Jesus to explain what he told her. When Jesus told her about her embarrassing life history, she took it in stride, decided that Jesus must have been a prophet, and sought out more wisdom from him.

            What is most telling is that, when Jesus explained that it was time for people to worship God, not at any specific location, but in Spirit and truth, the Samaritan Woman immediately mentioned that the Messiah would reveal the truth. This would have been considered an extreme jump in logic in the respectable circles of the Jews. What Jesus explained, however, resonated with her anticipation of the Messiah and who he would be even if she did lack the full picture. She was truly ready to receive Jesus as Messiah and Lord because she was willing to worship God the way he wants to be worshiped. This is why Jesus chose to announce to her that he is the Messiah.

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New Testament Scripture Notes Theology

Notes on the Two Miracles of Mark 5:21-43 and Faith

Jesus made many miracles occur, as is seen throughout the Gospels. Some of the most memorable ones are in Mark 5. The first miracle is that of the possessed man being completely healed by Jesus after he drove all the demons afflicting the man into a herd of pigs. As important as that miracle is, it is a good idea to pay good focus to the latter miracles described in the chapter, as well as why they are written about as they are.

            First, a synagogue leader named Jairus begged Jesus to heal his dying daughter. Jesus ascents and follows Jairus to his house. Before he can get there, however, a woman described as bleeding for twelve years touched Jesus’s cloak with faith she would be healed and immediately the bleeding stopped. Jesus noticed that someone touched his garment and, when the woman confessed to it, he blessed her and declared that her faith healed her. By that time Jairus’s daughter had died, but Jesus went to Jairus’s house anyways. Jesus stated that the girl was not dead but asleep and was laughed at by the mourners. Jesus then healed Jairus’s daughter.

            It is clear that Jesus performed many miracles, often in close sequence. But these two miracles that happened one after the other needed to be recorded in order to reveal a little about how God works. The first thing of note is that God is no respecter of persons, and the reasons why he shows favor have nothing to do with human standards. Galatians 3:28 says of believers, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Faith in Christ Jesus is the qualifier for being in Christ Jesus. We see two vastly different people approaching Christ in faith. The first is Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. He was a man and of great religious authority. He would have been perceived as spiritually superior to most in the community. The second person is a woman, typically deemed inferior in both ancient Jewish culture and the Roman Empire. On top of it, she suffered from a health condition that was presumably constant menstrual bleeding when a female was considered unclean when she simply had her period. She would have been considered constantly unclean. She also became broke seeking ineffective medical treatments in a time when women lacked means of supporting themselves. Both Jairus and the bleeding woman had faith in Jesus. There was nothing against either Jairus as a powerful individual or the woman who bled as an outcast, nor were these features what commended them in the sight of Jesus. Their faith made them equally blessed in the eyes of God.                                              

We also see something important in terms of timing. Jesus certainly knew that he would heal both the woman who bled and Jairus’s daughter, but in the time that Jesus healed the bleeding woman, Jairus’s daughter died. The woman who bled would have seemed impossible to heal already, and Jesus’s power had to be displayed through this seeming impossibility. Jairus’s daughter was supposed to be healed once she was deemed impossible to heal. The most important thing was that it needed to be obvious that Jesus was responsible for the miracles by working in time frames that served as ultimate signs of faith on the part of those who believed in him.

            The woman who bled suffered twelve years of a brutal health condition and was healed. The daughter of Jairus was twelve years old- she was at the cusp of womanhood in her time in history- and died. These miracles occurred back to back to display the variety of believers in Christ Jesus and the different and equally valid ways and timetables God chooses to work miracles for those who love him. But as proven by these acts of Christ Jesus, as well as others recorded in the Bible, God is fond of working miracles at the cross section of the unlikelihood or seeming impossibility of the situation and absolute faith in Christ Jesus.

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New Testament Scripture Notes Theology

Notes on 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

There are truly only a few things that can garner true influence in society: money- and with it, belongings, the right personal connections, and wisdom. Wisdom, perhaps, comes the closest to any sort of egalitarian standard for granting power. It comes with a respect that money cannot buy and connections cannot produce.

            It is worth noting that there are limitations to wisdom as a threshold for influence in the world. This is because perceived wisdom and actual wisdom are two different things. Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians a few times, but in chapter 1 verses 18-31, he describes Christ and worldly wisdom to be diametrically opposed when he says in 1 Corinthians 1:18-19, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’” (New International Version)

            In order to be wise in actuality, one is required to understand what is not only true but what is most important as truth. That which is at the top of the hierarchy of truth must be understood first before anything else can be understood if one seeks to be considered wise. It is not necessarily knowledge, but the discernment of what actually matters, that determines wisdom. This is precisely why, as Paul says in verse 27, “…God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.” (NIV) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but worldly wisdom grows pride, thus insuring that wisdom cannot develop. The root of actual wisdom is the acceptance that one can do nothing to be righteous, but that Christ died so that you can be righteous before him. Worldly wisdom is dedicated to seeking out solutions for becoming righteous by one’s own efforts. Because of the intrinsic pride of worldly wisdom in this way, it happens that actual wisdom will automatically register as being illogical to those with a pride block preventing them from seeing reality. But those who have not had much to boast in at all, and those who have seen the underbelly of the human experience, are far less likely to have a pride block than those who have been exalted among humans for wisdom. This makes it much easier for them to choose the actual wisdom of the gospel. When Christ said, “[…] it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle that for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” as recorded in Matthew 19:24, we understand that whatever will make one prideful will be a serious stumbling block that can prevent people from receiving Christ. (NIV) Wisdom and wealth are both things that lead people to be exalted in their own eyes and those of others. It is much more difficult to sacrifice pride when one has been exalted than to give up pride when one has nothing else to lose. So this is how the truly wise have accepted Christ and how those who are wise among the worldly have not.

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Propaganda

Theory of Ascending Values Subordination

Cultural propaganda is that which seeks to influence people in nonideological ways. It is almost always marked by sources of propaganda making anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, and anti-cultural conformist content while at the same time exerting pressure in favor of nonideological conformity in various types of consumption- physical, artistic, etc. It is certainly a test for the ability for the consumer to be manipulated by the propagandist, but how do we know what the spectrum between the cultural and ideological looks like and where the dividing line hits? How do we truly know that this is what is going on instead of simple hypocrisy on the part of propagandists who want money for themselves but not for us?

            Propagandists have a few key values. The first is the urgent need to manipulate, and the second is to ensure you never know you’ve been manipulated by them. They will utilize a variety of tactics for this, but the most important are peer pressure and shaming. Those who resist cultural propaganda are heavier targets of the manipulating actions than others. It is through the tactics used towards these people where we see the hairline cracks in the ability of the propagandist to be covert in his intentions while exerting the appropriate level of pressure for the situation.                                                                                                                                      This is where the theory of ascending values subordination comes into play. Those who are unwilling or unable to submit to the conformity demanded by the propagandists are those who are subordinate. The closer the thing promoted in cultural propaganda is to the ideological end of the spectrum, the more important it is to ensure as many people comply as possible. As the propaganda inches closer to the ideological edge of the spectrum, propagandists are more or less forced to choose between emphasizing either urgency or subtlety. Because the propagandist is fully dedicated to his cause, the former almost always must trump the latter.

            Language will almost always determine where the thing promoted in cultural propaganda is on the ideological spectrum. It can be difficult to tell the difference between the more and less urgent matters among the various things the masses are told to be obsessed with, as bombastic language and peer pressure is always utilized. That is, if it weren’t for shame. Those who have been subordinate will typically be considered one or more of the following things: out of touch, uncultured, stupid, unfeeling, or evil. The more propagandist value there is to something, the more those who resist it will be shamed. If this appears in circumstances that appear to be completely nonideological, then you have hit upon a propagandist being able to successfully conceal the ideological nature of his work. However, most of the time the ties will become more obvious the more closely you observe what is going on.       

          For example, when a certain novel that has been published only in the last year or two winds up on lists with titles like “Novels you must read before you die” and the like, understand that this novel is almost certainly sub-propaganda. If you are considered uneducated or closed-minded for reading such a new novel, this is definitely a high value piece of sub-propaganda, and those who do not read it must be shamed by the propagandists until they comply.

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Theology

An Introduction to Truth Blocking

Christianity reflects truth. Honest seekers of truth without spiritual blocking must ascent to this fact. Part of the warfare against the Church therefore is funneling falsehoods into religious practice and doctrine. This phenomenon builds a couple of stumbling blocks. The first of these is to mislead those in the Church into being absolutely convicted that a falsehood reflects absolute reality and what it means to serve Christ. The second of these is to dissuade open seekers of the truth when it is clear that there are inconsistencies, that there is something deeply wrong in what they are told is the genuine expression of the Christian life.              

             These stumbling blocks explain precisely what is wrong in the West concerning religion. In particular it is why so many Westerners say that they like Jesus but hate Christianity and the hypocrisy they associate it with. The Bible says multiple times that all fall short of the goodness of God, that no one can earn salvation, and that the sanctification of the saved is a process that requires endurance- you will still make mistakes but must keep pursuing righteousness. This is poorly conveyed to people in the Church, let alone outside of it, so there is simply no context for why people in the Church are able to be hypocrites. Nor is there explanation on the reality of false believers who go into the Church to wreak havoc. The acknowledgment of false believers is in fact almost nonexistent. The key exception to this is to be found in the charismatic wing of the Church and this is not a coincidence. How you view the spiritual realm and its connection to your world will determine what precisely you think of spiritual warfare, if you think much of it at all.                                                                                                                                         In addition, it is the consequence of one particular stumbling block, which is the widespread illiteracy of the Bible. It is difficult to have important conversations across the Church as well because the languages and contexts of Christianity are far too wide ranging. Some of this cannot be helped temporarily. 1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “For now we only see a 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.” (NIV) This is why salvation is by the grace of God alone- we cannot possibly have full understanding in our present state, therefore we will sometimes err. But there is also the issue of knowing what is in the Bible. It would be scandalous how unfamiliar Christians were with the Bible if more people cared. Misapplication of scripture is the twin stumbling block of Biblical ignorance with its own whole history and contemporary presence.

            There are three key weapons against truth blocking: knowledge, honesty, and love. Christians must read the Bible and seek to understand what they are reading, meaning that substantial prayer must be considered a part of studying Scripture. Christians must seek to emulate Christ. In particular, they need to emulate the love and honesty of Christ, not only because these are important in and of themselves but because the main accusations against Christians are that they are dishonest, hypocritical, and unloving. These accusations are used as weapons to convince Christians to stray as well. So, the war on truth blocking is not only a war of apologetics, but of discipleship as well.

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Propaganda

Cultural Propaganda: An Introduction

Saying that propaganda is necessary for the elites to function is putting it mildly. The thing is, in order for propaganda to be effective, it must be holistic. It can be tricky to convince people on ideological matters because they are weighty to most. Even the primary forms of sub-propaganda, or material conditioning the audience to accept certain premises, is not enough because it is often too obvious.

            This is where cultural propaganda comes in. It applies to areas that appear to have no ideological function- what to wear, what to eat, etc.- on the surface. It is the mechanism by which acceptability is tested, by which, I mean the ability to be influenced at proper cues and provide the right cues outwardly. The goal of propagandists is for the audience to have a Pavlovian response to their content. If the audience does not respond in the intended way in small matters, how can it respond in the desired way in great matters? Those who buck superficial trends, therefore showing a lack of appropriate assimilation to that which “everyone is doing” will inevitably be suspect as they are more likely to be resistant to ideological sub-propaganda without a shadow of a doubt.

            The primary tell for the use of cultural propaganda, as opposed to run of the mill consumerism, lies in surrounding messaging in the specific media in play. Specifically, these media tend to be anti-capitalistic and anti-consumerism in ideological content while promoting trends in other content. If a resource specifically is anti-capitalistic or anti-consumerism and has multiple articles dedicated to purchasing items on Amazon’s website, then the resource is definitely utilizing cultural propaganda as a litmus test.                     

For context, anti-capitalistic individuals complain that corporations are too powerful, that monopolies are allowed to run rampant, and that this is oppressive. They make an exception in judgement however for nearly every business in the United States that is actually monopolistic, namely Alphabet Incorporated- i.e. Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, because all of these businesses have engaged in power grabs against ordinary people. This makes the monopolies simpatico with all elitists, especially the openly anti-capitalistic.  So, keep an eye out for this sort of content spread. Elitists will be hypocritical in their hunt for wide stretching influence.

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Lectionary Based Notes Lent

Notes for the First Sunday in Lent

Today, Christians associate water with salvation and grace as we participate in baptism in order to be consecrated to God. However, water has not always had such happy connections in regard to God’s relationship to mankind. We are all familiar with the story of Noah. Humanity had become so disturbing that God decided to flood the entire earth. God spared Noah and his family by ordering the obedient Noah to build an ark in advance of the flood, as God deemed Noah righteous. We cannot be certain how many people were alive before the flood, but we know only eight people were spared- Noah, his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law. (Genesis 7:7) Once the flood had come and gone and the land had dried up, God made a covenant with Noah that he would not use a flood to destroy all life ever again, and that a rainbow would be the sign of this covenant.
Just because God did not destroy humanity through water or anything else, it did not mean that humanity had not descended into decay. However, God’s response was to send his son Jesus Christ to earth to save humanity through the sacrifice of his life. But before he began his earthly ministry, he was baptized by John the Baptist. And according to Mark 1:10-11, “Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Notably, the bird that Noah sent out from the ark to find evidence of dry land was a dove, which has come to signify peace. When Jesus had been baptized, the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove, displaying the covenant of peace between the Father and the Son, and later between God and the saints. It is through God that the meaning of water changes. According to 1 Peter:18-22, the great flood was the water by which Noah and his family were saved, and that this very water symbolizes the baptism that renders the saints pure before God. According to Galatians 3:27, “[…] all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” What we see here then is the covenant between God and Noah writ large. The covenant between God and the saints developed through the sacrifice of Jesus is one not only of salvation, but of peace. Just as when we are baptized, we put on the clothes of Christ, God the Father is well pleased with us when we are baptized as well. Baptism is symbolic of the transformation of the decaying circumstances of the world into a propellent of the grace of God and, ultimately, the eternal peace God will establish. As humanity was saved from physical decimation through a violent flood, humanity was saved from spiritual decimation through the violent death of Jesus Christ.

All scripture referenced from the New International Version (NIV) Translation.

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Epiphany Old Testament Scripture Notes

A Few Notes on Psalm 130

Psalm 130 has been used frequently in hymns in large part due to conveying the emotions of a penitent individual in a short yet depth filled text. Verse 1, which says, “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord,” implies a sense of drowning in sin so deep that only God is able to rescue the sinner. In addition, The repetition of the phrase, “more than watchmen wait for the morning,” in verse 6 shows the desperation for God’s forgiveness and the eagerness to be reconciled to him.
However, this also functions as a prophetic text, as it reveals God’s distinct nature that is shown more fully once Jesus lives on earth than in previous times. In verses 3-4, it is explained that God does not rule against us for our sins when given His gift of forgiveness. There is also the key understanding that without God’s forgiveness, all fall short of the glory of God, as verse 3 says, “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” Considering the hyper-focus on the law and deeds determining goodness that would develop among the Jews by the time Jesus began his ministry, it is interesting to see that the doctrine of grace already had seeds in Judaism that went largely unrecognized. In addition, verses 7-8 describe God as having unfailing love and deliverance from sin. Again, these are concepts that were largely forgotten by the time of Jesus’ arrival. Jesus would make these evident in his own time among us. 1 John 4:9-10 says, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” So Psalm 130 anticipates the revelation that it is impossible for mankind to make up for our sins and that God seeks to provide redemption through love.

*All verses cited are from the New International Version (NIV) translation of the Holy Bible.