If you are a Christian, it still might not apply to you. I wish it didn't apply to me, but I am regrettably susceptible to culture-creep, so it was an uncomfortable experience to write this post.
Actually, this blog pretty much wrote itself in one night several months ago after I experienced a particularly dark reminder of what I have been delivered from, followed by an overwhelming sense of the glorious relationship I have been saved for.
I have been actively NOT posting it ever since.
For one, I don't think it has the right tone. Too strident? Most likely. Too hard? Probably.
Secondly, I am a people-pleaser at heart. I like to be liked. I go all sleepless and weepy if I even think I smell a critical tone in an email, for goodness sake, so I don't tend to rush into crowded rooms and shout, "WAKE UP, YOU SELF-SATURATED SLEEPERS. YOU DRANK THE KOOL-AID. YOU'RE BEING POISONED BY YOUR OWN HAND. THROW IT OUT AND RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"
It just doesn't set well with one's friends to do that too often.
But ultimately I wonder if there is a way to scream a warning without actually...screaming a warning. So I'm doing it.
Please know that I am writing this as a gut-check reminder to myself that every act of my life is worship--either of God, or of something else.
"So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do ALL to the glory of God," says the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians.
Or as John Piper expounds, "sin is not just a list of harmful things (killing, stealing, etc.). Sin is leaving God out of account in the ordinary affairs of your life. Sin is anything you do that you don't do for the glory of God."
So let me ask you--
What if I wrote a song?
And it was the prettiest song in the history of songs? What if the notes melded together in the perfect marriage of beautiful and bittersweet, and the melody moved the hearts of everyone who heard it?
And then, what if I wrote into it a poem about the sweet satisfaction of drinking myself into a stupor and then going home and beating up my little girl?
And then I sang it to my adopted daughter?
What if I commissioned a perfectly exquisite marble statue of my neighbor's husband...
...at the exact moment when he succumbed to the sexual advances of his secretary?
And then presented it as a gift to his betrayed wife?
What if I discovered the most inspired piece of artwork ever to grace a canvas? And the technical skill and the use of color and shadow and boldness and nuance was universally acknowledged to have brought about the one painting that could make the Old Masters lay down their brushes and kneel at the artist's feet.
And it happened to be a painting of a terrorist beheading a child?
And I gave it to a Syrian refugee?
What would you think of me as a person?
What kind of horrible blog post is this anyway?
Just hear me out.
What if I insisted that I LOVED my daughter SO MUCH!
And my neighbor's wife too. Honest, I would do anything for her. She's so amazing. So selfless. With such a heart for her family.
And the Syrian refugee! Oh! She had absolutely captured my heart with her story, and I was committed to spending the rest of my life making her happy. I had heard that her whole family was killed by ISIS and that just moved me so much that I didn't even care about my own life any more. I just wanted to live for her.
And that is why I hung the gigantic, bloody reminder of her ultimate pain in her living room where she could be amazed by what a masterpiece it was.
Because it is just art.
Because it stands apart from real life as ethically neutral. Beyond judgement. Sophisticated. Inert. And thus, able to be appreciated in some sort of moral vacuum.
Ok. Now I am talking to Christians. And to myself as a Christ-follower.
So, what if I claimed to know Jesus? Not "know about Jesus" like the historical figure or a storybook character.
But KNOW Jesus. And love Him. Like a person. Like I know my daughter. And my neighbor. And my friends.
And by know, I mean, I understand them--what they love and hate. What makes them happy. What hurts them.
And by love I mean, my heart is for them, toward them. Protective of them. Anxious to please them. Made sad by what makes them sad. Made joyful by what brings them joy.
And let's say this person, Jesus--this real, living, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-loving, sentient being--is with me all the time. Let's say we are supposed to be best friends. Let's say He proves it to ME every day.
And lets say that He is mortally offended by certain things. Literally.
Like they caused him to actually have to leave heaven and sinless perfection and perfect communion with His father, and DIE.
And I know this.
But then, whenever the mood strikes me, I proceed to trot out a hit parade of everything that is most painful and repugnant to Him.
Everything that distorts what He has made, and mangles His designs.
Everything that was responsible for putting real nails through his real flesh and causing His real Father to turn His face away and abandon Him to real evil.
I want to ask you a real question, fellow Christian.
How is that not like hanging a picture of Hitler in the home of a holocaust survivor?
Or putting together a slide show of her crime scene photos for a rape victim?
How can I stand before a Holy God and sing:
The club isn't the best place to find a lover
So the bar is where I go
Me and my friends at the table doing shots
Drinking fast and then we talk slow
Come over and start up a conversation with just me
And trust me I'll give it a chance now...
... I'm in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do
Although my heart is falling too
I'm in love with your body
And last night you were in my room
And now my bedsheets smell like you...
... One week in we let the story begin
We're going out on our first date
You and me are thrifty, so go all you can eat
Fill up your bag and I fill up a plate... --"The Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran
--without so much as blushing at the affront?
I am sick and tired of hearing Christians say that art and music and movies and books are elevated forms of expression that do not have to bow the knee to Anyone or anything.
"Get your legalism off my Deadpool."
"Keep your moralizing out of my Grand Theft Auto."
"Let me sing my sex-saturated songs and read my horror-soaked books and laugh at the comedization of all manners of perversity in movies and television."
And then say my choices are exempt from scrutiny or judgment because, after all, it's all art and entertainment. And we are grown ups.
Well.
The only thing in the universe that does not have to bow to the standards of a Holy God is...God.
So, if art is exempt from the same kind of stringent, ruthless, critical, love-driven analysis that everything else in a Christian's life is supposed to undergo, then I guess that would make "art"..."God".
And what does that make God?
And what are we really worshiping?
I can no more enjoy the glamorization of adultery or fornication in a movie (or a song or a painting or a sculpture or a book) than I could laugh over a comedy about child abuse or a comic book about ISIS.
These things killed Someone I love, and because I love Him, I want to distance myself from everything that hurts His heart and my relationship with Him.
And it's not just Jesus I want to love and protect.
Lets talk about the people down here.
My childrens' birth moms bought the distorted vision of what their bodies and minds were worth from a culture that soft-pedaled evil. It was delivered via smooth pop and clever sitcoms and cheap novels and raunchy movies with happy endings. And smooth-tongued players satisfied their appetites with them and left them and their babies to fend for themselves in a hungry world.
These women bought it all for cheap and it destroyed them and almost destroyed their children.
I cannot wink at the carnage that sin has wreaked in the lives of the ones that I love.
If something is "not that bad" then why did hurt my babies and their mamas?
Why did Jesus have to die over it?
If it IS that bad, then how can we justify listening to it, watching it, or reading it for amusement?
Ever.
No matter how pretty or funny or entertaining or clever it is?
Just because there might be a jewel of truth buried in a mountain of lies, doesn't mean I am going to waste my life chopping through worthless rock looking for it.
Especially when there is a mountain of treasure for the taking right behind me. (James 1:17, Ephesians 2:3-5)
And just because there might be a chocolate Whopper in the rabbit pellets, doesn't mean I'm going to suck on them until I find one.
Particularly when there is a banquet full of every good thing already laid out for me. (Philippians 4:8, Psalm 84:11)
Call me a legalist. Call me weak. Call me judgmental. Call me anything you want. As a person who loves art, I have struggled as much as anyone with wanting to give myself to the appreciation of creativity--even when it is corrupted by smatterings of things which God, in His word, has called evil.
But I live before His face, in His presence, for His glory, by His power. I killed Him once.
But He forgave me and took me into His family and gave me a hope and a future.
And nothing I might see or hear here is worth compromising the sweetness of His pleasure ever again.
*************
Philippians 3:7-10
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
