One of my favorite parts about my job is the opportunity I have to communicate to large groups of students every week. I love teaching about God's word and connecting it to our lives.
I also really enjoy examining culture and how God is already engaging us through it. This blog focuses a lot on the cultural aspect but last night I had the opportunity to share that with our students as well.
If you've spent any amount of time with a teenager lately, then you know that they are a media-driven group. They ingest various forms of media all throughout the day. They love social media like Instagram and Snapchat but also consume vast amounts of traditional media like movies, music and television.
The problem with a lot of Christian teens, though, is that they don't think about the media they ingest. They don't think about the influence movies, music and television have on them. Every form of media attempts to communicate a message. If we don't unpack what message they're communicating, then we could end up blindly accepting it.
We need to think critically about media and culture if we hope to approach it in a God-honoring manner. Instead of just accepting the messages of One Direction and Bryan Singer, we need to analyze those messages. We need to see if the messages fall in line with God's will and desire for our lives. We need to make sure that those messages won't pull us away from the one who created culture in the first place.
I love culture and interacting with it. I think most forms of culture are redeemable and contain at least a sliver of God's truth. We just need to commit ourselves to the work of critically analyzing the culture with which we interact. We need to identify what is redeemable and keep that which isn't from pulling us away from God.
God created culture and it was good. Now he calls us to partner with him in its redemption.
What helps you think critically about the culture you consume?
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