Second time around...with some bits of freedom

I've been informed lately that people have actually begun reading this, consequently it behooves me to add some actual thoughts rather than random "follow up" notes post Sunday.  So this is my blog in a 2.0 release with additional furor devoted to making regular updates. 

The last few months have been productive in the way that I've begun to make mental notes of things to blog ABOUT...and apparently for those of you who are reading this I'll hopefully post something that will at SOME POINT illicit an actual response.  Here goes:

I'm finishing up Mark Driscoll's first book Radical Reformission, and I thoroughly enjoyed this section:

garbage in, garbage out

As a college freshman and a new Christian in the early 1990s, = had a Christian buddy tell me to throw all of my "secular" music out and get new "Christian" music. He reasoned that if I listened :0 non-Christian music, it would shape my mind and cause me to =:nd up living like a non-Christian. While I doubted that listening :0 the Cure would compel me to wear eye shadow, I acquiesced ~d threw out all my CDs. I then bought "Christian" music that I .:.did not like but tried to enjoy because I was told it was good for me, like cauliflower. I remember visiting my parents on a holiday once when someone (likely the teenage pothead miscreants from the neighborhood) broke into my 1969 Chevy truck and stole all of my Christian music. To this day I still crack a crooked smile every time I picture the look that must have come over the kids faces when they popped my Keith Green, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Maranatha worship tapes into their stereo.

When the insurance money finally showed up and I had to replace my music, I was torn between buying the "secular" music that I enjoyed and the "Christian" music that I did not. After much prayer, I decided that God loved me and allowed my music to be stolen so that I could buy back the old albums that I enjoyed. And so I did, and as the pastor of a church filled with "secular bands that hosts "secular" concerts, I have not had a regret since.

Meanwhile, my buddy's theology of "garbage in, garbage out remains quite popular but has numerous flaws. First, there is no such thing as a pure culture untainted by sin and sinners, includ­ing Christian entertainment, which has had its share of scan­dalous behavior. Second, it is uncertain what distinguishes clear. "Christian" and unclean "secular" entertainment forms and why Bibleman is so much better than Spiderman. Third, "garbage in garbage out" theology assumes that if Christians see and hear sin up close, they will want to participate in it. But the fact is that sin looks good only from a distance; the closer you get to it, the more clearly you see it, the more sickening it becomes. Though I grew up in a neighborhood filled with drug use, I have never tried drugs in any form because seeing strung-out junkies walking around shaking and talking to themselves while going to the bath­room in their pants was more than enough to convince me that drugs are in no way fun or enjoyable.

Reformission requires discernment by God's people to filter all of the cultures they encounter, Christian and non-Christian going to seminary at the grocery store through a biblical and theological grid in order to cling to that '.which is good and reject that which is evil. As we engage culture, 'we must watch films, listen to music, read books, watch television, hop at stores, and engage in other activities as theologians and missionaries filled with wisdom and discernment, seeking to better grasp life in our Mars Hill. We do this so we can begin the transforming work of the gospel in our culture.