Churches Struggling with Christ and Culture

The other evening I was a little bored and found myself watching a move with Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan. It wasn’t a movie I typically watch or ever thought I would be interested in, it was just on as I did some other things.

This move, called First Sunday, was about a couple guys who have execute a half-baked plan to rob a church. As the story unfolded it became clear that this church was very typically in the middle of a controversy about involvement in its community. Some wanted to move into a safer community where they could be protected from the corrupting culture around them. Others wanted to stay in the neighborhood and reach out to it.

Christ and U23D

Today a friend and I went to see U23D. Being self-avowed U2 fans we had high expectations yet it was everything we could hope for. The 3D aspect of the movie was great. More than a couple times I found myself leaning over to better see the Edge since his microphone stand was in the way. There were times when I tried to move out of the glare of a spotlight only to remember that this was a movie, and I couldn’t do that. There were times when I wanted to start cheering with the concert audience but then I remembered that Brian and I were the only two people in the theater at 1:30 in the afternoon.

The Archaeology of the Jesus Tomb

When I was in college a frustrated roommate snapped at me, “You are cynical about everything but Jesus!” I’ve always taken that as a compliment. No wonder I rolled my eyes when I saw the commercial for the new “documentary” The Jesus Tomb.

After watching it last night, I think Newsweek summarized it best in an article they published last week. The article sums up the case for the Jesus Tomb in four arguments.

1. “recent Biblical scholarship argues that Mary Magdalene’s real name was Mariamene”
2. “DNA tests show that microscopic human remians scaped from the Jesus box and the Maramene boz are not related, at least not matrilineally, leaving open the two humans whose bones were once in those boxes were married.”
3. “The patina on the Talipot [Jesus' tomb] ossuaries… matches that of the James box.”
4. A statistical argument saying that it is too great of a cooincidence to find all these names (surrounding the story of Jesus) to not be the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.

Does this make this diffinitive proof that they found Jesus’ tomb and he did not rise from the dead? No.

My favorite Christian movies

Usually when people describe a movie as “Christian” it is produced by Evangelical Christians in order to promote a Christian agenda- an example of Christ Above Culture. For example, Facing the Giants, which was produced by a church in Georgia. I was surprised that I actually liked that movie (although it was rather “preachy” it really spoke to me).

The 10 Worst Movies about Jesus

The Wittenburg Door today posted an article about the 10 worst movies about Jesus. Boy are they bad. At least they give good examples of Christ of Culture for the way they each re-define Jesus in light of a current perspective.

Although these are bad these critiques are “easy.” I think that some of the more accepted movies about Jesus are equally insulting- not just because I am an iconoclast. Take, for instance, The Gospel of John. It features the actor who plays Desmond on Lost- which also ruined it for me. The worst part of this movie was that Jesus, like in many other movies, was stoic. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by anything or particularly happy about anything either.

Vatican scientist says belief in God and aliens is OK

I’m still not quite so sure what I think about this (or how I can fit this into the topics of my blog), but Yahoo! Odd News published an article where the Vatican approved believing in God as well as believing in aliens.

As a limited sci-fi fan (Star Wars and some Star Trek TNG) I have often thought about what the theological implications might be of the discovery of intelligent aliens creatures (somehow I am able to rationalize around non-intelligent life). Some say that CS Lewis has addressed this issue in his Space Trilogy but (only having read the first book) I think he is using sci-fi to prove his theological point with an allegory.

Christ and Mr. T

Here’s a funny take on the Christ and Culture discussion by earlbarnett.com. In it he uses pictures of Jesus (“Buddy Christ”, from one of my favorite movies- Dogma) and Mr. T to illustrate Niebuhr’s five positions of Christ and Culture.

Skywalker’s Last Supper

Two of my favorite things are Star Wars and Jesus (not in that order, and closely followed by Kansas Basketball). Here’s an example that combines both of them:

This is what you get when you capture 69,550 full resolution frames from the six Star Wars movies and combine them with a version of Da Vinci’s Last Supper on a PC with mosaic-making software and a custom matlab-based algorithm.

In celebration of Maundy Thursday, I offer this example of Christ of Culture.

Denzel Washington and Culture

It’s always difficult to find an example of an artist who might be characterized as Christ and Culture in Paradox. This is because eventhough they believe their faith does not directly influence their art. They live in two worlds at the same time- the world of their faith and the world of their art. They are a Christian artist only insofar as they are an artist who happens to be a Chrisitan.

The Summer of Christian Movies

This summer proves that Hollywood has learned something we’ve always known in the South- Jesus sells. There are tow summer blockbuster movies that are featuring Christian themes and stories: Evan Almighty and License to Wed.