I try my best not to steal the content of other blogs when I write my posts, but today I read something that is worth stealing. In the academic community one can get around this by referencing the source, and so I give full and complete credit to Shaun Groves and the good people (or selfsame person) at Shlog for a great post this morning (maybe you should just read his and skip mine).
I truly enjoy Groves' posts, but today's was particularly relevent to me because it delved into the intellectual malaise of the Christian community. In his post he references Dick Staub, whom I admittedly know nothing about, and he links to an article written by Staub that brings up the Da Vinci controversy. It is a short article, and well worth the read, even if only because he quotes some of my favorite one-liners concerning educating Christians, which have been written by great men.
Our fear of culture must die if there is any hope of relevance within said culture. A professor in college used to hammer me with these words, "You must engage the philosophers using their own terms." He was referring to my weak attempts to interpret Plato and Heidegger, trying to teach me to adopt their own language. Plato's demiurge is not the same of Israel's God, and so I have to approach him using his terms. Heidegger's Dasein is seemingly bastardized with any translation into english, and so it must be understood and identified for what it is. In the same way, then, I think we as Christians must approach our culture.
Should we see Da Vinci? Not only do I think we should see it, but perhaps we should be first in line, enterring the theater with open and unbiased minds, ready to study the 'terms' of culture. It is high time we stopped being so afraid of being 'corrupted' by the world and decided to start living in it for the glory of God. That requires being 'in it', though.....or we can choose, and yes, it is a choice, to remain irrelevant, learning our theology and singing our songs, and we will continue to drift farther and farther from the world God has created us to live in.
I truly enjoy Groves' posts, but today's was particularly relevent to me because it delved into the intellectual malaise of the Christian community. In his post he references Dick Staub, whom I admittedly know nothing about, and he links to an article written by Staub that brings up the Da Vinci controversy. It is a short article, and well worth the read, even if only because he quotes some of my favorite one-liners concerning educating Christians, which have been written by great men.
Our fear of culture must die if there is any hope of relevance within said culture. A professor in college used to hammer me with these words, "You must engage the philosophers using their own terms." He was referring to my weak attempts to interpret Plato and Heidegger, trying to teach me to adopt their own language. Plato's demiurge is not the same of Israel's God, and so I have to approach him using his terms. Heidegger's Dasein is seemingly bastardized with any translation into english, and so it must be understood and identified for what it is. In the same way, then, I think we as Christians must approach our culture.
Should we see Da Vinci? Not only do I think we should see it, but perhaps we should be first in line, enterring the theater with open and unbiased minds, ready to study the 'terms' of culture. It is high time we stopped being so afraid of being 'corrupted' by the world and decided to start living in it for the glory of God. That requires being 'in it', though.....or we can choose, and yes, it is a choice, to remain irrelevant, learning our theology and singing our songs, and we will continue to drift farther and farther from the world God has created us to live in.
Your last few posts have certainly had a permeating theme. I do want to discuss it one of these days. Thanks for writing.
The day's almost done!
If you need some blogging motivation, I finally put up a Friday "morning" prompt.. now that it's 12:45 :)