The HOW is as important as the WHAT -- will evangelicals ever learn?
Check out E.J Park's article: "A Tale of Two Kitties," in the February 2006 edition of Christianity Today. He argues (counter culturally) that the form of art matters, and that within a particular form there are implicit messages which we should be aware of. His critique is applied generally to films marketed to the evangelical demographic such as The Passion and Narnia, but is not so narrow that it should not be applied to art of all forms. Evangelicals should read and heed Park's warnings or else they will continue sending exactly the messages they so painstakingly preach against, thereby even hindering the manifestation of the gospel to the world. His article ends on a stirring note. He claims that it is not so important to get these things right merely for art's sake, but for the sake of how we image or bear witness to God. Ultimately, every performance manifests some sort of explicit as well as implicit attestation; will we take seriously the implicit, the abstract, the complicated, or will we reduce ourselves to the realm of the "thematic" (Heidegger's term) or the explicit? I think the answer that stirs in my bones is that we can not but engage in understanding the tacit (or the implicit), else what is at stake is the relevance or evocative nature of our performance. For the way we posture others and preform matters, even to the point that the gospel is at stake. How long will we disengage the culture to condemn it before we realize that we are not contributing to the solution, but rather we are the problem?
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