Often, your best friends also tick you off the most. No exception here. My buddy Drew constantly teases me about CAPC. He likes to pick on me for being a poor dresser, too, but he’s basically right about that so I can’t complain.

His favorite joke is that at CAPC all we do is try to find, “redemptive themes,” in movies. “Where was the redemptive theme in THAT?” he asked, 30 seconds after we walked out of “The Dark Knight.”

My friend’s unfair (and uninformed) joking is a humorous pain in the neck, but he highlights a real problem in Christian circles- we often evaluate movies by only looking for two things; content (much discussed elsewhere in CAPC) and redemptive themes.

Worse, we look for and encourage these themes even when the “redemption” being portrayed is different or even antithetical to the Christian version of redemption. Christian redemption recognizes sin, accepts Christ’s offer of forgiveness, submits to God’s will, and has confidence in the hope of heaven. Worldly redemption realizes that life sucks or that someone screwed up, pulls oneself up by the bootstraps, and results in living out your life more happy than you were before. Those two things are, um, different.

Exhibit A is the list Christianity Today puts out each year; “The 10 Most Redeeming Films of [the year].” This list is intended to help people find quality movies, which of course I appreciate. The problem is the idea that movies with ANY kind of redemption are healthier for Christian consumption than those that have none, even if the non-redemptive movies are a more accurate portrayal of Truth.

For example, let’s take examples from 2007. CT highlights, “Into the Wild.” They say:

“This idealistic young man was running away from the right problems, but he ultimately ran right past the meaning of life—and those mistakes cost him his life. But the beauty and wisdom he encounters along the way have much to offer us all.”

Wait… what? The kid dies for no reason and misses the point of life, but it’s a redemptive movie because he encounters beauty and wisdom? And what, “meaning of life,” does the movie portray him as missing? Happiness is only real when shared?

The list goes on to recommend “The Kite Runner.” Interesting movie- but redemption from guilt without redemption from sin is not a helpful message. We Christians want to be clear that sin leads to death, no matter what acts of goodness you do to make up for past actions.

Finally, the list highlights “Ratatouille.” Well made? Yes. A good example of the Christian idea of redemption? No. Listen to this:

“This feast for the eyes and the soul is also a commentary about the pursuit of excellence, rather than settling for competence, and about how great things can come from the unlikeliest of places.”

Since when does any of that help point people toward the gospel? Is it really the Biblical witness that redemption is about pursuing excellence and believing in yourself?

Now, noticeably absent from the list were two of the best movies of the year; “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country for Old Men.” I entirely agree than neither one portrayed redemption… but for that very reason, I think they were much more accurate portrayals of the TRUTH of the world -its sinful, greedy, self serving side in particular- than any of the, “redemptive,” movies above.

How are Christian leaders teaching Christians to think about art? Is it supposed to feel good or be truthful?

Let’s take two biographical stories of redemption vs. non-redemption.

One, while still a young man, had a career in the ministry set before him. However, he left. He wandered around the country, using props and demonstrations to express his message that the country was headed down the tubes, that there was no hope for society. Further, he argued that the best people would survive the coming challenges, but the bad people would not. Even so, when war came he stuck with the bad people, and eventually died with them.

Another man became an actor at a very young age. He made several movies, but then fell into drug abuse. He failed several rehab programs. He was arrested multiple times. He drove down Sunset Boulevard naked, throwing imaginary rats out of the window. Eventually, though, he turned his life around. He cleaned up his act. He got some more acting jobs, and was fantastic. Now he is healthy, active, and engaged in multiple projects. He was also named the Entertainer of the Year.

The story of the first man, if made into a movie, may not sound redemptive. The story of the second does. But the first man is the prophet Jeremiah, a faithful follower of God. The second is Robert Downey Jr., now an herbal health nut and clearly not interested in Christianity at all. Which man is better at pointing to the gospel?

Here’s a comment I wrote on a blog about “Walk The Line,” the movie about Johnny Cash:

“I agree that there is something inherently dangerous about Walk The Line.

I don’t think it is saying Cash’s sins are good, nor that his life on the whole is a model to follow. In fact, I agree that it is a story of redemption.

However, it is not redemption from an unholy life and sin so much as it is redemption from PAIN. As portrayed by Hollywood, Cash goes through great struggle to find happiness. In the end, he seems no less self-serving and hedonistic than before; he has merely come to a new understanding of which self-serving desires are the best ones to fulfill. The pain of long experience has taught him that happiness comes through sobriety, popularity, and June Carter rather than alcohol, drugs, and the first Mrs. Cash. He orders his life accordingly.

To me, this story glorifies the intertwining of the maturation process and the pursuit of happiness. In his early life, his lack of the former led to mistakes in his pursuit of the latter. Through painful experience and failures, he learns to realign his values so that his pursuit of happiness and selfish desires is guided by the ‘wisdom’ of maturation.

This is where the dangerous part comes in. Hollywood glorifies these two themes in the life of Johnny Cash, rather than repentance of sin and glorification of God. Thanks to selective story telling (I’m sure we’d have a different take if the whole story was told from his first wife’s perspective), we are made to sympathize with his choices as he tries to be happy, and then hurt for him when these choices turn out to be destructive. We are then made to feel emotionally happy when, through his experiences, he finally gains a ‘happy’ and productive life. Do what you want, the movie seems to say, but do it in a way that won’t cause you pain in the long term.

Thus, drugs and alcohol are bad. However, that nagging wife is never going to change, and you couldn’t really be happy without June, now could you? Therefore, the happy life of the ending is drug and alcohol free, but June remains.

Remember, when she won awards for this movie, Reese Witherspoon continually referred to June Carter as her ‘inspiration.’ Though she may not be able to articulate it, for my money I’d bet it’s because the world tends to deify those who have the patience to wait for the maturation process to come to completion.

So, I think the movie is a significant danger to younger people. They are taught to see beauty in finding what they want and what makes them happy, even if there are a lot of pitfalls along the way. They are taught to respond to their emotions as their guide, and to let pain (not sin) be their teacher. They are taught that when health, wealth, and happiness are present, all is well with the world, and when poverty and boredom and pain come, you need to make changes in your life.

Those are not the values I want for my kids, nor for myself. I’ll take Chariots of Fire instead, thanks.”

So Christians, stop pretending that a “good” movie is only one that fits some form of “redemption from everything.” And stop boycotting movies that are truthful about the sin and junk in the world. If we want to proclaim the true gospel to the world, we had better start with Truth.

• A Superhero “Smaller than Life”
• What Makes a Film “Good”?
• Sorry, Cloverfield: Love Won’t Keep Us Together

Download audio file (Podcast_31__Shop_til_You_Love_Jesu.mp3)

This week: Rich and Ben discuss the cultural phenomenon known as Black Friday, argue over a canceled TV show as metaphor for Romans 7, and discuss the implications of living in an iPhone Culture.

Posts discussed in this show:

My Own Worst Enemy: At War With Myself

Retropost: The Revolution Will Have to Call You Back

One Phone to Rule Them All

Every week, Richard Clark and Ben Bartlett sit back and discuss the posts of the previous week on Christ and Pop Culture, acknowledge and respond to the big issues in popular culture, and give a sneak peak at the week ahead.

We love feedback! If you’d like to respond you can comment on the website, send an email to christandpopculture@gmail.com, or go to our contact page. We would love to respond to feedback on the show, so do it now! Subscribe to us in iTunes by clicking here. While you’re at it, give us some good iTunes feedback! We’ll love you forever!

• Podcast #30: Rich and Ben “Bond”
• Podcast #20: There Will be Blood
• Podcast #26: I Am [Not Using That Stupid] Iron Man [Cliche]

It’s a simple enough question: is the celebration of Halloween a sin? After all, Halloween is the American adaptation of the Day of the Dead celebration. Legend has it that the Day of the Dead was the annual time of year when your dead ancestors and relatives came back to life to haunt you. The trend then was to dress up like scary monsters and creatures, and decorate your house with scary features in hopes that you might scare the ghosts away. As is common these days, of course, American consumerism has turned a religious festival into a market driven holiday (complete with candy corn)! The question that has been presented to me, however, is the standard: should Christians celebrate Halloween?

Some are totally against the celebration, saying that it is tantamount to “Satan worship.” Their arguments stem from the historical origins of the holiday. I think such an answer is an over-reaction. If we were to press these same people on the celebration of Christmas I am quite sure they would want to honor the holiday, and express how much disdain they have for the “liberal media’s” anti-Christmas campaigns that we hear so much about around that time of year. But the origins of the actual Christmas celebration have their roots in the pagan winter solstice celebrations. Under Emperor Constantine the Roman Empire adopted the celebration as a Christian festival, but our Christian forebears for centuries following were strongly opposed to the celebration of Christmas. In fact Benjamin Keach, an early baptist father, would be appalled that his most famous hymn is sung as a “Christmas Hymn!”

So the issue then is why it is okay to celebrate Christmas and not Halloween. One can hardly find an adequate defense of such a concept. At the heart of the matter for me and my family is the reality that Halloween does not mean what it once did. It is no longer considered among Americans as a fight against evil, nor was it every considered worship of Satan. American Halloween is simply a time to dress up, play games, and eat tons of candy! It’s part of the American heritage that we’ve all come to enjoy from living in this country.

If we can change Christmas to mean something good, I am not sure what the problem with Halloween is. Perhaps it is again another attempt by conservative Christians to simply attack the culture we live in (we seem to be good at that). It’s hard to say, but perhaps we could all be better served by simply celebrating Reformation Day instead…or at least dress up like Martin Luther for Halloween.

• “Silent Night” is Not Enough
• God-Clause: Reflections on Santa and Theology Proper
• Rock N’ Roll Grace

You would have to be living in a hole to be unaware of the antics of Britney Spears or the public scrutiny surrounding her sister Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy. But behind these two girls is a mother who you may not know much about. Now Lynne Spears sounds off in her new book, “Through the Storm”, just published by Thomas Nelson.

A lot of controversy surrounded this book even before it was released. Many billed this book as a parenting book and didn’t understand why a Christian imprint, Thomas Nelson, would want to publish it. But this book isn’t what you may think. It isn’t a book wherein Lynne Spears either defends or dishes dirt on her daughters. If you are looking for a tabloid, tell-all book then you will be disappointed.

Through the Storm is a book by a daughter, sister, wife and mother who simply tells her own story. As Lynne states in her introduction:

“It’s really the story of one simple, Southern woman whose family got caught in a tornado called fame and who is still trying to sort through the debris scattered all over her life in the aftermath. It’s who I am, warts and all, with some true confessions that took a long time to get up the nerve to discuss.” (pg. ix)

Lynne discusses her childhood and speaks with great detail about her relationship with her now ex-husband Jamie.

According to Lynne, there was no master plan to get Britney into Hollywood and the music industry. Just like Lynne, we often make small decisions that lead to another and combined with some unexpected opportunities and events we find ourselves at a place we could have never expected or imagined. That is the story for the Spears family.  Lynn mentions how destructive instant fame was for them and their family:

“Not everyone who becomes famous does so in a split second.  Britney’s fame came around the corner, zooming at us at two hundred miles per hour.  Ben Affleck is right.  He said sudden fame is like being in a car wreck.  It comes at you fast, and you spin out of control.” (pg. 104)

They were thrust into fame, and were ill prepared to handle it. This fact coupled with the strained and fractured marriage between Jamie and Lynne meant their family didn’t have the emotional and spiritual buoyancy to handle all the pressures and influences that fame brought.  Also, Lynne realized how quickly she lost control in the lives of her children:

“When I saw the cover [The Rolling Stone], my heart sank, and my face burned with embarrassment and anger.  Oh my gosh.  How did this slip through the cracks?  How did this happen?  Already, lines were being crossed.  Yet I foolishly thought I was still in control, when in reality my authority was slipping with every day and every dollar being spent - and made- on my daughters’ career.” (pg. 110)

Through the Storm is a candid account of a wife and mother’s many regrets. Through it all, Lynne Spears is tenacious to persevere throughout it all and fight for her family. It is also a story of how her faith has kept her strong and how quickly and tragically she observed some of her own children walking away from their faith.

Through the Storm takes all the sensationalism of Britney and Jamie Lynn and boils it down to an undeniable fact - our shared humanity. Jamie, Britney and Jamie Lynn are part of a family that has made a lot of mistakes, faced a lot of scrutiny and pressures. They need our prayers, not our disdain.

• Lessons My Daughters Learned from Hannah Montana
• Britney Spears to play Virgin Mary?
• Review of Book on Obama’s Faith Puts Author in Hot Water

Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle is known in the wider public sphere for his coarse speech, harsh tone, and for being the ex-emergent emerging pastor. His books are full of witty, if sometimes questionable content, and loads of criticisms against the church.

His most recent book, however, is quite a surprise. It’s not only not funny, but it contains a graphic nature that is entirely appropriate. Driscoll’s book Death By Love: Letters from the Cross is deeply pastoral, theologically rich, and refreshingly honest about the world we live in and the application of the cross to it.

What makes the work so great is not simply that is is a new side to Driscoll, but also that its content shows the relevance for deep theology in everyday life. So many people think that theology is for academics and professional theologians. Driscoll shows us, however, in a fresh way just how important good theology is for living.

The chapters of the book are written to real individuals in real, gritty, heartbreaking situations, from the point of view of Mark as their pastor. Chapter one “Demons are Tormenting Me” explains how Jesus on the cross is one young woman’s conquering hero. Chapter five, “I Molested a Child,” explains how Jesus’ cross is one man’s justification. Chapter seven, “He raped Me,” explores how Jesus’ sacrifice is one woman’s expiation. And chapter nine, “I am Going to Hell,” explains how Jesus’ crucifixion is an old man’s ransom. The multi-faceted nature of the cross is revealed and beloved in these pages.

What’s really refreshing about this book is that while often people think the climax of Christian cultural engagement is reached in reviewing movies, Mark Driscoll (a pastor dedicated to theological orthodoxy and cultural relevance) shows that the greatest aspects of cultural engagement happen when we bring the gospel to bear on the lives of real people!

• The Incarnation and Culture (Part II)
• Strike Sadness
• The Day Community Came Back

Download audio file (Podcast_29__A_Podcast_About_Nothing.mp3)

Ben Bartlett and Richard Clark return triumphantly with an in depth discussion about pop culture’s nihilistic tendencies, which attempting to avoid talking too in depth about the philosophy of nihilism itself. It turns out, nihilism is all over the place in popular culture, and it may not be such a bad thing. Tune in and find out why!

Plus, Richard and Ben give really lame reasons for not having done a podcast in forever and they also count down their Top 5 Nihilistic Moments in Popular Culture. You don’t want to miss this!

Then again, what’s the point?

We love feedback. If you’d like to respond you can comment on the website, send an email to christandpopculture@gmail.com or best yet you can leave a voice-mail at 206-350-8475 (seriously this time. It works now). We would love to respond to feedback on the show, so do it now!

Subscribe to us in iTunes by clicking here. While you’re at it, give us some good iTunes feedback! We’ll love you forever!

The music in this episode is by SoberMinded and awesome rap duo featuring our own writer and co-founder,Alan Noble. Check them out!

• Podcast #30: Rich and Ben “Bond”
• Podcast #26: I Am [Not Using That Stupid] Iron Man [Cliche]
• Podcast #31: Shop ’til You Love Jesus!

On Sunday, God flipped a switch in Louisville. It was a single switch with two results: electricity turned off, and community turned on. As you may have heard, Hurricane Ike meandered its way to Louisville, Kentucky and took out 60% of the city’s electricity, effectively rendering its inhabitants utterly devoid of television, video games, and computers. Instead, everyone went outside and played on an uprooted tree (I’ll have a great story about that tree in the comments sometime soon), discussed the weather, and enjoyed one anothers company. When pop culture disappeared from our lives, what appeared in its place was one another. It simply ought not to be this way.

Christians are meant to partake in pop culture in an altogether different way than the world, and this doesn’t mean we avoid rated R movies. Jesus had something specific in mind when it came to the defining mark of the ones who believed in Him: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) This mark doesn’t merely apply to our church-life and charity priorities. It applies equally to the way we relate to and enjoy popular culture. 

Christians in this culture are much too susceptible to the tendency to forget this mark when we leave our local church building. All sorts of areas are affected by this tendency, and our consumption of various types of popular media is primary in this failure. 

It is often seen as normal to read, watch or play alone. Many of us have “guilty pleasures” that we often refrain from bringing up around others. We view television shows and films as not quite important enough to talk purposefully about with fellow Christians. When it comes to pop culture, the church as a whole seems to have adopted the attitude that our choices and media related experiences are “between me and God.” 

We were not created for island living, and we were not created to keep certain aspects of our life partitioned off from the church. Accountability, encouragement and openness should be values that affect the way we approach film, television, video games, comic books and any other form of popular culture.

Electricity didn’t just switch back on in Louisville, Kentucky. It came back in waves. Sections of the city were fixed one by one, giving the opportunity for something miraculous to happen. People invited one another over (and some invited themselves) to enjoy video games, movies, and to use their internet. And they felt kind of bad about just using one another for their stuff, so they talked, and often they talked about what they were experiencing together. And with that, the switch was split into to, and at least for a while, both of them were set to “on”.

• In Praise of Video Games
• An Open Call
• Should Christians use violent video games to lure teens to church?

After our guest post on Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, a couple of people have asked me what I would consider to be valuable reads on the topic of religion (specifically Christianity) in the American South. Here are my top five, presented in no exact order, a mix of fiction, memoir, anthropology, and history.

1. Anything by Flannery O’Connor

You had to know it was coming. After all, she is the one who coined the phrase “the Christ-haunted South.” Yet, in the very same paragraph from which that phrase originates, O’Connor writes that “almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety.”

We often use O’Connor to support stereotyped views of Southern religion as bizarre, extreme, and violent . . . all of which are adjectives that might be applied to O’Connor’s fiction. However, as a Catholic writer in the predominantly Protestant South, she found more affinity with the “freaks” and those on the fringes of white Southern society than she did with mainline Protestants: they at least shared an emphasis on the incarnational aspects of Christianity, often living it out in radically physical ways.

To get this angle of O’Connor, there’s no better story than “Parker’s Back,” in which a man has an elaborate, Byzantine icon of Christ tattooed on his back. “Revelation” is another good story to start with if you’re new to O’Connor, if only because it - like “Parker’s Back” - is a story in which no one actually gets drowned, impaled, or otherwise killed. Also, “Revelation” seems to be about my grandmother-I don’t know in what situation Flannery O’Connor might have met her, but she must have.

Of O’Connor’s two novels, The Violent Bear It Away is my favorite, though Wise Blood is more famous. If you want to understand phrases like “the Christ-haunted South,” check out Mystery and Manners, a collection of O’Connor essays and speeches. One of my favorite O’Connor books, however, is the collection of her letters called The Habit of Being. They’re hilarious, cranky, touching, and insightful. I have actually cried both times I’ve reached the end of the volume (My husband: “What’s wrong?” Me: “Flannery O’Connor just died.” My husband: “Again?”).

2. Salvation on Sand Mountain (1995), Dennis Covington

The book’s subtitle is “Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia” . . . so, yes, like O’Connor, it does focus on the stranger manifestations of Southern religion. What makes Covington compelling is that he explores the specific social and historical circumstances that have surrounded Appalachian snake-handlers. He’s writing as a journalist, but he doesn’t remain an objective observer, instead reflecting on why he finds the snake-handlers both inspiring and frightening. 

In many ways, the book is a conversion narrative: Covington does not become a snake handler (though he does take one up once), but he does come to a deeper understanding of what his own family past and his geographical location mean for his faith. 

The book has amazing lyrical passages from Covington. For instance, the very last words of the book send chills down my spine (and not because of snakes): “I was always called home by my father, and he didn’t do it in the customary way. He walked down the alley all the way to the lake. . . . This is how he got me to come home. He always came to the place I was before he called my name.” It’s a beautiful metaphor for Covington’s spiritual journey, as well as our own.

3. Saving Grace (1995), Lee Smith

No, I do not have an obsession with snake-handling. In fact, I’m scared of snakes and don’t really like reading about them. As a religious practice, I think snake-handling is a terribly misguided - not to mention dangerous - reading of one Bible passage. But writers do such powerful things with snake-handling as a metaphor for the precarious walk of faith.

Lee Smith partially credits O’Connor with the inspiration for her own novel about Florida Grace Shepherd, the daughter of a hypocritical, philandering, snake-handling preacher who yet works genuine miracles. Grace herself is what O’Connor would have called a pilgrim malgré lui, a pilgrim against her will. She leads a hard life, her external circumstances sometimes resembling that of stereotypical “trailer park trash.” Yet, after a divine encounter at “Uncle Slidell’s Christian Fun Golf” (I am not making this up), she returns home to God.

4. Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith (2005), Timothy K. Beal

I also do not have an obsession with Christian putt-putt golf courses. I feel the need to mention this because there are two Christian putt-putt courses in Roadside Religion, one with the inexplicable name of Golgotha Fun Park.

Beal is a religion scholar, but the frame of a family road-trip-as well as the eccentric subject matter-makes the book very accessible. Like some of the other writers featured here, Beal finds the most spiritual meat among the most marginalized residents of the South. (To be fair, Roadside Religion doesn’t occur exclusively in the South, but I can only recall a couple of chapters that venture above the Mason-Dixon line.)

The book is also amazingly gracious to seeming expressions of kitsch: Beal is able to view the Precious Moments Inspiration Park without scorn. His genuine openness to the workings of God through particular places and particular people humbles me.

5. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997), Christine Heyrman

A scholar of American religious history, Heyrman focuses on the rise of evangelicalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At that time, the South was a bastion of Anglicanism (as well as slavery), and itinerant evangelical preachers were seen as spreading chaos and upheaval.

Heyrman is particularly skillful in pointing out the irony that evangelicalism was originally viewed as an “anti-family” movement, because young people rebelled and broke from their more traditional families when they converted. She also describes how evangelicalism then adapted to gain a foothold in the South. Southern Cross is an important reminder that the attitudes we associate with “Bible-Belt” Christianity today arose out of a specific, historic context-sometimes owing more to that context than they did to the radical teachings of Jesus and Paul.

There are definite limitations to this list: most obviously, I haven’t read enough about the rich history of the African American church in the South. I also have not included any Walker Percy, for the simple reason that I do not like Walker Percy (sorry to all his fans). I’m eager to hear from our readers: what would make it onto your own reading lists?

• A dash of Flannery O’Connor
• Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
• Jesus Goes to South Park

Of course, their offending taste can’t be ignored. Allowing them to continue in their undiscerning taste when you have the knowledge to set them straight would be like a lifeguard who smiles and waves to a swimmer as they dive into an empty pool. Something must be said, but what and how?

While taste in art and pop culture is not exactly the same as food offered to idols, in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, I think we can find some useful guidelines to help us respond biblically when our taste is offended:

“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” I Corinthians 8:1-3

What is important to see in these verses is the way Paul tells us what we should be communicating when we are dealing with issues of conscience with people who might disagree with us. Paul, speaking very frankly here, tells us that our ultimate goal should be to communicate love for the person we are talking to, not necessarily knowledge.

Although the Bible has many things to say about knowledge and its importance, it is critical for us to understand its limits. The main limit Paul points us to in these verses is that we are finite: we don’t know everything. In fact, for Paul, if you think you know something, you don’t know as you ought to know! If our goal in a conversation with a friend about the merits of a film is to convey our confident, absolute knowledge on the matter, then we are not focused on what is truly important: loving our neighbor.

Practically, what this means is we should be testing ourselves to make sure that our conversations do not involve any puffing up. Here are some questions to ask yourself in these situations:

• When you are first confronted with an example of bad taste, what is the spirit of your desired response?
• Do you want to correct them out of love or knowledge?
• Are you at all excited to display your knowledge, or are you excited to share your view on the subject?
• What do you hope to gain by talking to this person about their taste?
• How do your words, tone, and demeanor convey that purpose?
• Who are you seeking to glorify in your conversation, God or yourself?
• Who are you seeking to build up in your conversation, your friend or yourself?

If we think and act intentionally about these questions, we may find that often the best response to someone is to tell them that we are happy they enjoyed the movie (or whatever media it might be). Other times, depending on the situation and our relationship to the person, we might be able to aggressively help them appreciate a different perception of the artifact. Whatever the situation requires, we need to keep in mind that our purpose is not to be clever, witty, knowledgeable, hip, or even right, but to lovingly and humbly communicate your views in such a way as to build up the body and honor God.

How do you handle disagreements over taste with your friends?

• Your Life in 12 Words or Less: the Dehumanizing Effect of Facebook Profiles, Personal Ads, and Eulogies
• Wearing Our Faith
• The Incarnation and Culture (Part III)

Like most people, my initial reaction was to cough a lot and slowly back away. No one likes second hand smoke, and these days most agree that smoking is a bad habit that endangers the person doing it as well as those around them. This became clear as I decided to hang out in the “danger zone” for a while. I half-jokingly asked, “I’m not smoking, is it okay if I sit here?” Thankfully, they invited me into their club and proceeded to explain to me various reasons they’re smoking. None of them had anything to do with it being the right thing.

The truth is, smokers know what they’re doing is bad for them, but they do it anyway. Christians often respond to such a dilemma with disdain. We rant about the dangers, we avoid smokers at all costs, we don’t allow such a substance in our home or in our car, and we practice our disapproving looks daily. And if we ever see a “Christian” who is smoking? Well, let’s just say there’s a reason that word is in quotes.

What if Christians showed compassion for smokers? Sure, let’s acknowledge that smoking is a bad habit. Let’s acknowledge that if God wants someone to quit smoking, they can and they should. But let’s acknowledge a few other things too:

1. Quitting is hard. While I don’t buy into the idea that “addiction is a disease” and that one who is addicted to smoking loses all personal responsibility in the matter, I do think it’s important that we realize that it can be a rough, oftentimes traumatic experience to give up what for many is a huge part of their life, not to mention the physically addictive nature of smoking.
2. Smoking is bad for them, but so is that thing you do. Let’s face it. We all do things that aren’t good for us. Big Macs, driving without seat-belts, bungee jumping, not getting enough sleep, getting by on caffeine, etc. Those habits which we suffer from are going to be pretty big planks in our eyes for as long as we insist on berating or looking down on those who smoke.
3. Smoking isn’t actually addressed in Scripture. Okay, it’s bad for you, probably unwise, and so probably sin. But in truth, smoking in any way that enables us to rebuke others in any authoritative sense. We can keep our friends and church members accountable, questioning them and making sure they understand that nothing is to be our master, but smoking is no reason to discount someone’s spirituality or faith, though our culture may encourage us to believe so.
4. We are called to sacrifice. Consider opening your home or car to smokers. If you’re serious about evangelism, wouldn’t you be willing to accept a weird smell in your car and a little lung damage in exchange for the opportunity to share the gospel with a coworker or friends without any unnecessary stumbling blocks? I understand that this challenge isn’t for everyone, but some of you ought to be willing to accept such a risk.

I should make it clear: this post isn’t about whether or not it is okay for you to smoke; it’s about our response to those who do. We need to remember that smoking does often serve as a stumbling block for many nonbelievers as well as believers, and so one needs to think long and hard about the repurcussions of taking up such an expensive and risky hobby. But we also need to remember that no matter what we refuse to do, if it’s not refused in love, it’s a useless refusal.

• Four Exhortations for this Political Season
• “Silent Night” is Not Enough
• Do Hard Things…Like Read a Book!