The auditions were cattle calls, and were held in several cities across the nation in January and early February, also like “American Idol.” I knew there would be little hope of success in going to the audition, but you never know, and the Los Angeles area audition was held here in Burbank. So, I printed the application, and prepared for standing in line all day.

The night before the audition, I sat down to fill out the roughly ten-page application, and to sign the included waiver. Then came the period of stunned staring after reading said waiver. I guess I always knew that such shows were not primarily concerned with the rights of the contestants, but the language of this waiver was unbelievable. I suppose the producers know that contestants on these shows are often desperate for a break of some kind, and willing to sign whatever they need to in order to get that shot. But it temporarily brought my plans to audition to a standstill. I actually was not sure I could sign the thing. I woke up the next morning and desperately tried to reach at least four people to get their advice, two of whom were my pastor and my friend who is a lawyer.

I was concerned about two aspects of the waiver. Since I no longer have a copy of it, I will have to mostly paraphrase what worried me, but I can recall one specific phrase precisely that threw me for a great, big loop: “Throughout the universe.” Isn’t that bizarre? That phrasing was actually used more than once, relating to basically any and every potential artistic work of mine to which, if I agreed to be a contestant on their show, they would apparently be claiming ownership rights. My concerns were mainly that the wording of the waiver suggested the show would own any and all artistic works I created from then on, whether I was still a part of the show or not. I realize that makes no sense, but I even read the phrasing to my lawyer friend, who said it sounded that way as well, but would not likely be enforceable.

My other concern was that the waiver explicitly said the producers have the right to do anything they want with the footage they take of you, and stated that could include editing, adding to, taking away from, or putting it together with any other footage they see fit, and could portray me in any light they choose. As a representative of Christ, you might see how this would be problematic. Again, I understand what the general intention is here: they want to be able to use footage as much or often as they like for marketing purposes, but they take their language way too far.

After consulting with four people before 8 am that morning, I did sign the waiver and audition, and didn’t even get a callback. Incidentally, the gimmick with this show- the blind audition- was not the case with our auditions that day. I guess the swivel-chair judging doesn’t kick in until later. I can only hope that any possible future involvement I may have with networks and studios is done with agents and lawyers that I trust representing me. Also, I think I’m done with reality shows. The whole experience makes me thankful to God that I did not come out to Hollywood at a younger, more vulnerable age.

Where’s my XBOX720?

The PlayStation was released in the US in 1995. The PS2 and XBOX were released in 2000-01, and were followed by the XBOX360 and PS3 in ‘05-06. So where’s the next generation of consoles? There’s a simple answer: they’re not coming. The seventh generation of gaming consoles was built for growth, using software updates to make them more efficient and to add new features.

Instead of a new generation of thumb-straining consoles, Microsoft and Sony have followed Nintendo’s lead into motion-based gaming with the Kinect and the Move. These technologies are opening up a ton of new possibilities for the industry’s new target market: casual gamers. So even though there’s no new generation of consoles, there’s still a new generation of gaming.

TV without the TV Set

For the last few years, netbooks – those 10-inch laptops you could pickup for under $300 – were making a place for themselves in the market. They seemed like something that was here to stay. Then a few things happened to knock them off their path, and create a new market for home entertainment (presented in no particular order):

• The iPad: Everything your netbook does, but cooler.
• The $350 full-size laptop: When you look at a 10-inch screen for $300, and a 15-inch for $350, you suddenly realize that it’s tiny. It’s like you couldn’t see it before, but now it’s there, and you can’t not think about it.
• Netflix, Hulu, and streaming TV: They’ve been around for a couple of years, but 2010 was the watershed year, when it suddenly wasn’t odd to watch TV on your computer.
• Falling LCD prices: In November of 2008 I bought an LCD TV for $400. In 2007 that TV cost $600, and today it costs $279. When you put that together with free streaming TV on your PC, you get…
• Streamed TV and Movies in the living room: the XBOX360 offered Netflix streaming to your TV first, but now all three consoles, a number of set top boxes, Blu-Ray players, and Net-enabled TV’s have followed suit. Apple and Google have even entered the game (with the creatively named ‘AppleTV’ and ‘GoogleTV’, respectively).

It’s no surprise that no one wants a netbook anymore. It’s also no surprise that cable companies started acting shady.

Comcast, Verizon, and the FCC

With the growth of streaming services, cable companies worry that Netflix and Hulu will hurt the cable TV market. To calm themselves they made a deal to charge a middle-man extra to “transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content.”

This is just the kind of thing that Verizon teamed up with Google to prevent. In a much misunderstood proposal (at the end of this Wired article), they propose rules which would guarantee a free and open internet, while creating a second network which providers could use to serve premium content for a fee.

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to run the show as industry players negotiate these situations, but they (and the rest of the country) seem to still be confused about whether they have any authority over the internet. Don’t worry, though – eventually, someone will do something, and half the crowd will get mad.

Apple v. Google

No, they haven’t gone to court – not yet anyway. The massive and opposing philosophies of these two giants are like the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format wars, except this fight is for mind-share, rather than market-share.

Apple’s philosophy is simple: make it sleek, make it sexy, make it work, and don’t let anyone screw it up. They push a closed system where everything is designed together, built together, and approved together. The two results of this philosophy are that a) every product is seemless, and b) they have total control.

Google’s philosophy is equally simple: make it open, make it flexible, and make sure anyone can change it. They endorse free (as in beer AND as in choice) in as many ways as possible. They help design parts – parts that you can use together, mix and match, or use toward your own project. They have no control, and they don’t seem to want it.

Consider the respective app stores: Steve Jobs taking a strict ‘no porn’ stance, and pointing out the presence of a ‘porn store for Android.’ Is Google making a statement in favor of porn by not having a similar ban? Not really, it’s just their philosophy: open means open, even when it’s controversial. The same philosophy has the iPad competing with an untold number of variations, from Samsung’s GalaxyTab and the Dell Streak, to the VelocityMicro Cruz Reader.

Now consider that Android has 26% of the market, while the iPhone has 25%. While the iPhone’s share is made up of 4 iterations of the same (stellar) product, there are dozens of Android devices, each with a different set of features (and problems); manufacturers even have the ability to make Android look and work however they please. Their competitiveness shows how torn we are about which is better. It will be interesting to see if one of these philosophies pulls ahead this year.

So that’s the wrap up. I know a lot more happened this year (Boxee, 4G, LED TVs, wireless broadband), but I couldn’t possibly get to it all. What do you think about what’s here, and what important things did I leave out?

Obviously, you’re going to find some spoilers down there. Don’t read if you haven’t watched.

Lost has a knack for making us hate it. I don’t mean that we “love to hate it,” but that fans of Lost often want so badly to unabashedly love the show, to embrace it, to let it wash over us, but find it throwing wrenches into that plan every step of the way. Paradoxically, this is why I love Lost, and it’s why, after a good night’s sleep and a little bit of processing, I think I loved Lost’s finale.

Does this all sound familiar? Because it should – it’s how we often feel about life. How many times have we simply wanted to accept this life – to let go? And yet we find that even this is a chore. At the end of one of our days is a seemingly pointless death or a maddening cliff-hanger, followed only by a black screen. We want answers, but they never arrive. We strive and struggle, day in and day out, to figure it all out. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What is the point of all of this? Did I just see my dead father?

And so, we watch television, we watch movies, we read books, and we enjoy getting answers from them. They give us life lessons, resolution, and in a sense, they give us a little bit of peace.

And then there was Lost, the show with so much promise. We were drawn in for the mystery, but we stayed for the characters. We thought sawyer was probably a bad guy, until we grew to love him. We thought Jack was a jerk, until we got to know him. Kate we pretty much disliked until the very end. I guess you could say they were our friends, but more accurately, they were like our friends. Or at least, they were like those around us. And they were like us.

After last night, it’s clear that Lost is a show about community, and how redemption is impossible without it. Though we often wanted it to be about something else, it was always a show about the characters, and their relationships to one another. Even more, it’s about what happens when those relationships are forced to grapple together with the implications of incomprehensible mystery, pain, and loss.

And so that’s what we did. We watched the show with the people around us, we discussed it with them, and we shared our own insight into the show. One of us may have been familiar with one of the books on the show and one of us may have been familiar with one of the philosopher’s that a character was named after. One of us may have had a crazy dream that explained it all. Oh, and there’s always one guy who has the HDTV. He’s important too.

The experience of Lost can be summed up in one phrase: Live together, or watch alone.

The finale beautifully brought all of these themes to the forefront. As each character remembered one another, we remembered the series ourselves, and how much it meant to us. These sequences were shameless, self-indulgent, and absolutely earned.

If there is any complaint that can be had about the finale it is this: that the final scene undermines everything else that happened throughout the series. On the contrary, just as Desmond says (and these words are the key to the entire show), “There are no shortcuts, no do-overs – what happened, happened. All of this matters.” Though they may find themselves in another place now, that other place was shaped by their life then. Their moments of resolution in their first life may have seemed to come too late for them to matter, but that just stands to give even more importance to their existence after death.

It’s a brave story to tell in a culture that oscillates between declaring that the here and now as all there is, and insisting that the spiritual is all that matters.

For the Christian – and it appears, for Lost and its viewers - the spiritual and the physical, the life now and the life after life, our own struggles and the struggles of others – they all matter. All of this matters. And the mysteries throughout? We’ll find out the answers if and when we need to know them.

The writers behind Glee understand that faith and spirituality is a deeply profound and personal concept. They understand that each person struggles with questions of faith and that those questions must not be trivialized or stifled. They get that many of us find a need to pray to a higher power, to believe in something bigger than ourselves, and to devote our lives to something great. That’s why they thought long and hard about a storyline to open up the episode with and provide a context for such a conversation. That’s why they decided to open with Finn, praying to his “super-delicious” lord, Grilled Cheezus.

Wait, what?

Glee has always dealt with hard or controversial subjects with a certain amount of irreverence. If the show is guilty of anything, it’s giving deathly serious subjects a slight air of triviality, though they might argue (wrongly) that such an approach is perhaps the only way to speak to the current generation of teenagers. Either way, this has been Glee‘s voice and it’s made for a fascinating and entertaining show. Even if we may not be coming to the table with the same assumptions as Glee, we can appreciate the show for its fairness and frankness. While the rest of popular culture either refuses to acknowledge the typical teenage taboos, or normalizes them to an embarrassing degree, Glee has the guts to question them and wrestle with them. Whether the discussion focuses on sex, teenage pregnancy, self-image, disability or relationships with parents, each side of the issue is given a fair voice, even if the show does often come out on one side or another of an issue.

For the most part, faith is given a similar treatment in this episode. As is usual for a hot-topic relatedGlee episode, each member of New Directions is leveraged to present their own distinct opinion about the subject at hand. The two extremes are represented in Kurt’s staunch atheism and Finn’s blind faith. In between, we are treated to cursory expressions of agnosticism, Judaism and Christianity. Quinn expresses her thanks for God bringing her through a pregnancy, while Santana mocks her thanksgiving. Puck expresses frustration at Finn’s using Jesus’ name to cramp everyone’s style. The teacher expresses nothing and merely facilitates, perhaps a wise response when such a discussion breaks out in a public school setting.

This all sounds perfectly fair, and for the most part it is. Still, as the episode progresses, the question of what one believes becomes far less important than the question of why one believes it. When we hear from Sue in this episode, it’s clear that her reasons for sharing in Kurt’s atheism stem from a place of both compassion and reason. First, God doesn’t make sense. And if he did, why doesn’t he heal her mentally challenged sister? Kurt expresses frustration that, if God exists he “makes me gay and then has his followers going around telling me it’s something that I chose.” Quinn, one of the Christians, can’t handle it: “We shouldn’t be talking about this. It’s not right!”

The telling thing about the episode is that while Sue and Kurt have the opportunity to share why they believe what they believe, the rest of the cast come across as blindly dogmatic. Even Finn, who had the benefit of seeing a sign from God on his grilled cheese, could claim to have more reason for faith than the rest of the characters. So why do these people believe in God? Glee offers the answer by way of Mercedes, in a stirring speech to Kurt:

I know you don’t believe in God. You don’t believe in the power of prayer, and that’s okay. To each his own. But you’ve got to believe in something. Something more than you can touch, taste or see. Cause life’s too hard to go at it alone, without something to hold on to, and without something that’s sacred.

And there we have Christianity framed as a coping mechanism or crutch rather than anything close to a reasoned response to the world around us. It’s not so much that it makes sense of the world. According to Glee, it’s that faith of any sort allows us cope with the harsh realities we face every day as human beings. Jesus Christ is just one of many things we can cling to in this endeavor. Nothing more, nothing less.

Kurt agrees, but finds that something to be his Dad, whose heart-attack forms the emotional core of the episode. It’s this event, not finding Jesus’ face on a grilled cheese sandwich, that the show demonstrates to be the real instigator of religious and spiritual thought. For Kurt, it confirms his belief in his dad and his disbelief in God.

So yes, Glee truly does understand that many of us have a deeply personal need to devote ourselves to something bigger than ourselves. The only thing they don’t understand is that for most true Christians, belief isn’t a luxury. It often makes things harder, more troubling, and more disturbing. We don’t believe it because it comforts us. We believe it because it rings true. Does it often seem as if God has betrayed us? Yes. But more often, I feel as if I’ve betrayed God. I am deeply in tune with how awful I am, and how deep my need for salvation truly is. And when I look out into the world, I don’t see a meaningless nothing as much as I see a world in need of saving, with no hope except for the only One that makes any real sense to me.

This Week: After a relatively quiet Black Friday, it seems fitting to remember just how ugly Black Friday can become, as it did in November of 2008…

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard that a man was trampled to death at Wal-Mart while opening the doors for “Black Friday.” It’s a sad testimony to the greedy, self-absorbed culture that American consumerism (combined with total depravity) has created. How a mass of people can continue to walk over an actual human being lying on the ground is mind boggling to me, and then to find out that they have, by their combined efforts, killed this man is an outrage. Of course I can’t help but wonder how this will affect Black Friday.

Will the stamping to death of a human being tarnish this “Black” day? One can only hope that it will compel department stores to think differently about how they participate in the holiday. Some are already suggesting that such re-thinking will happen, and I can imagine that there will be some new safe guards that stores put in place for their employees, but in a world where the almighty dollar rules you can imagine that not much will change.

Black Friday is so necessary for many stores to stay out of the “red” that they will resist hampering the masses from storming their doors. Anything that may add to a decline of shoppers will be avoided like the plague. A little more blackened or not, I don’t suspect much will change in terms of Black Friday.

But as Christians we must think carefully about our part. I would love to say that were I one of those in the materialistic hungry stampede I would have bent to pick up this poor beaten down man, but I can see myself trying to jump over him (because of course this is better than stomping on him, right?) while I raced to get some new iPod gadget. I need to be careful that my judgment of these Wal-Mart stompers isn’t self-righteous. I am, because of my sin, all too likely to knock someone over on my way to grab a rare book off the store shelves. We are all sinners, capable of all sorts of sins, and we must beware of a self-righteousness that says I am obviously better than them. Jesus warns us well of such things!

So if you participate next year in this tarnished Black Friday you should beware of your judgments, and, perhaps even more significantly, beware of what you step on.

This Week: With today’s release of Fallout: New Vegas, it’s worth considering the nature of moral systems within games and their implications.

In the last two generations of gaming systems, the inclusion of a moral system which affects plot and character has become a prominent feature in many games.  The simple version of this gameplay feature offers the player different endings depending on whether or not they were “good” or bad.” More complex games (Fable, Mass Effect, Fallout 3) take a more nuanced approach to morality or “karma,” assigning the player various good points or bad points depending on how they act in the world: who they kill or save, how they treat other characters, and what choices they make in the plot. The player is then given various bonus, perks, or abilities that are unique to his or her “karma” level. In a Star Wars game, an evil character might get Force Lighting. In Mass Effect, a good character might get the ability to charm someone into helping them.

However the player benefits or is hurt by his or her choices, most games present fairly simple moral choices. You can either chose to rob the poor family stuck on a deserted planet, or give them a lift off the rock. You can either call your companions idiots for letting the villian escape, or you can assure them that it was not their fault. A few offer the player a third choice, essentially a “neutral” moral response, but no matter how many ways they divide the choices, it is nearly always clear to the player how their choice will affect them. In other words, using morality as a gameplay feature only works insofar as the player understands the game’s system of morality. Once the player’s understanding of right and wrong diverge from the game’s, the player will end up making choices which do not produce the results they expect.

I became acutely aware of this in a conversation with a friend about Fallout 3. We both enjoyed the game and were discussing how it surprised us in various ways when we got around to discussing a particular quest called, Tranquility Lane. If you wish to avoid spoilers, I would suggest skipping the next two paragraphs. In this quest, you get trapped in a virtual world controlled by a masochistic scientist. The other characters in this world, like you, are real people who are asleep in a pod; however, unlike you they have been sleeping and living in this virtual world for years. The scientist, Dr. Braun, who controls this world and lives in it, enjoys torturing the other characters and even “killing” them.  After he “kills” these characters and is finished with his fun, he starts up a new environment, wipes their memory, and starts over again. When you enter his virtual world, he gives you various tasks to do before he will let you leave: make a little boy cry, break up a marriage, kill a woman in a creative way, and then kill everyone in the town. Obviously, if you do his tasks your character loses “karma” points. But the game gives you another option.

If you find Dr. Braun’s hidden computer, you can release a simulation called, “Chinese Invasion” which sends Chinese soldiers into the town to kill all the inhabitants and allows you to escape. What is interesting is that unlike the murders that Dr. Braun has been committing which leave the person in the real world unharmed (although mentally scarred), the “Chinese Invasion” is a fail safe which kills the characters both in the virtual world and the real world, thus freeing them from the endless torrment of Dr. Braun. This option gives you good karma in the game. Both my friend and I remarked that it seemed odd to receive “karma” for killing these characters, even if it was, presumably, an act of mercy. In the game’s moral system, it is morally better to kill people than to allow them to be tortured in a virtual world, despite the fact that the characters themselves have no way of communicating to you their preference. You are, in effect, rewarded for judging the worth of someone’s life and then killing them based on that judgement.

This quest presents players with a fairly complex moral dilemma, which I think is good for mature games to do, but the complexity of this situation is reduced by the moral system of the game by offering the player a moral binary. To torture and kill in a virtual world is evil, but to save those people by killing them in the real world is good. The game is presenting me not only with a moral situation, a fact that needlessly preoccupies much of the “moral” discussion of video games, but a moral system by which to act in that situation. In general, these moral systems appeal to fairly universal ethics: murder, theft, and lying are wrong; sacrifice, benevolence, and honesty are good. But in Fallout 3, I was confronted with a morality that was much more complex and yet the judgment of that situation was disturbingly simple and challenged my beliefs.

Certainly video games are not the only medium which presents both moral situations and systems. Books, films, television and most stories involve some judgment on the actions of the characters, and this judgment constitutes a moral system, even if it is limited. But video games are unique in that they invite the player to engage and act out the plot in a way that differs from other storytelling mediums. I might identify with a character in a book or movie, but I am not making his choices. I will always be distant from them because I have no agency in their world (unless you include “Choose Your Own Adventure” books…). In a video game, particularly role playing games, I am given some, albeit limited, agency. Which leads me to the question, how should Christians respond to video games which call what is evil, good?*

It could be argued by some that games like this can and will redefine our morality in an unbiblical and dangerous way by rewarding us when we act according to the game’s morality, not the Truth. There are several assumptions in this argument that make it untenable. It assumes that the player is oblivious to the morality expressed by the games and that actions in a game can have profound and penetrating affects on our most basic beliefs. The validity of both assumptions depends entirely on the context of the situation and the maturity of the player, and so this response seems to be less than satisfactory.

Another response is to note that games are only likely to become more emersive and involve more complex moral systems. As games allow players to enter into more realistic and emersive worlds and offer them more varied actions and moral choices in that world, the moral systems that judge the player’s actions will have to engage increasingly complex situations. In this sense, it seems important for us to begin considering how to respond to the way video games portray morality now so that we are prepared to deal with this issue as it becomes more prominent.

For now, I believe the most important action we can take in response to the presentation of morality in video games is to make an effort to identify how a game treats morality and how that differs from God’s Truth. The reality is that all man-made moral systems (including ones we impose upon ourselves in moments or periods of legalism) are corruptions of the truth; they inevitably are unjust and confuse what is evil for what is good. Our calling is not to merely condemn and flee from these systems, but to honestly and graciously understand them, identifying what is a corruption and labeling it as such and agreeing with what is right.  I chose to unleash the Chinese Invasion upon the residents of Tranquility Lane, believing that it was the better of the two options the game gave me. Although I do not agree with the games assessment of my character’s action as “good,” I am thankful that it challenged me to consider how video games are capable of presenting a moral system.

*My point here is not that that particular quest in Fallout 3 confuses evil for good, but that the fact that the moral situation is so complex suggests that if players don’t disagree with this game’s morality, they will find conflict with the morality of future games.

Wait, what?

Glee has always dealt with hard or controversial subjects with a certain amount of irreverence. If the show is guilty of anything, it’s giving deathly serious subjects a slight air of triviality, though they might argue (wrongly) that such an approach is perhaps the only way to speak to the current generation of teenagers. Either way, this has been Glee‘s voice and it’s made for a fascinating and entertaining show. Even if we may not be coming to the table with the same assumptions as Glee, we can appreciate the show for its fairness and frankness. While the rest of popular culture either refuses to acknowledge the typical teenage taboos, or normalizes them to an embarrassing degree, Glee has the guts to question them and wrestle with them. Whether the discussion focuses on sex, teenage pregnancy, self-image, disability or relationships with parents, each side of the issue is given a fair voice, even if the show does often come out on one side or another of an issue.

For the most part, faith is given a similar treatment in this episode. As is usual for a hot-topic related Glee episode, each member of New Directions is leveraged to present their own distinct opinion about the subject at hand. The two extremes are represented in Kurt’s staunch atheism and Finn’s blind faith. In between, we are treated to cursory expressions of agnosticism, Judaism and Christianity. Quinn expresses her thanks for God bringing her through a pregnancy, while Santana mocks her thanksgiving. Puck expresses frustration at Finn’s using Jesus’ name to cramp everyone’s style. The teacher expresses nothing and merely facilitates, perhaps a wise response when such a discussion breaks out in a public school setting.

This all sounds perfectly fair, and for the most part it is. Still, as the episode progresses, the question of what one believes becomes far less important than the question of why one believes it. When we hear from Sue in this episode, it’s clear that her reasons for sharing in Kurt’s atheism stem from a place of both compassion and reason. First, God doesn’t make sense. And if he did, why doesn’t he heal her mentally challenged sister? Kurt expresses frustration that, if God exists he “makes me gay and then has his followers going around telling me it’s something that I chose.” Quinn, one of the Christians, can’t handle it: “We shouldn’t be talking about this. It’s not right!”

The telling thing about the episode is that while Sue and Kurt have the opportunity to share why they believe what they believe, the rest of the cast come across as blindly dogmatic. Even Finn, who had the benefit of seeing a sign from God on his grilled cheese, could claim to have more reason for faith than the rest of the characters. So why do these people believe in God? Glee offers the answer by way of Mercedes, in a stirring speech to Kurt:

I know you don’t believe in God. You don’t believe in the power of prayer, and that’s okay. To each his own. But you’ve got to believe in something. Something more than you can touch, taste or see. Cause life’s too hard to go at it alone, without something to hold on to, and without something that’s sacred.

And there we have Christianity framed as a coping mechanism or crutch rather than anything close to a reasoned response to the world around us. It’s not so much that it makes sense of the world. According to Glee, it’s that faith of any sort allows us cope with the harsh realities we face every day as human beings. Jesus Christ is just one of many things we can cling to in this endeavor. Nothing more, nothing less.

Kurt agrees, but finds that something to be his Dad, whose heart-attack forms the emotional core of the episode. It’s this event, not finding Jesus’ face on a grilled cheese sandwich, that the show demonstrates to be the real instigator of religious and spiritual thought. For Kurt, it confirms his belief in his dad and his disbelief in God.

So yes, Glee truly does understand that many of us have a deeply personal need to devote ourselves to something bigger than ourselves. The only thing they don’t understand is that for most true Christians, belief isn’t a luxury. It often makes things harder, more troubling, and more disturbing. We don’t believe it because it comforts us. We believe it because it rings true. Does it often seem as if God has betrayed us? Yes. But more often, I feel as if I’ve betrayed God. I am deeply in tune with how awful I am, and how deep my need for salvation truly is. And when I look out into the world, I don’t see a meaningless nothing as much as I see a world in need of saving, with no hope except for the only One that makes any real sense to me.

This Week: Son of Rambow is the rare brilliant movie that you’ve almost certainly never seen. Fortunately for you, it’s now available on Netflix Instant Watch. To celebrate the movie’s new availability, we feature Carissa’s plea on its’ behalf.

Summer is the time for big-budget movies; it’s also apparently the season when we, in the eyes of studios, should prefer to watch escapist fantasy (not that fantasy is necessarily escapist, but studios seem to think that’s its primary value). So how about taking an hour and a half this summer to celebrate the ultimate cinematic fantasy: the dream that a community will actually recognize and embrace the talent and vision of an obscure and unlikely moviemaker? Such is the dream at the center of Son of Rambow, the first film written by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy director Garth Jennings (who also directs here). Son of Rambow is ultimately uneven in quality, veering off into melodrama by its end, but even with its visible seams, it’s by far preferable to most of summer’s film-by-numbers offerings.

Son of Rambow was released in the summer of 2008, but unless you live in Los Angeles or New York, you probably had no chance to see it until it was released on DVD. Set in 1980s Britain, the film focuses on two very different boys who become fascinated with First Blood, the movie that introduced the world to Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo. One of the boys, Lee Carter (Will Poulter, soon to be seen as Eustace Clarence Scrubb in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), is the archetypal school troublemaker, though he also dreams of making a film and entering it in a young filmmakers’ competition. Will Proudfoot, on the other hand, is quiet and well-behaved; he belongs to a strict religious sect called “the Brethren” (it’s not really clear whether they’re supposed to be the Plymouth Brethren) that forbids its members from watching movies. The boys meet when Lee, forcibly expelled from his classroom by a teacher, lobs a tennis ball at Will, who has been sent into the hallway while the rest of his class watches a documentary. Despite this inauspicious beginning, Lee soon manages to recruit Will as an “extra” for his film.

It’s while Will is over at Lee’s house that he catches his first glimpses of video clips from First Blood. For some reason, either the character of Rambo or the new (to him) medium of film—or perhaps both—further inspires his own artistic endeavors: fanciful drawings covering his sketchbook and the walls of the boys’ bathroom. These drawings, under the influence of Rambo, begin to take on the frame of a story in which Will, as the son of “Rambow” (the misspelling presumably reflects Will’s ignorance of pop culture), tries to rescue his father from an evil scarecrow—with the assistance of a flying dog, no less. Lee agrees to use Will’s stories and artistic concepts as the basis for his film.

Son of Rambow could have easily become a film exploring the effect of violent movies on young boys, and perhaps that film would also have been interesting—but this is not that film. The real film takes for granted the boys’ assumption that Rambo is a worthy basis for their own cinematic masterpiece, and that’s fine. The real focus of the movie has to do with art and community. Lee and Will, despite their differences, are brought together into a partnership through their shared vision; that partnership is challenged when the boys disagree about whether their moviemaking should be opened up to the participation of a larger community. Didier, the popular French foreign-exchange student who swaggers through the school with a posse of English imitators in tow, discovers Will’s sketchbook and asks to be in the movie. Suddenly the two-person projects swells to a full cast and crew.

One of the most refreshing things about Son of Rambow is how Lee, Didier, and Didier’s followers all recognize Will’s giftedness and, despite his youth, his less-than-imposing physical stature, and his “weird” religious background, place themselves under his artistic leadership. Son of Rambow challenges us to remember the possibilities of childhood, rather than its pressures: especially the possibility that others will recognize talent and respect it accordingly. (The flipside is also presented in a later scene in the movie, in which we see Didier, who has been idolized by the English schoolboys, experiencing the utter scorn of his French schoolmates—popularity, Son of Rambow suggests, is largely an accident of circumstance, but talent has a chance of transcending circumstance.)

However, the film never really deals with the question of whether Will’s artistry is unique because of his strict religious background. The Brethren, for Will, seem to be defined by their prohibitions more than their faith-propositions—and that’s quite possibly the way a child would view such a sect. Whether it intends to or not, however, the film asks us to consider how Will’s lack of media exposure has shaped his art for the better. When he does discover film, the medium excites him and adds to his creativity, but it might not have been such an inspiration had movies been a part of his life from birth; even Rambo might have been merely flashing images and background noise to him.

Though Son of Rambow ultimately doesn’t wrestle enough with the questions of how Will’s faith community and his new artistic community should intersect—it’s implied that Will’s family will simply leave the Brethren, at least in part for his sake—I think it might be a particularly worthwhile film for those whose religious background restricted their participation in the arts, whether as observers or creators. Having never been in that position myself, I’m hesitant to judge how meaningful the film would be for others from a stricter upbringing, but I think it could help us all to remember that restrictions don’t always suppress our gifts; sometimes they call forth our gifts in new and unexpected ways. Again, I think Son of Rambow would be much more substantial and satisfying if it really explored the reasons that the Brethren opposed movies—and whether, in this particular community, they could somehow support their young brother without compromising the essentials of their faith. These are the tensions that we live out as Christians engaged in arts and pop culture, and these are the kind of questions some obscure summer movie near you (or, possibly, far from you) may be raising, even if they don’t always provide satisfactory answers.

Christ and Pop Culture: You made public last year that you no longer believed in God. Where are you at now in relation to that?
David Bazan: That process had been 5 or 6 years in the making, the last 2 of which were writing and recording the album.

CaPC: Are you further from belief in God than you were last year?
DB: It’s similar. The more I study the Bible and the character of God in the Bible, the less likely it becomes that I believe that.

CaPC: You mentioned recently that the culture wars are mainly about Darwin. There is a movement of Christians who see their faith as incongruous with science. Many of them have embraced theistic evolution to reconcile the two. Would this approach have worked for you?
DB: I’m familiar with that. I know Francis Collins (geneticist, director NIH) takes that view. The creation account was not a deal breaker for me. I’m a line item guy.

CaPC: Were there any particular deal breakers for you?
DB: In Genesis 1, God’s reaction to the sin of the garden.

CaPC: Were you ever angry at God, as C.S. Lewis puts it, for not existing?
DB: Not really, no. Just disappointed in how it turned out to be. I still pray, but not to a personal God. I say prayers of gratitude. I believe in a cosmic consciousness or whatever. I would like to believe. I just can’t. I have to be truthful about how I understand things.

CaPC: Did Calvinism have any role in your loss of faith?
DB:I don’t think so. I never bought into that entirely. Of course, they have Romans 9 which is difficult to argue against.
See, it’s kind of funny to use the word faith. I have faith. I have faith that there’s no heaven, faith that there’s no hell but I don’t have any interest in being a spokesperson for atheism or agnosticism.

CaPC: Are you working on new material?
DB: Well, I’m in the studio, but not recording. Right now, we’re just working on some new songs.

CaPC: How soon can we expect a new album?
DB: I can’t really say. We’re just getting started. It’ll be awhile.

Bazan said that there had not been any particular books to encourage his disbelief. He emphasized the importance of study in his life. He expressed disinterest in Dawkins and Hitchens and conversely, distaste for Lee Strobel preferring more academic, less bias and less rehashing of old arguments. “I still read Christian books. But I’m not going to read Lee Strobel.” He stated “Tim Keller’s The Reason for God had some good points but was otherwise a flaccid entry.”

He gushed about Peter Enns Inspiration and Incarnation describing it as helpful to Christians trying to make sense of contemporary biblical criticism in light of their faith. He added, “I would like to see a growing movement among evangelicals to confront textual inconsistencies.”

CaPC: Having been on the inside, when do you think Christian culture is at its best?
DB: Anytime something is given a label like Christian the quality suffers. I like when anyone tells their story honestly. That’s always good.

After establishing “Christians in a band” as the preferred qualifier of good Christian music Bazan asked, “Do you want to know Christian bands I like? I dig Starflyer 59. They’re on Tooth & Nail. I guess that makes them a Christian band. And the Innocence Mission are rad.”

CaPC: Has this shift freed you up artistically?
DB: I don’t think so. I made a point before to not be restricted in my writing but it has freed me up personally. I feel a lot better about everything.

This Week: There are so many returning favorites and intriguing new programs this fall season, that it’s possible you’ll find yourself spending some significant amount of time watching television throughout the week. Here’s an article about how to leverage those television programs to benefit your relationships.

Television has a bad reputation when it comes to its ability to promote social interaction between friends. This reputation is mostly deserved. Television, while beginning as a family-oriented medium has morphed into our most despised national treasure. Take our television and we’ll hate you forever, though we know we’ll probably be better off.

Why? Because the medium lends itself to passivity, laziness, and obsession, among other things. The very fact that for most, television is a guilty pleasure – something we realize is probably overall bad for us but that we feel we have to have – demonstrates the inherant disarming and trivializing influence of television: we feel as if we can’t do anything to prevent its’ influence on our lives, and even if we could, surely it’s not that big of a deal anyway, right?

One of the most disturbing results of TV watching is its often monumental stamp on our relationships with others. Television is often viewed as a private activity, and when one considers how often we choose to stay in and watch television when we have opportunities to be with others, we begin to see how resolutely community is cut off.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In an effort to take back community without giving up our television, I offer 4 ways to watch television and build community. As a special bonus, they all involve words in quotes. Neat.

1. Embrace the “commercial vacuum.”
Yes, commercials can be annoying. They interupt the flow of a story and can compromise the artistic integrity of a television program. They can also be incredibly annoying, or even worse, subversively convincing. So why embrace them? Because they give those watching television a chance to mute the television and debrief. Don’t be overly formal. Just mute the television and sit there. You’re bound to talk about something. Of course, asking pointed questions of one another is bound to improve this opportunity.

2. Make it an “event.”
If you find others who are excited about something coming on television, invite them over and throw a party around it! Season premieres, season finales, each and every episode of Lost or The Office. These can join the likes of the SuperBowl and awards shows as reasons to hang out with friends and debate the various plot points.

3. Set limits for your television “alone time.”
Television time doesn’t have to be wasted if it’s spent with friends. On the other hand, if you’re merely using television to please yourself with no other purpose, the chances increase significantly that your time could be better spent. Place limits, or better yet, determine exactly which shows you will allow yourself to watch alone and never turn on the television unless you’re doing so to watch those specific shows.

4. Embrace the “common ground” at the “water cooler”
What many perceive to be shallow and foolish talk can often morph into conversation about morality, salvation, redemption and spirituality. If we write off this possibility, we run the risk of coming across as (and being) overly pretentious and self-righteous. Refusing to watch television is admirable. Watching television but refusing to talk about it is downright dangerous.

This Week: As college football starts to ramp up, we share this meditation by Chase Livingston on what it means to be a fan.

I grew up at the tail end of an empire. That empire was known as the Crimson Tide. As far as I knew, every living soul loved Alabama Football with the exception of terrorists and baby killers. Their number one fan just happened to be my old man. Once he traded our bunk beds for a blanket which had been custom made for a former Tide player. We had the commemorative Bear Bryant Coca-Cola bottles, as did all of my extended family. I had a helmet lamp with a battered shade and framed pictures of “the Bear” as well as the newspaper which had announced his death in a display case. My room was white with red trim to match my genetically-inherited fandom and Dad completed it by painting an elephant on the wall.

When I was born, I was brought home in an oversized tee which boasted me as a “future player”. The red of that shirt effectively brought out the pink of my complexion. That was my father’s dream; that I would grow up to be a star athlete for the Crimson Tide. Dad was especially proud of book reports I did on Bear Bryant, Joe Namath, and similarly, Knute Rockne. I was excited to sign up for midget league football but as it turned out I was not as naturally, athletically gifted as we had hoped. It wasn’t all bad. I did have a few glorious moments as nose guard. Nonetheless, it was not the game for me. When it ceased to be fun, Dad assured me I didn’t have to play anymore. Still not wanting to be a “quitter” of any stripe I stuck it out for another miserable season before dropping the ball (pun intended).

In 6th grade, it suddenly was fashionable to fan other teams and to dis on Alabama. Dad explained to me that these kids were fickle and that anyone could pull for the current favorite. A true fan stood by his team through it all. No longer a Heisman candidate, I transitioned my ambition to being one of these true fans. I wore a sweatshirt, one we had bought for Dad, which listed state and national championships among other impressive stats. My knowledge of sports was very limited outside the contents of that sweater. Still, I debated those points with my wishy-washy classmates. After awhile, seeing it was futile, I bored of the discussion. I lost interest in watching the games too as I hardly understood them.

After Stallings’ resignation the university’s football program would appear dead in the water for the next decade. The critics were giddy to report the empire’s postmortem status. This was a rough patch, to say the least, a fact best evidenced by the record number of head coaches over the next several years. If ever there was a true fan, my Dad was it. He remained hopeful season after season that soon enough the empire would be reborn. He explained that this process was a rebuilding. Year after year, he’d assert that this would be their year. Every year when that didn’t happen, the sadder the story seemed. I wanted to believe him but it was so hard to. Once upon a time, I had loved them because he loved them. I had rooted for them because he did. I had taken his word for it but now I had questions. While his enthusiasm had inspired me along the way I hardly saw the point anymore.

Last year as the Titans blazed through ten straight wins, my interested piqued. I had come to call Nashville home and the spirit of the city was one of excitement. My co-workers wore jerseys on Fridays. We were even permitted a casual Tuesday if we wore blue. Any blue would do. Whether they won or lost mattered to me and this was troubling. Why did it matter? Why did anyone care at all? The idea that a team winning a game could unite a city seemed most ludicrous. And yet, it seemed to be exactly what was happening. I talked to my Dad about the Titans winning streak. He reminded me that he only cared about one thing: Alabama Football. And Mom, God bless her, gave me an earful about how Tennessee wasn’t really my home.

Amid the excitement, I hadn’t noticed that Alabama was having a winning streak of their own. That elusive perfect season had arrived. Unfortunately, it ended as Florida took away the SEC championship. This afternoon the two rivals meet again. I want the Tide to win for a very simple reason. I’ve seen glimpses of a once-great empire, an empire that my Dad and I share belief in, and I want that empire to reign supreme. Ridiculous, yes but isn’t that why we pull for our team? The rule of “kingdoms passing away” applies to football but we pull for teams not because they are necessarily the best but because they represent something of our ideology. I stopped caring about football when I stopped understanding it and when it seemed pointless. There are parallels between my early inherited fandom and an inherited faith. At some point, both have to become personal or else they die. There is an empire not of this world, unseen of this world, which one ought to have faith in. Faith being the substance of things unseen can be a lot like loving a perennially losing team.

5 Practical Ways for Keeping the Faith:

Learn everything you can so that you can adequately answer why you believe. This is important when others ask but also for when you question it yourself.

Understand that the institution is merely an instrument of the empire. That is, don’t expect perfection from the church. It is made of broken players just like yourself.

Remember, everyone can’t be QB. Teams need people in bleachers too.

Consider the unwaning enthusiasm of the die-hard fan. Be as excited about your church team in season and out. Your enthusiasm will serve to inspire others.

Remember where your home is. Winning seasons, like spiritual high points, come and go but even the best of times are merely a glimpse of future glories. Remember your home and do everything to see the dream realized.

I’ll leave you with the words of the immortal Mac Powell of Third Day who last night said, “Hope I get to meet Tim Tebow tomorrow and tell him “Roll Tide, God bless you.’”

This Week: As if we needed another indication that Glenn Beck wasn’t interested in making friends, his upcoming speech at the same place and date as Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech has done little else besides frustrate and shock those who disagree with him. Needless to say, his style is heat-generating, focused on controversy rather than consensus, but in this article, Richard Clark points out that Beck is lacking not only in style, but in truthful substance.

Is Capitalism evil? Is President Bush a bad president? Should health care be offered to everyone in all circumstances? Does everyone deserve a job? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It’s that simple. Or at least, that’s what Michael Moore would have you think. And many have taken the bait.

Let’s get this straight: Michael Moore (and those who appreciate his films) are not completely off base. They’re right to point out the glaring flaws of capitalism, the problems with the abuses of executive power, and the need to take care of those who are sick and hurting. Christians would do well to listen to some of their arguments and engage them, and the Christians who count themselves among Moore supporters (of which there are an increasing number) are certainly not to be expected to simply “get over it.” As Christians living in a fallen world, one of the things we are meant to do is to bring the attributes of God to life in a real, tangible way. This is what being a “light on a hill” is all about.

Of course, how we go about doing this is where it gets complicated. Should we attempt to pass legislation so that a more just society will continue for generations, or is that simply an impossible fool’s errand? Should we seek merely to carry out as many acts of kindness as we can as individuals or are we wasting our time when we could be accomplishing some more “big picture” changes?

There may be answers to these questions. I certainly have my opinions. But one thing is for certain: Michael Moore is not supplying us with those answers. In fact, he is short-circuiting the discussion by oversimplifying it. While his concerns are often real and valid, he often invalidates his claims by framing them in broad, foreboding strokes. In Bowling for Columbine, the NRA is painted as an offshoot of the KKK (because it was established around the same time the KKK was disbanded), a group of hapless followers of the foreboding villain, Charlton Heston who, with the help of a craftily edited series of interviews and speeches, was made to look as if he was spitting on the graves of the victims of 9/11 and their families. In Fahrenheit 9/11, Bush was portrayed solely as a President who saw 9/11 as nothing except for an opportunity to invade a country in order to benefit his wealthy friends. In Sicko, the American health care system is portrayed as utterly broken, while Europe is portrayed as an example of perfect justice in the realm of health care. In Moore’s world, it was all so simple.

But the thing is, it’s just not. In this world there are no unadulterated villains and heroes. Comparing Bush to Hitler serves to either alienate those who differ or dilute the horror and tragedy of the holocaust. Lesser villains equated to great villains simply creates an army of people who have no clue what true evil and tragedy looks like.

Moore doesn’t usually outright lie (though he’s been known to come pretty close). Instead, he oversimplifies. He paints with a broad brush and dehumanizes everyone who disagrees with him. And others are following suit.

The scary thing is, those following suit are not always liberal democrats. Glenn Beck, who many see as one of the main voices for conservative politics, wrote a book with the empathetic and edifying title, “Arguing with Idiots.” He is apparently fast and loose with words like “socialism,” “racism,” and “indoctrination.” When Barack Obama sought to encourage students in a speech to do well in school, Glenn Beck called it indoctrination. He called global warming “the greatest scam in history.”

What Michael Moore and Glenn Beck have in common is a disdain for complexity. They find clarifying arguments to be frustrating and counterproductive to their cause and will seek to villainize anyone who suggests them. Watch, for instance, the calculated way in which Moore responds to criticisms of Sicko, not by addressing the issues but by claiming the entire news network is biased. Similarly, note how Glenn Beck, when asked simply to clarify his own statement, begins to accuse the news media of “trapping” him. When faced with the possibility that there may be more to an issue than at first meets the eye, both Beck and Moore become visibly frustrated.

To follow Moore’s or Beck’s lead is a huge mistake. While it may seem tempting to take the easy way to winning an argument, there are three crucial principles the Christians must never lose sight of: First, for the Christian, truth is a value that must be both treasured and actively protected, not only by refusing to tell lies, but by also acknowledging truths even when they are inconvenient. Second, Christians must remember that winning arguments is last on the list of priorities, and that political debate oftentimes serves to distract from the gospel. Imagine how thrilled Satan must be when we argue with our unsaved family members about socialism and gay marriage. Finally, we must remember that we are merely pilgrims in this world, and that any political defeat or victory will only last until he comes and is therefore of diminishing importance as each second passes.

Are Michael Moore and Glenn Beck horrible people? Man, it sure is tempting to say so, and it may even be partially truth. But the real truth is, it’s just not that simple.

This Week: With a recent poll indicating that people are still unsure of our president’s religious affiliation, Barack Obama’s faith is yet again front and center. Two years ago, before Obama was president, Bill Reichart wrote about the idiosyncrasies of Obama’s religious background and beliefs.

We are coming to the end of the Democratic National Convention and Denver, and no matter what you might think and believe politically, the fact is that we have witnessed a historic event.  For the first time in the history of our country, a major political party has nominated an African-American as their party’s candidate.

Even though Barack Obama has received overwhelming acclamation and support, many people are still wondering, “who is this man?”  And one of the key issues being asked about is Barack’s faith.  Stephen Mansfield in his newly released book, The Faith of Barack Obama, attempts to address that question.  Mansfield has written an honest and balanced account of Barack’s faith addressing the many questions and concerns people have about Barack’s life and faith.

Knowing a candidate’s faith is essential.  According to Mansfield, the book is written in the belief “that if a man’s faith is sincere, it is the most important thing about him, and that it is impossible to understand who he is and how he will lead without first understanding the religious vision that informs his life.”

Barack’s story of faith isn’t typical of the American experience. For instance, if Barack ascends to the presidency he will be the first American president to do so having not been raised in a Christian home.  Instead, he spent his early years under the influence of an atheist mother, a step-father’s folk Islam, praying at the feet of a Catholic Jesus, and influenced with a humanist’s understanding of the world that sees religion merely as a man-made thing.

In Barack’s adult life, his spiritual journey toward Christianity also defies pattern and refuses to fit in a clean theological box, although his coming to faith typifies the pattern and process that many Americans have journeyed. He came to faith not so much to join a religious tradition, but rather to find belonging among a people. In Barack’s memoir, Audacity of Hope, he describes his religious conversion as such: “it came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear.  But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me.  I submitted myself to His will and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”

Barack’s beliefs are tailored to and reflect the diverse religious experience of America.  For Barack, “Christianity is but one religious tree rooted in the common ethical soil of all human experience.”

Within the book, Mansfield effectively addresses the lingering questions of Barack’s brush with Islam and whether or not he is a secret Muslim.  Mansfield’s answer is a unequivocal NO.  Also Mansfield dissects and seeks to understand the religious soil of Trinity United Church of Christ and Jeremiah Wright, the environment where Barack’s faith first took root.  Mansfield discovered from first hand experience that Trinity’s a mixture of both good and bad.  According to Mansfield, his experience transcended more than just the couple of Jeremiah Wright bombastic video clips on YouTube that have come to define the religious culture at Trinity.

Barack not only forged and developed his faith during his adult years, but he also allowed his faith to intersect with his political life.  What became distinct of Barack Obama was that he unapologetically brought his faith into the public square and within Democratic politics.  Mansfield writes about Obama’s speech to Jim Wallis’s progressive Sojourners organization, “With the speech’s tone of moderation, its welcome of faith into the public square, and yet its insistence that people of faith conduct themselves in public debate according to democratic values, it became what Obama had intended: a call to reform, a redefinition of religion’s role in American political life. Soon, his words were debated on cable news programs, heard by tens of thousands on YouTube, and argued fiercely on Web sites from every political perspective.”

Mansfield’s book takes a fair and balanced tone to the discussion of Barack’s faith.  Mansfield is honest with some of the lingering questions and concerns that still swirl around Barack, especially concerning Barack’s view of abortion and his voting record on partial birth abortion.

As you take the time examine both candidates this election year, I would encourage you to pick of a copy of The Faith of Barack Obama, and take the time to get to know a facet of a man that you may have not have already known.

For those of us who believe the latter, this state of affairs seems on the face of it to be alright with us. As long as popular culture refuses to take the practice seriously as an option, they are prevented from making any flippant or trivial arguments in its’ favor. The truth of the matter, though, is that abortion doesn’t need arguments in its’ favor. For those who find themselves or their significant other pregnant against their will, the option of abortion when separated from its’ inherent cultural and moral stigma  is virtually magical. Like sex itself, abortion doesn’t need popular culture’s support because in an age where reversing a pregnancy is possible, it seems like the only logical choice.

This is why it’s such a brave and crucial thing for Friday Night Lights to commit to addressing the subject without a blatant agenda and without leaving out any crucial steps along the way. When Becky finds herself pregnant with a football player’s baby, she finds herself at a loss as to any other way to handle the situation. Her boyfriend, while good-natured and caring, is relatively passive when it comes to the decision. They both know not to challenge what their culture tells them: that this decision is purely the woman’s decision, and no man – even the father – has the right to any input.

Implicit in the episode is the unsettling truth that Becky’s mom is anxious for her to go through with the abortion out of experience: if Becky had never been born, it would have been better for her mom. This only serves to complicate the already complex decision Becky is trying to make. Interestingly, it’s her mom’s “pro-choice” values that seem to be pushed on her during this critical time of decision making. When a doctor appears to merely be sharing some important information about what abortion is, and Becky seems to be interested, her mother sees it as most pro-choice advocates would: a pointless result of a brutally political law. As her mom rails against the doctor, all Becky knows is that her mom must really want her to go through with this abortion.

The most heartbreaking moment of the episode is when Becky goes to visit Coach Taylor’s wife for some advice. She visits them not because she knows them and trusts them, but because she has no where else to go. It’s clear Becky would like to go through with the pregnancy. She speculates on how she would defy all odds and make the baby feel loved and cared for – exactly the things she is not. But she simply doesn’t see a way to make it happen. She tells Tami Taylor what she believes to be the inevitable truth, through tears: “I can’t take care of a baby.”

Obviously, if abortion is what we say it is, this is hardly a good excuse for going through with it. On the other hand, it does draw attention to one of the key reasons many scared teenagers do seek out an abortion: they feel totally and utterly alone. Becky has been failed by her family, her community, and her friends. Of all the people who are faced with this predicament, none of them says to her, “If you do want to have this baby, we will help you.”

…until it’s too late. When her boyfriend calls and says that he is willing to make it work, that he’ll do anything within his power to make it work, and makes an actual appealing case for raising a child, all she’s able to say is that she “took care of it.” If this were a lesser show, the emotions on display would be relief, but this is Friday Night Lights, and they know that regret is inevitable here. For a while, at least, those two teenagers will be dwelling on what could have been, and what’s been lost.

What this, the first realistic and honest look at the issue I’ve seen on television, demonstrates is that in a culture where abortion is far off from being inaccessible or illegal, it becomes even more inevitable in the face of what is for many teenagers an utter lack of community and companionship. In every town or city, there are countless girls who are starved for the love and affection that a boyfriend will give them, but who lack the guidance of a good parent. What our culture lacks in connectedness and shared community, Christians can make up for, simply by making ourselves available.

Reading this passage on the DC metro several summers ago, I immediately thought of my own old friendships. Several of them date back to before high school. I recall summers spent in one friend’s basement watching really bad Adult Swim shows on the Cartoon Network; or going to the local, all-night diner, eating subpar food and watching drunks arrive to sober up before going home. We would debate music, movies, politics, religion, philosophy—really anything and everything we could think to argue.

The intervening years brought increasingly diverging dress, political views, music tastes, hobbies, and moral outlook. To increase the divides, we are now spread across the state of Ohio and, in my case, across the country. In spite of these changes, the bonds between us endure. We still speak with some regularity; we still go out of our way to meet when in the same city. The meetings often become what they were back in high school—debates over anything and everything sprinkled with the storytelling that revives the best (and sometimes worst) of times past. Like Tolstoy’s novel, our friendship contains elements so deep, so secure that while we would likely never become friends were we to meet today, it is even harder to imagine losing such friendship after all this time.

Yet one important divergence between us has not been mentioned. In the last few years two of my friends have become avowed atheists.

The difficulties surrounding this change have been legion. Zealous new converts, their conversations have been consumed with proofs against God’s existence and assaults upon organized religion. In addition, their brand of atheism owes much to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, the so-called “New Atheists.” Coming from this polemical lineage, their atheism is not one of sad doubt but intense surety. They do not bewail the death of God in their minds but rejoice, all-the-while heaping up attacks upon the God of Scripture that are nothing short of base, often very lewd blasphemy. These actions have strained our friendship probably more than they realize. The gulf between God and themselves has created distance between us.

I further struggle with the eternity of our discussions. Though I believe God is sovereign over salvation,  that does not preclude the intensely held hope that He will soften even the hardest heart among my friends. I desire that we be united in Christ as we have been united in friendship.

With these personal experiences I have been driven again and again to the question:  what does it look like to love your atheist friend? Not in the abstract; not in the form of some cloudy, benevolent feeling; but loving in real actions that take place in real circumstances. The following ideas form the core of what I have tried, though certainly not always succeeded, to do.

First, I try to show my friends that our friendship is not conditional. They are not my friends because they meet a certain check-list of dos and don’ts. After all, what check-list would we meet for each other, considering our vast differences? I hope that in some way such actions will show them that the essence of Christianity is a relationship, one built not on performance but on eternal faithfulness. The Christianity they attack is nothing like this but a sad tale of self-righteous self-salvation through adhering to rules and degrading those who do not.

Second, I have tried to engage them respectfully on their arguments. Too often they have had family and friends reject them outright as moral horrors because of their lack of belief, persons who then are either unable or unwilling to discuss the merits or weaknesses of their arguments. Such actions have only fueled their belief that religious persons believe blindly and irrationally, that my friends are the enlightened ones who have shed monkish ignorance and bravely stared at the heavens as they are—empty.

Yet while engaging them on this intellectual level, I have tried to remind them that they are human beings, not floating brains. Their atheism comes from the full human spring of the social, emotional, and intellectual just as my Christianity flows from these personal streams.

Third, I have tried to stay friends and not become merely debating partners. Sometimes Christians can turn friendships into one long , explicit evangelistic endeavor. While in one sense we must always be showing others the love of Christ, that does not mean we must always discuss Scriptural proofs. Relationships out of which the Gospel can be seen as well as heard seems the best way.

Fourth and finally, I have tried to be honest with them and with myself. I have tried to own up to wrongs I have done and do so in a manner that truly looks to costly grace and not either legalism or libertinism. Such actions have caused renewed vigor on my part to fight sin and temptation, study God’s Word, and fellowship with other believers for both love, counsel, and correction. God has used this situation to further His work in me.

In the end, I do not know how God will work out this situation. Will my friends come to a redemptive knowledge of Christ or be forever separated from Him and from fellowship with me? Only God knows for only God is sovereign. I pray, though, for faithfulness and patience, much more than I have yet shown, that these friendships may not end but grow in the manner God would have them.  Perhaps by His grace, our childhood friendship would realize the greatest commonality—union with Christ.

In my role as a pastor I find myself doing several things on a constant basis: responding to e-mails, reading and studying, and planning my week. Now I’ve done all those things for years without an iPad and done them just fine, but what the iPad has allowed me to do is to take on these same tasks from beyond the walls of my office. Without having to lug around a bag full of books, a laptop, and a daily planner I am able to pick up my work and move to the coffee shop up the street and work for several hours. This has opened up so many more opportunities for evangelism.

One of the downfalls of being in pastoral ministry is that you can very easily spend all of your days with Christians and lose sight of the need for pastors to be consistently involved in evangelism. The iPad has allowed me the freedom to do my work and share the gospel (not to mention that every average Joe wants a peek at it, thus opening doors for conversation). With the iPad I have my Greek and Hebrew tools accessible to me anywhere I go, I have countless books at my fingertips, and I can drop an e-mail as quickly as I want. All that being said, however, there is a common language about the iPad and ministry that is beginning to concern me.

The iPad is being hailed as a technological revolution. I am not sure it warrants that title… not yet, anyways. It has certainly opened up a whole new category of products between laptops and smart phones, but the real stretch in my mind are the young tech savy pastors who claim that the iPad will “revolutionize ministry.” This seems not simply a stretch to me, but a dangerous train of thought. Pastoral ministry is about helping people grow in their knowledge of, love for, and obedience to God. It is about ministering to people, pointing them to the gospel, opening God’s Word for them and with them. As great as the iPad is I am not quite sure how it is going to “revolutionize” all of that.

There are some who view technology as the key to successful business and successful ministry (these people obviously haven’t read Jim Collins). Some think that if you’re going to grow, if you’re going to connect with people, if you’re going to maintain relevance then technology is an absolute necessity. I’ll be the first to admit that technology has much untapped potential for the church, but to suggest that ministry in the 21st century can’t be conducted without it is, in my view, ridiculous. The iPad may change many things (reading, web-surfing, etc.), but to suggest that it will drastically transform pastoral ministry may say more about the quality of some pastor’s ministry than about the iPad.

I love my iPad, I really do. But if I need it to love my people then I am not a good pastor. If I can use it to help serve them, then I will, but I, like all Christians, need to be cautious about overly sanctifying my technology. True pastoral ministry can’t be centered around technology, but it can always be done without it.

Sent from my iPad

Every week, Richard Clark and Ben Bartlett acknowledge and respond to the big issues in popular culture. 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, review us in iTunes! We’ll love you forever!

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Normally, our focus rests on issues such as health care, taxes, education, and abortion. When a Supreme Court vacancy must be filled, our attention goes deeper. What is the role of the Judicial branch as opposed to other branches? What is the basis for making and interpreting law? How should we understand the basis and malleability of our Founding documents?

All of these questions pertain to two overarching inquiries:  What is justice and how does it apply to our country? Two answers dominate our national discussion.

The first is the progressive response. This articulation of justice rises out of the Progressive movement which, though tracing back to the late 19^th century, still holds the greatest sway in our regime. Here the two foundational assumptions are History and progress. History does not refer to the list of events and persons that occur through time. Instead, capital “H” History speaks to the intellectual, scientific, and moral movement of civilization. As thought and technology change, so does morality. Justice evolves, being true to one understanding at one time and rightly changing at another. Thus as the Founding Fathers determined that man is endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so each succeeding generation must make the same choice (though not necessarily the same conclusion). The idea of progress assures the historical school that the movement of history has a somewhat Darwinian appeal:  we move toward higher and higher plains of being intellectually and morally just as we do biologically. Though the progress element was severely challenged by the facts of the 20^th century, it remains even in a weakened state. This understanding results in the concept of a “living constitution” where our ruling document is only viable as it is re-understood from generation to generation. This view, in various mutations, is the dominant view of the current Supreme Court.

The second response argues for a more transcendent moral compass. It denies that History so contextualizes justice as to determine its very core. History in the sense of specific cultures and situations may necessitate certain actions. But these actions are the application of justice on the part of the statesman, not the determination of an evolving justice. History is not deterministic. The progress made is not assured. And the progress made is toward an unchanging conception of the good founded in something more permanent than History and deeper than public opinion. Most often, this foundation is articulated as the Declaration of Independence states it, “The laws of nature and nature’s god.” This understanding, having only one real proponent on the Supreme Court, pushes for a Constitution anchored by the principles of the Declaration and understood to be timeless articulations of truth.

Sotomayor as a nominee has done little to further these debates. Her past points to a mostly progressive understanding of justice. Her testimony belies a more moderate, though inconsistent, conception. Thus, either her unwillingness or inability to speak to these deeper issues in a fresh or even clear manner indicates she is unlikely to be an intellectual heavyweight on the Court. She will vote predictably but add little more to her position. This makes our opportunity more difficult. If our discussion of justice and our regime will not be furthered by the nominee, we must conduct it not through but around her.

Therefore, the questions remain: Is our constitution an evolving document, meant to be re-understood with the times? Or does it rest on a deeper foundation that does not change? From the Christian perspective, both present problems. Progressives’ changing justice makes truth less the outflow of God’s character and decree and more the result of accident, naturalistic evolution, and unsteady opinion. The man who stands on History will go the way of one who tries to stand firm upon ebbing and flowing tides. The natural rights argument, however, often makes God too deistic, implicitly denying that transcendent truth can remain when God moves history toward the end of the New Heavens and New Earth. God is actively involved in time, working out His plan exactly as decreed before the world began.

Thus the Christian is necessary in this debate. For only the Biblical view, one that recognizes the History of Redemption while maintaining eternal justice, can truly articulate the world as it is. By intelligently participating in these debates, we can fulfill our calling to be salt and light in the world, to seek the good of the city in which we now live.

In RetroPost, we feature a post from at least one year ago (ancient in pop culture time). The posts are featured because they have some relevance to current happenings, because they are timeless in nature and speak to a relevant issue, or because we plan on providing a follow-up in an upcoming post.

This Week: In our recent poll (which is still open and susceptible to swaying), most of you said you loved video games. This means that many of you are like me: desperate to defend your favorite past-time, and often all too apt to overlook its’ many faults. Unfortunately, video games is just one other medium, and is as a result susceptible to its’ own set of dangers.

Most mediums have been around for long enough time to mature. Video games are another story. Video games were born the same year I was: 1982. And like me, they are still figuring out what on earth they’re going to do with themselves. In the meantime, the medium seems to be reinventing itself every five years, adding new control schemes, more realistic graphics, and unleashing new controversies.

Because of these controversies, no one is a stranger to the dangers of video games, but many are ignorant of the root causes, or ways to guard against them. This post is simply an attempt to get both those who write video games off and those who play video games regularly to stop and consider exactly what it is we are facing.

(Of course, video games aren’t all bad. Check out my post on the Benefits of Video Games)

Video Games can Distract from Real Life
The most well-known problem with video-games is also the most foundational. In fact, this flaw is really the reason for the rest of the flaws listed.
The stereotypical video-gamer who rarely goes outside, showers, or interacts with the opposite sex is very real and can be found in any Gamespot near you. And here’s a news flash: you’re not far from becoming him. Sure, it’s possible to become a video game enthusiast without becoming the stereotype, but it takes some real work. One must think hard about the way one plays video games and what they play, as well as how they react to them. There’s nothing wrong with loving video games, but the key is balance: let nothing become your master.

Video Games can Reward Obsession
One debate in the gaming world right now is whether or not casual gaming is killing off all of the “good” (aka “hardcore”) games. The Nintendo Wii has demonstrated that regular people are willing to play video games if they aren’t forced to spend hours learning special moves and what the 20 various buttons do before they can even begin to succeed. This is why classic games are so attractive to regular people: Pacman takes a total of 20 seconds to figure out.
But then came Street Fighter 2, which added “special moves,” which were activated by button combinations that no one could guess on their own. Inside knowledge was required. Street Fighter 2 and games of its kind actually required study time to excel. Most people agree that right about this time is when people started their exodus from playing video games. They claimed that they just “didn’t have time,” and what they meant was, they only had time to play, not to practice or memorize. That’s probably a pretty healthy attitude toward video games.

Video Games can Alienate you From Others
Just ask my wife: you may be really excited about Super Smash Brothers Brawl, but not everyone feels the love. No one is able to appreciate your favorite game simply because you want them to. People appreciate the people in their lives, not the games in their friends lives and they really just want to spend time with you. Don’t treat people as a “2nd player” (this is something that sounds ridiculous but is a common problem for many gamers) and instead treat them as someone you’d like to hang out with and get to know. Use video games as an opportunity to break the ice. Horror of horrors: You may want to let them win a couple of times. This is exactly the reason I let my wife win every single game of Dr. Mario Rx against me. Yeah, that’s why.

Video Games can Discourage Deep Thought About Critical Issues
Admit it: when you’re playing Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament or Call of Duty, you’re not thinking about whyyou’re doing what you’re doing. You’re simply trying to do it better. This is simply one example of how video games can subtly distract us from moral questions that ought to plague us. While recent games have drawn attention to these moral choices, for the most part games are still in the early artistic stages and designers show little real concern for causing us to stop and think about what we’re doing.
My suggestion: Especially for narrative based games that deal with heavy issues, pause the game and think about what is being simulated. Ask why your character is considered the “hero” of the game. Ask whether or not he should be considered a villain. Most important, probe yourself and ask God to shine a light onto any way that might be being affected by the game.

There are two extreme sides of the video game issue: one side claims that they are too addictive, too violent, too risky for the believer to take part in, and that they must be avoided. The other claims that video games are just plain fun, that they don’t affect our thought patterns, and that they ought to be treated in the same way as film or television.

Both sides are guilty of the same sin: underestimating the power of the video game to affect how we see the world, how we exist in the world, and how others see us. Video games ought to be enjoyed, but they ought not to dominate our lives. The worldviews presented in video games should be considered carefully. Finally, gamers need to stop clamoring for games to be treated the same as every other medium. Video games are not just any other medium: they are innovative, full of potential, immersive. These things, coupled with the fact that they are made and played by a depraved humanity makes them wrought with danger.

See Also:
In Praise of Film
The Dangers of Film
In Praise of Television
The Dangers of Television
In Praise of Video Games

This Week: You would think that, after more than a year, people would stop talking about Grand Theft Auto IV. That would be true if it weren’t for the latest downloadable content that adds an extra chapter to the story: The Ballad of Gay Tony. No, we’re not kidding. You can rest assured we’ll be addressing that issue more in depth in the future, but for now here’s what Alan Noble originally had to say about the original GTA IV, sans Gay Tony.

Tomorrow, or late tonight for some people, the nearly four-year GTA drought will end when Grand Theft Auto IV is released on Xbox 360 and PS3. So far, all the enthusiast press has been extremely positive, with some critics already calling it a major contender for Game of the Year. With pre-order sales and strong marketing, GTA IV looks to have one of the strongest releases in game history, perhaps even rivaling or surpassing last year’s record-setting Halo 3 release. While most gamers and the enthusiast press are gushing over GTA IV, for most conservative commentators and those in the mainstream press, the GTA series is usually summarized by a few talking points:

• You can sleep with a prostitute and then beat her to get your money back.
• You can drive drunk, and it’s fun.
• You can perform drive-by shootings.
• You can carjack.
• The game is a cop killing simulator.
• It contains drug use, extreme violence, strong sexual content, profanity, and partial nudity.

While each of these bullet points accurately describe what players can do in the game (except for item #5), by presenting these gameplay elements without context, many conservative commentators have been dishonest in their appraisal of GTA IV and its past versions. What appears to be clear from the press, interviews, and previews is that this latest iteration of Grand Theft Auto is intent on exploring the relationships and characters of violent criminals and the morally depraved. So does this mean an end to the glorification of degenerate, depraved, and criminal lifestyles in the GTA series? Should believers boycott this game or embrace it?

Satire and social commentary

GTA has always had a satirical edge to its humor and gameplay, drawing attention to American’s fascination with guns, fast food, and stereotypes. Take this ad promoting the “Liberty City Gun Club” or the fact that the gun shops in the games are called Ammu-nation for example. But the core mechanic of the game that has made it one of the most popular game franchises of all time is the ability to play in the sandbox world with little to no consequences. Rockstar might have peppered their games with satire and witty pop culture references, but most of us played them because we could run over pedestrians, steal a car, get chased by the cops, fly off a bridge, and then reappear outside the hospital with only a few absent dollars to testify to our criminal adventure.

It’s always been hard to take GTA games serious as social commentary when they’ve made being a soulless criminal so darn fun! In past games there was no sense that the crimes that were committed meant anything in the game world. Murdering a rival gang member or betraying someone was merely a part of the plot, since the relationships in the games were fairly wooden and predictable. As a player there was no compelling reason to connect to the characters, and therefore, when they died it was not tragic.

But comments like this have me wondering if this new game will give a more balanced view of criminal life: “Criminals are an ugly, cowardly lot more worthy of pity and disdain than admiration. This is what you’ll learn playing through the single-player campaign in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV” (IGN’s GTA IV Review).

The real world of organized crime?

The word coming from Rockstar and the critics who have been lucky enough to play review copies of the game is that there is a stark difference between GTA IV and previous iterations. Rather than treat the murder and violence of the game as trivial or merely comical, GTA IV attempts to show the reality of organized crime.

According to Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser, “We’re a long way from having just sort of a great big, white, alpha-male dude running around with a bazooka. Our games aren’t really set up like that. We want to have a character that makes you ask questions — that can be a little confusing in terms of how you empathize with them and how you relate to them….”

Serious moral dilemmas in a video game? In a Grand Theft Auto game? As unlikely as it seems, if IGN’s reviewer is to be trusted, it seems that Rockstar was able to pull off:

“You play as Niko Bellic, an Eastern European attempting to escape his past and the horrors of the Bosnian war. He arrives in Liberty City to experience the American dream, only to discover his cousin, Roman, may have fibbed a bit in his tales of success. Starting from nothing, Niko makes a living as a killer and enforcer, a bad-ass foreigner who appears to have no morals. The longer we stay with Niko, the more we see that there is a broken human being inside, one who would give anything to escape the person he once was. As Niko becomes mired in the death throes of American organized crime, he begins to become more self-aware. Niko’s struggles with his ruthless nature never inhibit the gameplay, but instead enhance the emotional gravity of a brilliant storyline. The more absurd the action becomes, the greater we feel the very real pathos of Niko Bellic.”

What this all seems to suggest is a very real moral center to this game. Where previous GTA games existed in essentially an amoral universe where judgment was as irrelevant as punishment, GTA IV’s storyline shows how truly ugly and sad these gang members are. This sense of realism was the creator’s intent, and critics who have played review copies have confirmed that the intent was successfully realized in the game. Which leads us to our final question: if Rockstar has made a game which realistically portrays the tragic and pitiful effects of violence and crime by having the player take control of a depraved character, should we support it or should we boycott it?

To hit and run, or not to hit and run?

As any of our regular readers know, here at CAPC we rarely (if ever) make universal statements concerning what is and what is not acceptable for believers to watch/play/listen to/read in pop culture. It is our hope to encourage believers to use biblical discernment about these matters rather than relying upon man-made laws to keep us from sin. So instead of offering a simple condemnation or recommendation for Grand Theft Auto IV, I would like to present a few ideas for believers to consider:

1. Although the game strives to present the ugly truth about organized crime (which indicates that the game exists in a moral universe), players can pick up hookers and receive lap dances. Any believers who struggle with lust should probably avoid this game. However, it should be noted that to my knowledge these sexually explicit scenes can be avoided in the game (much like in Mass Effect) simply by choosing not to pursue them. Since I do not have a review copy of the game, I am not sure if any of these scenes are a part of the single player story or can be skipped.
2. Just as the previous’ games use of satire failed to justify (for me at least) the glorification of senseless violence, GTA IV’s serious look at the criminal underworld fails to strike me as a genuine example of social commentary, since all the reviewers seem to agree that being a ruthless killer is so darn fun in the game. If the story and characters are telling us that criminals are “more worthy of pity and disdain than admiration” but playing a criminal is exciting, fun, and invigorating, what message exactly is being expressed?* Specifically, this has me wondering about Proverbs 3:31: “Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways.” Will playing this game make me envy a violent lifestyle?
3. And finally, in what way will playing this particular game glorify God? Is it a good use of your time? Will it tempt or cause you to sin? Will it help you cultivate righteous thoughts, attitudes, and actions?

These issues are not easy to sort out, and for anyone who is seriously considering purchasing this game, I would strongly encourage them to prayerfully consider each of these.

I applaud Rockstar for creating a game which deals with gang culture in a serious manner, showing the tragic effects of such lifestyles instead of merely romanticizing them. It is very likely that Grand Theft Auto IV will be considered an important moment in gaming history, and particularly games as art and storytelling. While I firmly believe that there are some very praiseworthy aspects of this game, for myself, the irreverence, disregard for human life, tasteless sexuality, and pleasure in senseless violence will keep me from dropping $60 on GTA IV tomorrow.

How about you? Are you going to buy Grand Theft Auto IV? Why or why not?

*To be fair, I don’t have a review copy of the game myself, so I cannot say for certain that it is fun to run people over and pull drive-bys as in the past GTAs, but frankly, I can’t imagine that Rockstar would release a GTA where the core gameplay mechanic isn’t focused on wrecking havoc on innocent people.