The Superbowl is upon us. For your pastor and the staff, that means the headache of trying to figure out how to keep all your church family happy without looking like sell-outs concerning the importance of the local church gathering.  Most churches have some sort of regularly scheduled service on Sunday nights, it might be a preaching service, some kind of discipleship or prayer service, or perhaps community groups. Something in the regular life of the church is going to conflict with the Superbowl this Sunday. What ought the church to do?

It may seem that this Sunday’s game is of mega-importance, it is the “Super” Bowl after all, but really it is a fixture of American pop culture. It has gotten so big that advertisers can’t wait to air their multi-million dollar commercials, so they are ‘pre-releasing’ them on the internet to get more bang for their buck. (Seinfeld! Ferris Bueller! Woohoo!) The Super Bowl is a pretty big, multi-billion dollar entertainment extravaganza. How can a Sunday night church service hope to compete with such a juggernaut? And should it even try?

How should the church handle this? Isn’t it true that sports in the United States have become an idol for many people, even Christians? Isn’t it true that people invest way too much of their identity in the success and failure of their favorite team? If this is the case, perhaps the church shouldn’t bow to this Baal, and they should have their regular service and ignore the hype. After all, there are those who do not care about football. There is an 80% chance that the guy who does not care is from Canada, but still there are those people at church.*

And yet, the church doesn’t want to seem cold to the hobbies of its members. After all, some enjoy football in a non-idolatrous way. Football is not a sin. It can build up the positive themes of team work, camaraderie, and teaches the importance of repetitive and difficult practice. Plus, there is the fact that if the church steam rolls ahead without a thought, those who love football are going to be absent. Should the church just ignore those folks and move on? Or should the pastor talk to them to see if their attitude about football is wrong? The church could avoid this awkwardness altogether by simply cancelling the Sunday night service and letting people do as they wish. But what message does that send?

Another way churches deal with the Super Bowl is to completely embrace it. They recognize it is an important part of the culture and schedule a party around it. They make it a big deal and invite friends from the community. Sometimes, a half-time devotion is given. In it, the person usually makes note of the fact that who wins the Super Bowl is not of great importance in comparison to one’s relationship to Christ. Everybody is happy! Well, except the folks that like the Budweiser commercials. Usually some guy is designated the “remote guy” and his job is to fast-forward through all the GoDaddy commercials and other such risque advertisements.

I trust that your church loves Christ, His Word, and is jealous for His glory. We don’t want anything to overshadow him, and frankly the attention the Super Bowl gets makes us a little jealous because Jesus deserves as much and more.  But yet, we do not want to be sticks in the mud at worst, or miss an opportunity to rub elbows in a fun way with the community at best. Every church has to navigate between sending the wrong signal about the importance of the teaching that happens at the Sunday night service, and the great desire to be the type of church that folks want to be a part of.

So here is the real answer, and it so happens that this is also a great question: Why couldn’t the NFL had made this easy for us and called it “Super Bowl Saturday”?

________________

*I’m kidding. I realize that the percentage of non-Canadians who don’t care for the Super Bowl is higher than 20%. I made that stat up. It is probably closer to 28%.

“This ‘Obama is Stupid’ statement or implication has become a common trope of the Right in recent months, and one we see in the mouths of many writers and politicians.

But, thankfully, this is not some hit piece on Gingrich or an excuse to mock the Right; Dr. Garrett calls our attention to the core issue: a fundamentally unChristian tendency across the political spectrum to dismiss and diminish the Other Side.

“[A]s hard as it might be for us to stomach, as appallingly stupid as it might sound, we have to be open to the possibility that we might be something less than totally right, and that those we oppose may be less than totally wrong.”

The California native, now 21, said that in the wake of baring her body as an Angel, she was also hosting parties, posing for men’s magazines, and craving more and more attention.

But she was not feeling good about herself.

“My body should only be for my husband and it’s just a sacred thing,” said Bisutti, who had gotten married just before winning the 2009 modeling competition. “I didn’t really want to be that kind of role model for younger girls because I had a lot of younger Christian girls that were looking up to me and then thinking that it was okay for them to walk around and show their bodies in lingerie to guys.

“It was pretty crazy because I finally achieved my biggest dream, the dream that I always wanted, but when I finally got it, it wasn’t all that I thought it would be. Especially being married I just wanted to keep my marriage sacred because divorce rates now in America are pretty high, and I just want to do everything I can to keep my marriage special.”

Cultural Vegetable of the Week: The Age of Innocence (1920)
Vegetable Equivalent: Iceberg lettuce
Nutritional Value: An example of how “progressive” thought hides its own reactionary impulses
Recommended Serving Size: Read slowly and steadily over a month; garnish with Martin Scorsese’s workmanlike adaptation if desired

Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence in 1920, but she set the novel fifty years earlier. Wharton traffics in the style of Henry James more than Theodore Dreiser, but this novel’s prose is brisk and lean in a way that James’s rarely was, if ever. Wharton often turned her gaze toward the New York social elite from whence she sprang, and The Age of Innocence is about a definitive moment in that set’s evolution. The 1870 setting suits Wharton because her literary roots are as firmly planted in the soil of sentimentalism as they are realism. No one will mistake this book for McTeague. In the novel’s protagonist, Newland Archer, we get a synecdochal protagonist for the privileged upper class, a man who feels himself at once superior to, and barred from what he wants by, social mores. The novel’s tone is thoroughly ironic, as Archer continually misreads as progressive the very traits that consign him to the status quo.

The novel satirizes not just its characters but their entire social scene. Wharton’s characters spend countless hours in evening wear attending operas or social engagements hosted by New York’s most prominent families. At one of these early operas, Wharton takes the time to comment on the performance:

She sang, of course, “M’ama!” and not “he loves me,” since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

Just who set such “an unalterable and unquestioned law” in place remains a mystery. A labyrinthine and arbitrary code is all that remains.

Archer is intelligent enough to recognize the staged quality of each of these affairs. He has just become engaged to the most beautiful girl in his set, Mae Welland, who for Archer represents the innocent woman in the novel’s titular age. Archer’s problem is that he is both attracted to and repelled by Mae’s innocence.

[W]hen he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

This passage establishes the novel’s chief tensions. In terms of plot, Archer finds himself more drawn to Mae’s world-wearied cousin, the already married Countess Olenska, than his own fiancée. In terms of form, the passage juxtaposes terse insights with longer, more complex sentences. In terms of the novel’s themes, Archer realizes how arbitrary and highly constructed the seemingly “natural” rules of his society are.

Archer makes a characteristic mistake in attributing Mae’s constructed purity to the women in her life. Archer would like to imagine that men like him would handle the question of feminine propriety differently. Though Mae’s father is alive, it is her aunt, Mrs. Manson Mingott, who holds the purse strings and real power in the Welland family. But Archer is far too modest. It is the behavior of he and his cohorts that maintains the social structure necessary for such “factitious purity.” Archer’s peers are philandering husbands, the crooked banker Julius Beaufort and the social commentator Lawrence Lefferts. While despising the way these men duplicitously deal with their wives, Archer closely resembles them in his desire for two lives, a superficial one that will satisfy high society and a clandestine one where he can find a woman with thoughts of her own. The passage’s central irony is that Archer knows and resents what he is supposed to want yet cannot see his desire for the tainted Olenska as similarly affected by societal forces. Mae is not the simpleton Archer imagines, and an open relationship with Olenska would not bring Archer the happiness he thinks it would.

The novel closes at the dawn of the 20th century with a solitary Archer walking back towards his hotel room. In the intervening time, he has become a dinosaur. The social mores that still consume his thoughts have long been forgotten by a new generation, particularly his own children. He once thought himself progressive; he is now unescapedly passé. He too was guilty of a factitious purity, one that manifested itself as an ironically innocent view of transgression.

Branding strategy is all about precise target definition with custom messaging developed to reach that particular group of people. It works. That’s why most brands, companies, and organizations do it. But there is a danger in becoming ultra-focused on the specific preferences of the target while disregarding the preferences of the market at large.

Case in point: Burger King.

Seth Stevenson’s article at Slate details Burger King’s use of a narrowly targeted campaign to its “‘superfans’ — meaning young dudes who eat fast food on a near daily basis.” Focusing upon this smaller target, Burger King employed the creative services of agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky to produce the creepy, plastic mask-wearing King and — according to Stevenson — other “campaigns that valued provocation above substance and casual cruelty above inclusiveness.”

Ouch. But double ouch for Burger King, for sales have dropped. Stevenson wonders “if actively ignoring, and even offending, every other demographic category in America might be unwise for a nationwide brand that could potentially find solid customers among women, children, and men who don’t wear Ed Hardy T-shirts.”

This has me wondering about Christian-based messaging that is intended for our target but is seen by the market at large. Are we like Burger King, targeting our Christian “superfans” without regard for others who hear our message? With better messaging, we could potentially attract Christ followers among those who don’t wear WWJD gear.

Scriptures tell us there will always be opposition to the grace of God found in Christ Jesus. No matter how we communicate, some will be offended by the Gospel.

I’m not suggesting we water down the Gospel or shape every church event for newcomers. I am proposing, however, that Christians should be aware that our message reaches more than our superfan base, and we could be more mindful of the argot, tone, and message we use. Fellow CaPC writer Alan Noble says it well in his column this week:

“If Christians (myself very much included) would consistently and seriously pursue adopting habits of speech that befit our calling, I am convinced that we would honor God before the world, win over enemies with our love and reasonableness, and divert time away from unprofitable debates and controversies so that we might devote ourselves more to loving our neighbor and fulfilling the Great Commission.”

Scriptures teach us to “let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt” (Colossians 4:6) and to “let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).

By the way, Burger King has switched ad agencies. They learned the hard way that targeting a message to your superfans doesn’t mean that they are the only ones listening.

Lately, however, I’m starting to wonder if there are games and forms of competition that not only aren’t good, but are fundamentally antithetical to a Christian vision and existence. Like some cultural activities, there are games that perhaps the Christian should refrain from playing. With such games, abstinence might be the greater exercise in Christian obedience and formation. Catan, I think, is such a game. Playing Pictionary and basketball can be profitable; the same cannot be said of Catan.

Catan brings out the worst in people. And not just people in general, but good people — fluffy, kind, gentle people. It’s an insidious masquerade of a game that causes the most placid and civilized to degenerate into the most tempestuous and belligerent. It is a spacious vessel that transports masses into the dark abyss of nothingness. It causes you to have the fierce urge to backhand someone you would never raise your voice to — like your mother. I kid you not, I have spoken to couples who have split up because of Catan. Indeed, “irreconcilable differences” has taken on a whole new meaning. I no longer play with my wife.

I’m not calling into question the factual (perhaps a bit overstated for effect?) claims Bennet makes about how Catan often results in arguments and strife. I myself have seen the game give rise to arguments among friends and family. There’s no question that the competitive nature of Catan can get to some people. The question at hand, though, is whether Catan is responsible.

The answer to this is kind of obvious, right?

Most of us know the feeling of getting just a little too angry during any game. Those who play sports are particularly familiar with this. The nature of any game is that we allow the stakes to be artificially higher for a period of time, during which we all pretend to our utmost that the outcome of the game itself somehow matters. But deep down, we all know the truth: it really doesn’t. Unless we’re playing college or professional sports and have a career on the line, there is little reason to experience any true emotional trauma because of the game. But then, sometimes, we do.

Some games really do reward that unchecked aggression. Football players are often encouraged to “save it for the field” and instead, channel all of their personal grudges towards some guy wearing the opposing team’s jersey. But that is not Catan. Bennet has it all wrong. While he claims that Catan is “designed with the most conniving and destructive intentions and methods ever conceived,” and that it “forces you to seek the misfortune of your opponents,” he’s talking about the fact that in order for you to win at Catan, the other players must obtain less resources and have less opportunity to score points. He’s right about that — but this is the case with almost any game. Astoundingly, he claims that “[p]laying Pictionary and basketball can be profitable; the same cannot be said of Catan.” I don’t understand the difference, and he never shares any secret knowledge in the article that clarifies what makes Catan so unprofitable.

The truth is that, yes, some games are more profitable than others. Some push our ethical limits. Balderdash asks us to “bluff”. Games like Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica often force one player to be the “traitor”, sowing mistrust in the group. Many videogames ask us to “kill” other players for points. None of these games are inherently “antithetical to a Christian vision and existence” because as long as they remain games, they take place in a separate context than the rest of life. Like a digital avatar on a videogame screen, the actions we take in a board game are mere representations of real-life actions: they are not the actions themselves. If we are able to keep that perspective, not only are we able to play them with a clear conscience, but we will be able to learn from them.

This is far more than a mere compartmentalization of life or an easy excuse. It’s an acknowledgement that games are practice for reality, rather than reality itself. Games provide us with an opportunity to experiment with the cause and effect of our various choices. In the context of games, because the stakes are actually false, so are the virtues. Because the virtues are false, so are the vices. Otherwise, we would find ourselves unable to play chess (a game with the ultimate goal of assassination) in any way that is remotely justified.

Games are only as profitable as we allow them to be, and in order for them to serve their purpose, we must first approach them rightly. Perhaps the #1 rule of approaching a game rightly is as follows: take it seriously, but keep your perspective. The stakes may seem high at times, but they are not high in the context of our real lives. It seems almost certain from this article that Bennet struggles with this rule:

A lot of playing happens, but I can’t say the same about fellowship. About fifteen minutes into the game, the fellowship often ends. Abruptly. Discussing struggles and praising physical, mental, or spiritual triumphs of the previous week is usurped by droves of expletives. And I mean droves. I’ll be honest, after Monday nights, I have to repent.

To be honest, the whole article is kind of heartbreaking for me. You won’t see me arguing that Bennet should suck it up and keep playing: it’s clear that playing Catan is resulting in a string of bad experiences for him, and that’s just unpleasant and not worth the trouble. But perhaps he should consider addressing the root of the issue: that he takes a game, on a board, with little wood houses and roads and in supposedly friendly competition with friends, as seriously as he might take an election or a church meeting or a war. They are not the same. Take a breath, consider the outcome, and just have some fun.

Bennet says he loses a lot. So do I. I love games, but I am awful at pretty much all of them. But I appreciate them nonetheless, because of the way they break the ice with friends and strangers, because of the way they illuminate our personalities, and because they provide a low-stakes playground in which we can experiment with and evaluate our values system without fear of actual transgression or relational hurt.

Settlers of Catan is about more than the ruthless destruction and usurping of our friends’ stuff. It’s about demonstrating patience long enough for that eventual windfall. It’s about exercising stewardship over limited resources. It’s about sucking it up and adapting when your plans don’t pan out as you’d hoped. It’s about learning to be kind when you are able so that your rival won’t be preoccupied with sticking you with the robber. It’s about managing pride, because no one likes a threat. Like any game, Catan is about winning. But it’s also about patience, discipline, humility, and kindness.

My friends and I have gotten frustrated, even angry at one another during a game of Catan. I’ve seen yelling matches, game-long pouting sessions, and even game pieces fly across the room. But in each of these games, we learn something about one another. We take those lessons and move on. We don’t dream of carrying the burden of the game into the rest of the week. We know, ultimately, that our rivals in Catan are not our real rivals. We take our frustrations and leave them on the wheat field.

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne.

Killing is easy in the moral vacuum of videogames. So when Daniel Mullins needed a challenge, he gave peace a chance.

Mr. Mullins, 19, is the creator of “Felix the Peaceful Monk”—his character in a videogame called “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.” The game gives players wide latitude over their on-screen characters’ appearance and actions. Felix, who is half man, half cat, has become a small-time Internet celebrity for his steadfast refusal to kill.

In videogame excerpts Mr. Mullins has posted on YouTube, Felix roams an icy fantasy world doing things like soothing angry wolves with magic. In one video, he explains how to turn away threatening skeletons, noting Felix won’t even harm the undead. And when an assassin tried to gut Felix with a knife? While most players have swords and arrows for would-be hit men, Mr. Mullins hit his with a calm spell.

Lana Del Rey, aka Lizzy Grant, may have been the most talked-about music story in 2011. That is, outside another infamous young singer who fired up debate over ethics and music earlier in the year. And yes, I’m talking about Rebecca Black.

The two don’t often get put in the same sentence, but in my mind there is a real and serious connection going on between the two. While Rebecca Black mostly just gave a lot of people a lot to laugh about, I took her role in our culture pretty seriously back in August when I wrote an article insisting that were we in some way partially responsible for her. After all, we are the ones who have the consumed cultural products that have somehow encouraged Rebecca Black, her parents, and the Ark Music Factory to believe she could succeed.

In some ways, I could understand the outcry over Black though. After all, “Friday” is absolutely hysterical. But Lana Del Rey? Did people have good reasons to be offended by the fact that Lana Del Rey wasn’t as “indie” as they had thought? If it wasn’t for Rebecca Black, would people have given any thought to the fact that Lana Del Rey wasn’t the singer’s real name and that she may or may not have gotten lip surgery and that she may or may not have been “engineered” by producers and agents to trick hipsters?

It’s as if, all of a sudden, we have become hyper-aware of how the music we listen to was made — as if we have become concerned that it had been made by underpaid workers in an assembly line in a Chinese factory. Don’t get me wrong: I think this new sense of awareness is something we should be thanking the “Friday” and Ark Music Factory incident for. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves either — it’s not like Lana Del Rey is any different than most other artists out there, whether they consider themselves “indie” or “mainstream.”

Marketing, branding, image, and production are not just afterthoughts in our musical culture — they are the bread and butter and they always have been. What would “Like a Rolling Stone” have been outside of the hippie movement? What would “Smells Like Teen Spirit” be without the 90s grunge movement it was part of? A band or artist doesn’t need to be signed to Interscope Records to care about stuff like what kind of clothes they wear, how long their beards are, and where their political/spiritual beliefs fall. That is why you won’t read many music reviews that talk a lot about music theory or technical performance skills.

The simple truth is that songs cannot simply be removed from their cultural context as if they are some kind of organism on a Petri dish in a science lab. Nor should we want them to be.

“Which vision comes closer to actual culture? As Christians we must begin with Scripture. In Scripture, life is imitation, copying. We are called to imitate (or copy) Christ (John 13:15) and the apostles who imitate Christ (2 Thess 3:7,9; Heb. 13:7; ); Christ is himself the very imitation or copy of the Father (Heb. 1:3). We reproduce by making copies (Gen. 5:3), imitating or copying God in the creation (Gen. 1:26). Trinitarian life is imitation, is copying, as each member of the Trinity copies the others (John 12:49; 16:13). Trinitarian life is collaborative, a sharing culture within the Godhead.”

While I certainly agree that US copyright law is profoundly flawed, primarily because of the substantial influence of powerful media corporations, I’m less sure that remix culture is the heart of a genuine folk culture. And I’m not convinced that it is accurate to use the Trinity as the basis for just copyright law. Regardless, this is an important issue for Christians to wrestle with. As I’ve said before, if we take Romans 13 seriously, then we need to fight for laws that are reasonable and just, rather than counter-intuitive, convoluted, and harmful.

If you have a story to tell, videogames might not be the best medium for you. I essentially agree with Will Wright (lead designer of Sim City and many other successful games) who says, ”Games are not the right medium to tell stories . . . video games are more about story possibilities.” Before you list your the top 5 story-driven games that changed your life, think for a moment about what it is that you like about those particular games and what those games ask you to do.

When we sit down to watch a movie–we expect to be passive, when we sit down to game, we expect to participate in the action. We expect that what we do “in game” is going to matter. We like to play games because they engage us in ways that other media can’t. That does’t make games better or worse than books or movies, it just makes them different and I think the best games emphasize this.

Consider Bioshock, one of the greatest narrative-heavy games in recent memory. What makes playing Bioshock a memorable experience? It is not so much Andrew Ryan’s monologues or Atlas’ radio messages so much as it is a combination of those elements and your own experience of the world being spun by them. The “story” of Bioshock exists somewhere in between the expositional narrative being laid down by Ken Levine and company and your unique participation in it. Andrew Ryan is undoubtedely one of the great characters ever envisioned in a game. However, were it not for the hours spent defending ourselves from crazed splicers swooping down on us from the ceiling, learning how to best handle each Big Daddy, and determining what to do with the little sisters–Rapture would not come alive to us. The contrast between Ryan’s vision for Rapture and it’s actual state might be seen but it would not be experienced.

In fact, what makes Bioshock‘s story particularly memorable is that the game’s narrative breathed new life into the idea of the silent protagonist. Bioshock asks us to do a lot of seemingly mindless shooting but in the game’s climax–all that mindless shooting  makes sense. So many games require mindless shooting that it is all too easy to take such actions for granted–Bioshock highlights this and gives such actions weight and consequence.

On the whole, Bioshock isn’t particularly dynamic in terms of player choices. There are really only two: either save or harvest the little sisters. And yet everyone who plays the game will have a markedly different experience in the world depending not just on how they interacted with the Little Sisters but based on every move, bullet, and plasmid. Their experience will be colored by every sign they stop to read, every corner into which they wander looking for supplies, and every window out of which they look to take in their surroundings. Bioshock is a special game because of the tremendous detail devoted to each of these elements such that most everything the player does contributes to bringing Rapture to life and making the player feel like an essential part of that world.

So if a game is going to attempt to tell a story, it must do so in a way that significantly involves the player in its telling. This is why most game stories are terrible–because the mechanics (namely what you spend most of your time doing in game) do not add anything to the story itself–they are mere tack-ons or fillers to transition us from one piece of expositional narrative to another.

When Will Wright says that “games are not the right medium to tell stories” and that games are more about “story possibilities,” I think the Sim City creator highlights what makes games special. The best games give us a sense that we are making our own story and our place in that story is absolutely essential. Games engage us most when we assume a key role in that story’s telling.

“I wonder about this too in part because of the recent news about Danny Chen, the 19-year-old Chinese American soldier who shot and killed himself in Afghanistan after a reported excessive and race-based hazing he underwent there. Reading Jennifer Gonnerman’s sketch of his home life, we learn that Danny grew up in New York’s Chinatown. To make ends meet, he and his parents shared the same bedroom. We don’t hear much about these Asian Americans, the ones who don’t go to Harvard or Berkeley–the non-model minorities.”

The Christian community tends to respond by either ignoring popular culture or critiquing it moralistically through discussion about popular culture, rather than reflecting on our inescapable existence within it. Even those Christian perspectives that emphasize cultural transformation have a dearth of positive engagement with contemporary manifestations of culture.

This tendency towards “evasion” forms a posture towards popular culture—we pray for it, we decry its excesses—that is at odds with the reality of our being immersed within popular culture: From food to fashion, guitars to guns, and pipe organs to orbiting telecommunication satellites. Every square inch of our lives is saturated by patterns and expressions of popular culture.

To make culture is an inextricable part of our human identity that has too often been ignored within the Christian tradition.

This conference, which will take place at Dordt College on November 1–3, 2012, will explore the Christian tendency to “evade” popular culture. Speakers and presenters will seek answers to questions like: Is it possible to be in the world but not of the world? How can the Christian community sustain the impulse of reformation with regard to the social and cultural aspects of human life? What are the implications of the Christian faith and the hope for “new creation” with regard to the human proclivity to make culture?

Honestly, the rationale for this conference is so dead-on, it makes me want to buy some plane tickets right now. Whether I’ll be able to make it is as of yet undetermined, but you should certainly try to make it yourself. They are also putting out a call for papers for all sorts of different subjects.

More information, including donation information, can be found at Longonot Education Initiative.

But what if you play with your food before it reaches the table . . . before it’s even butchered — is that OK? A new App is in the works called Pig Chase that lets you interact with the soon-to-be pork products.

Online sources (here and here) say Pig Chase is designed for European pigs because laws there require pig farmers to entertain their pigs while they prep them for slaughter.

What do you think? Do pigs need pre-slaughter entertainment? Would you want to play a game of chase with your pig before having him for dinner?

But there is a bigger issue. We must not equate courage with success, or even youth with success. We must avoid ever leaving the impression that these equations are valid. I have spent too much time in places like Japan, or in parts of the Muslim world, where courage is not measured on the world stage, where a single convert is reckoned a mighty trophy of grace. I am grateful beyond words for the multiplication of churches in Acts 29, but I am no less grateful for Baptist ministers like my Dad, men who labored very hard and saw very little fruit for decades in French Canada, many of whom went to prison (their sentences totaled eight years between 1950 and 1952). I find no ground for concluding that the missionaries in Japan in the 20th century were less godly, less courageous, less faithful, than the missionaries in (what became) South Korea, with its congregations of tens of thousands. At the final Great Assize, God will take into account not only all that was and is, but also what might have been under different circumstances (Matt 11:20ff). Just as the widow who gave her mite may be reckoned to have given more than many multi-millionaires, so, I suspect, some ministers in Japan, or Yorkshire, will receive greater praise on that last day than those who served faithfully in a corner of the world where there was more fruit. Moreover, the measure of faithful service is sometimes explicitly tied in Scripture not to the quantity of fruit, measured in numbers, but to such virtues as self-control, measured by the use of one’s tongue (James 3:1-6).

“Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done? Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry?”

While these incidents, if accurately represented by Gingrich, are invasive and unfair, they hardly qualify as intolerance or bigotry. Inconvenience, yes. But “bigotry”?

She then argues that a “secular bias” has prevented us from discussing the role of religion in our wars in the Middle East:

“A successful GOP candidate will have to be adept at reframing the debate: Secular bias characterizes not only the debate on social issues but also U.S. efforts to fight two wars in the heart of the Islamic world without mentioning religion.”

I’m not sure why Belz believes that the US doesn’t mention religion regarding its two wars in the “Islamic world.” Isn’t it publicly stated that the “war on terrorism” is a war against certain extremist Islamic groups? In any event, how is this a secular bias? I’d actually argue that the attempt to frame the Islamic world as radical, irrational, barbarians who are incapable of rational negotiation and dialogue, a vision of the Muslim world shared by many in the Church, is the truly dangerous secular bias–the bias that suggests that only those (like Americans) who can tidily divide their religion and their politics (and are thus “secular”) are civilized.

Finally, Belz describes the “secular bigotry” that affects the economy and the Federal Budget Crisis. She observes that despite the fact that 40% of the Federal budget goes to entitlement funding, and that the broken family is a major contributor to poverty, candidates are not allowed to defend and promote the family:

“Yet cultural elites who champion ‘choice,’ who promote same-sex households and childless lifestyles, are the first to demand higher taxes—and to ridicule a pro-family candidate like Santorum—whose six children someday will be wage earners and taxpayers contributing to their parents’ retirement plus others.”

Let me say that I agree with Belz that we should be concerned about the government limiting our rights to do charity work, and about the media silencing conversations on the importance of families to social stability. But I cannot agree that these are examples of bigotry. In fact, I’d say that both Gingrich and Belz belittle actual bigotry (racial or otherwise) by referring to inconveniences and biases with such strong language. I’m reminded yet again of the victim complex of the US Church.

A running theme in my column last year was the various ways in which the church has wrongly adopted vicious and self-interested discourses and rhetoric which are so popular in our country. Charity is seen as people-pleasing or being “PC.” Complex issues are reduced to simplistic caricatures and fiercely defended. Opponents are mocked. Giving offense is a badge of honor. And opposing perspectives are summarily dismissed.

I’d like to add another item to this list of ungodly conceptions about how Christians should speak:  Our duty is to tell the Truth and share the Gospel, and nothing else. So, we should not be concerned with what people think about us.

To help clarify what I want to talk about, here are a few variations of this belief:

If you care what people think about you, you’re being pragmatic and will probably compromise your faith.

We’re told the world will hate us, so there is no sense in being concerned about how others perceive us, especially the ungodly.

Some Christians have been so brainwashed by “political correctness”  that they are worried about hurting people’s feelings rather than telling the Truth.

We are to be God-pleasers, not people-pleasers.

A few weeks ago, I was shocked to come across a passage in Romans that I believe radically challenges this view of how we ought to interact with people:

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

(Romans 12:16-18 ESV)

I had a number of reactions to this passage.

First, how antithetical this is to our tendency towards arrogance and disregard for others, particularly online. Truly, how often do we consider whether or not our words will promote harmony? Our culture delights in and rewards those who spread controversy, but do we? Should we? There is currently an entire sub-culture in Christianity that subsists on criticizing and stirring up controversies, all under the name of “discernment.” At Christ and Pop Culture we try to ensure that we discuss issues that we believe are important to and for our readers, but I’m sure we’ve also fallen at times to the temptation of spreading controversy over promoting harmony.

Second, note Paul’s warning about repaying evil here. Perhaps you don’t feel that you “repay evil for evil,” but it is quite common for Christians to justify their political party or politician or a mocking portrayal of an opponent by saying, “Well, the Other Side does this all the time.” Isn’t this the kind of logic that Paul commands us to reject?

Third, what struck me most about this passage is the command to “give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.” Not only does Paul command us to spend time considering how others will evaluate our actions, but he even calls us to act on their evaluations, to do what will be “honorable in the sight of all.” So, although we should not be seeking the approval of men, we ought to do what is good or honorable in the opinion of all, when possible. I think that this idea has many implications for how we speak and act in the world. We might ask ourselves:

Can I tell the truth in this circumstance without offending this person, or is there a less offensive way to say this?

Can I speak out against this political ideology so winsomely that my opponents will admit that my actions are honorable?

Can I correct this brother or sister so that all people see my love for them?

Can I share the Gospel to this person so that they and other unbelievers agree that my methods are good and honorable?

So often, we allow the rightness of our cause (or the perceived rightness, as is all-too-often the case) to justify all kinds of arrogance and disregard for our neighbors, but Paul calls us to use actions and words that befit the rightness of our cause.

If Christians (myself very much included) would consistently and seriously pursue adopting habits of speech that befit our calling, I am convinced that we would honor God before the world, win over enemies with our love and reasonableness, and divert time away from unprofitable debates and controversies so that we might devote ourselves more to loving our neighbor and fulfilling the Great Commission.

Naming a child is perhaps one of the most personal and one of the most challenging decisions that parents face. There are a number of factors to consider—tradition and novelty, spelling and pronunciation, familial and ethnic heritage, relationship to surname and sibling names, and meanings. Then there is the reality that while name changes are possible, most of us keep our first names for our entire lives, making an offspring’s nomenclature an important legacy.

We see this kind of naming throughout the Bible, where angelic visitors dictate the names of important figures like John (“God is gracious”) the Baptist and Jesus (“Yahweh is salvation”) himself. Consider, for instance, the names of Hosea’s children, a son called Jezreel after a valley known for its bloodshed and a daughter Lo-ruhamah to mean “the Unloved.” While most parents I know don’t face the pressure of God dictating their children’s names to make theological points, it’s clear that the practice of naming carries tremendous responsibility.

For much of U.S. history, naming trends remained fairly mainstream, with a small pool of names serving the vast majority of families. Yet increasing diversity, greater desire for uniqueness, and more exposure (in the digital age) to naming fashions means an ever-expanding list of possibilities. It might seem like an anything-goes era, but governments throughout the world still regulate (to varying extents) the choices allotted to parents. Take, for instance, the New Jersey couple who lost custody of their son, named Adolf Hitler. Or note that in Massachusetts, names are limited to forty characters (much less generous than New Zealand’s one hundred), all of which must be letters in the English alphabet.

All of these regulations serve as reminders that children are not solely the property of their parents. They belong to their parents, the state, themselves, and God. Finding a name that pleases all of those parties can apparently be quite tricky, but the effects of a naming decisions—whether orthodox or eccentric—can last a lifetime.