Christian creativity...
I've been gone from blogging for a couple of weeks. Sorry! In that time I have thought about creativity and the world of Christian.
Why is it that Christians tend to copy culture, rather than affect culture? Why is it that we copy cool cultural ideas rather than come up with them?
Case in point: the LiveStrong armband. This is a great idea. Lance Armstrong came up with a bracelet that says something positive about life and supports cancer research. And what do Christians do? We copy it. We make little colored armbands with cool Christian sayings.
Understand, I am not knocking wearing Christian armbands with cool Christian sayings. I'm just wondering why we can't come up with a concept that grabs the culture with a positive while doing something positive (like helping to fund cancer research). And we could even do it without the necessity of having a Four Spiritual Laws included with every armband.
We could just say, "Hey, as Christians we want to stand up for good things. We do it because we believe that God loves everybody and we want to try to live that." Maybe then our message of salvation would begin to be accepted.
It's an old saying, but it's true: People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
So let's impact culture. Let's do it in a way that is positive. Let's do it without the overtly stated goal of the salvation of the lost (this is a STEP in the process, not the end of the process).
Here ends the rant.
posted by Pat Callahan at
5:15 PM
2 Comments:
I couldn't agree more! Our God is immensely creative. Choosing to copy and not be creative is choosing to not let His image in us show. Instead of bringing glory to the Creator of everything, we bring glory to the creator of whatever we copy.
May 09, 2005 8:44 PM
I think the topic is not WHAT is taught but more importantly HOW it is taught. I understood you, Pat, and I don't doubt your intent. And I, like most people, have witnessed the complacency and boredom many people have expressed in their church experience. This has no reference to the commitment of these bored, complacent people. No. On the contrary, I think it is an honest critique of HOW (remember HOW from above?) the message is delivered. The term “cool” may not be a good word for some and may conjure up thoughts of used car salesmen and flimflam artists who are not pure of heart or intent. But I know you Pat and I know how you are talking about the HOW of the message delivery – not the content of the message. And I must agree. Using technology to reach people, using the internet to reach people, using media to reach people, and using innovative ideas (like Lance Armstrong did to reach people with his message) is NOT wrong for the pure of heart. I like the idea, Pat, and I will diligently think about how I can help.
July 02, 2005 7:41 PM
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