Unpop Culture

After last year’s Video Music Awards, Christianity Today posted an article mourning over how Miley Cyrus gave in to the cultural idea that “in-your-face sexuality is the easiest way to get attention.” Four months later, the magazine used a different emotional tone when addressing Martin Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street , which revels in depictions of explicit sexuality. The article states , “ The Wolf of Wall Street is a great and possibly terrific movie.” In another corner of cyberspace, Christ and Pop Culture examined the implications of Miley Cyrus spending “the majority of her 6 minutes on stage ‘ twerking .’” The magazine summarized the sexualized spectacle as “exuberant, banal, nihilism.” Several months later, while examining Scorsese’s filmmaking and stylistic choices, this same magazine adamantly proposed that The Wolf of Wall Street was not only “redeemable,” but also “an incredibly moral film.”           ...

When Shannon and I took our infant daughter to the ER last month, we didn’t plan on a week-long hospital stay. We didn’t plan on days of scary bouts of pertussis-induced apnea. We didn’t plan on getting snowed in at the hospital, nor on me coming down with food poisoning, nor on Shannon developing a sinus infection. It was a comedy of errors, and while we weren’t exactly laughing, we weren’t despairing either: God’s was at work in the midst of our suffering. During our stay in the hospital, we repeatedly had to suction Elanor’s nose out to keep it clear. Sometimes we used an electronic aspirator and sometimes we used a handheld bulb. Each time, Elanor protested the invasion of her sinuses with pitiable vehemence. It was obvious that she didn’t fully understand what was going on and didn’t appreciate the discomfort that came along with her treatments. And in these respects, she reminded me of myself: how I—and, I suspect, many people—relate to God. More specifically, she helpe...

Interestingly, one of the most famous pieces of Christian literature ever written on romance and marriage was addressed to singles. Evidently, single people need to understand marriage and romance just as much as married people do. I know I did. Due in part to my idolatrous view of marriage, the last several years of my singleness were some of the most acutely painful years of my entire life. Paradoxically, those years also ended up being some of the most fruitful of my life. I guess you could say it was the best of times and the worst of times. It was the best of times because God was doing a lot of beneficial work on my heart . It was the worst of times because I was a single person living in a married person’s world, and I longed to be married. Events like Valentine’s Day only served to remind me of what I didn’t have. What I needed to read was that famous piece of literature addressed to singles about marriage. Being a good Christian guy, I’d glanced at it before, but...