Christianity has never existed in a vacuum but always in the context of social and cultural values. At times in the past Christianity has been able to influence popular culture but in more recent years the boot has been on the other foot. There have been times when Christians have loudly protested at times such as when Harry Potter novels became very popular, though that only surfaced in America when the large sum of money that J. K. Rowling was earning from the novels that patriotic Americans were objecting as much to the funds crossing the Atlantic as to the dangers of the occult which they were officially protesting about. At other times when popular culture attacks Christian values it is met with apathy, possibly because of the previous failures to turn the tide of secular thinking. In fact there are so many attacks from all directions that many Christians are often unaware of the more subtle ones.
Several years ago I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy by Stieg Larsson because I had heard people talking about in the media. I was surprised how morally challenging the books were. Being set in Sweden I was not surprised that they were written from a left-wing standpoint. But I was surprised to the degree the whole ethos of the characterisation of the various plots and subplots was opposed to Biblical values. Though I have to admit that this was in hindsight. Initially the first character you come across is the proprietor of a monthly magazine called Millennium which champion the “new morality,” who has just lost a libel/defamation case and gets sent to prison. To get his own back on the capitalist who brought the case, he is assisted by the eponymous girl who is an expert hacker. Though there was a warning early on when his daughter (he is divorced) makes a couple of brief appearances she is described as an evangelical Christian but he thinks the people she is associating with have brainwashed her, It was not so much that fact that he seemed to have sex with every woman he worked with that was disturbing to me. It was when the heroine uses the knowledge she has obtained by illegal methods to perpetrate a massive fraud on the aforesaid capitalist. Though this is treated as a side issue through the main twists and turns of the main plot where the heroine is depicted as a victim. She is never even suspected of the fraud by the Swedish authorities though falsely accused of other crimes including murder. All those the author deems good guys are secular, and left of centre or centre in politics. Anybody right of centre turns out to be fascist and treat their wives appallingly. Looking back I now see clear double standards being applied, I also heard that when the author died he left his unmarried partner nothing in his will even though she claimed she had helped him with ideas for his books. So much for the morally superior tone of his works.
When I look at the media today where many express similar views, and look to Sweden and other Scandinavian countries as utopian societies, one can see similar double standards operating. It is just that they are blind to their own prejudices. Too often people overlook the failings of people with similar views as mere foibles yet demonise those of their opponents as abhorrent. One of the problems the Church faces is that it is often unaware how much their congregations are taking in unbiblical attitudes and beliefs in without often realising how they absorb the ethos of the world around them. Instead of being the salt of the earth as Jesus said and impacting the world around it.
David Rose, 2018
Last week I bought a jigsaw that had a picture of the Mona Lisa on it. As I have been doing it I have been thinking of the similarities between solving jigsaw puzzles and theology. When you first start a jigsaw you are faced with a large number of pieces, most of which do not make a lot of sense as to where they fit in. Likewise when we become Christians we look at the Bible and it is easy to get confused with the different parts, trying to make sense of it all. One of the great dangers when you work at solving a puzzle is that you try and force a piece into the wrong place. At first, when it is only attached on one side, it might seem right but as you progress it begins to look wrong. If only because you cannot find any of the other pieces that fit in around it. However, just because the pieces do not fit in the way we want it to, does not mean that some of the pieces are missing. In fact you may have noticed that I have deliberately chosen a picture of the puzzle as a work in progress. This is because our theological understanding is a work in progress. I have even found out that some of the pieces shown in the picture were in the wrong positions. Too many Christians are making their theology fit their world view, instead of letting their world view be formed by their theology, i.e., Bible based and God centred. I have to admit that some of my theological opinions have changed over the years, though I am not talking about core doctrines here. The problem if we persist in the analogy of trying to force pieces in the wrong place we reject some of the pieces we have and look elsewhere for ones we hope will fit. That leads to many errors and false teachings. So beware.
Five years ago I noticed a splash of colour on my front lawn which consists of more moss than grass. On examination it was a flower I was unfamiliar with. I posted a couple of photos on Facebook and a friend suggested a type of orchid. Subsequently, I looked it up and found that it was a northern marsh orchid. By that time I had been living in the house for over a decade and had not seen it before. The following year another showed up in a different spot. A couple of years ago another appeared in a grassy part of my drive. But it did not flower last year though two new ones also appeared in the lawn. On examination I began to spot other orchids that had not come into flower, possibly because they were only in their first year. In total I counted 12 orchids. This year though spring was late there was a prolonged warm dry spell which brought the older more established orchids to develop earlier and begin to flower but a couple began to shrivel up before it rained again which brought most of the others on. However there was another dry spell so I began to water the orchids until it rained again. This year, apart from the two that only partially flowered, 12 flowered plus two more plants giving a total of sixteen. So these orchids are showing signs of fruitfulness.
cairngormmusings 