Really? That's so 20 years ago!

So I read a blog post today from a prominent Christian author, he was lamenting the "fascination of the American culture with death". His justification for this stance was the booming popularity of the television show The Walking Dead and "violent video games like Mortal Kombat". And it was maddening to me on a  few levels.

1. Mortal Kombat is a game that reached its highest peaks some 20 years ago. It was the reason that video games are now rated for content by the ESRB, it is violent and it is bloody, but it is in no way a reflection of the current culture, as it is not really culturally relevant, except if a cable channel is doing a retrospective show of the 1990's. There are plenty of violent video games, many which I would not  condone...so why would you pick one from the 90's?

2. The Walking Dead is a cultural phenomenon, highest rated show on cable television, maybe even better numbers than Duck Dynasty.  It is violent and brutal... but there is as much if not more "Biblical Content" on this show than any other Hollywood produced show. The reaches down to fundamental questions about humanity, it shows how bad things can and do get when we "as humans" determine morality for ourselves. It is the far extreme of relativism. There are a number of characters that directly quote or read from the Bible. There currently is a Pastor as one of the main characters, who when things went poorly did not do what he/or the church should do and is now in a great deal of pain and remorse for it.

So my real issue is this, we (including me) Christians are sometimes so detached from society as a whole we are unengaged in the conversations happening in our culture. If Christians (and by the way I do know many who watch the show) were able to engage our culture through a show like the Walking Dead and some of the great questions of faith it may raise; and have great Godly conversations based on a very popular show why wouldn't we be doing that? Instead mostly we sit in Ivory Towers heaping condemnation on this culture and society, tell everyone what we are against, but rarely what we are for. We hide behind our own piousness and lament on how far this culture is from our God and we point to the "awful" examples of art and expression as proof of our stance, but we would never soil ourselves by watching or partaking in such filth! We would never understand how to talk to people not of our faith because we are slowly isolating ourselves so much, that when we do need to make a point about our culture we point to something that is long past or well out of context.

We need to wake up to the world around us. God has us here and now for a purpose...it is not to hide and wait for Jesus return. We need to use whatever cultural settings we can to point people to the One who created all things! That is the way Paul and the early church did it!