The Center for Gospel Culture Blog
Sentimentality and the Lies that Blind Us
Jeremy M. MullenJune 30, 2010
At First Things, Joe Carter has written an excellent piece entitled “Thomas Kinkade’s Cottage Fantasy.” In the article, he highlights some of the early work by Thomas Kinkade – admirable in many ways – and contrasts it with his later work that gained him so much financial success. His describes the change in Kinkade’s work as a descent into sentimentality.
Carter goes on to note:
Sentimentality…encourages us to “suspend judgment and reflection in order to indulge deliberately in emotion for its own sake.” Reflection reinforces and strengthens true emotions while exposing those feelings that are shallow and disingenuous. Sentimentalists, however, try to avoid this experience of reality and try to keep people from asking questions by giving them pleasing emotions they have not earned. The shameless manipulation of our emotions…is the ultimate act of cynicism.
Kinkade – so wildly popular among religious (especially evangelical) audiences – gives us a window into the danger of sentimentality to our understanding of the world and (much more) to our understanding of the gospel. Sentimental art, especially sentimental religious art, tells us that everything is alright. It tells us that we should be comfortable and comforted.
It’s not that comfort is bad. But, comfort can be achieved in one of two ways – by hiding from difficult truths or by finding hope in the midst of difficult truths. When artwork, especially Christian artwork, offers us comfort without the cross – that is to say, without the difficult realities of sin, death, and the need for a subsitutionary sacrifice – it fools us into believing the lies that our lives are not really messed up, that what should come to us is easy, and that this life will just be fine. Little wonder, then, that the Christian gospel has slowly lost its grip in the Western world as it reaped the benefits of colonialism (in the 19th century) and modern industrialism (in the 20th century).
By contrast, the gospel has always flourished where people cannot deny the harshness of reality. Even now in portions of Africa, South American, and Southeast Asia, the church is growing at an incredible rate. The contrast is strong because the gospel offers us a hope beyond the wildest dreams of the sentimentality. It plunges us into the difficult depths of reality, yet it raises us up in the beautiful expectation of a world that will be transformed – not into a sentimental cottage by the sea but to a Father’s mansion which is being prepared for us. Christian worship, at its best, denies sentimentality and yet points us forward. In the words of Charles Wesley:
Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise. (from “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”)
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise. (from “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”)
“Where is the Wisdom We Have Lost in Knowledge?”
Jeremy M. MullenJune 18, 2010
Recently I heard that many ministers – established and (by most any standard) successful ministers – have decided to shorten their sermons. They want to shorten them for one reason: their congregations struggle to stay focused for as long as they used to be able. From any number of directions we are receiving warnings that the more we try to multitask – especially with the wide variety of communication media available – the less efficient and more stressed we become, as well as less able to maintain attention. Matt Richtel’s recent New York Times article “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price” rehearses some of the more recent studies, with anecdotal attention to a California family being pulled apart by technology.
There have always been some who feared technological development. It has virtually frozen some communities in a particular era – such as Amish communities. Others have tried to conscientiously lag behind – such as Wendell Berry (whom I admire in a myriad of ways). But most of us are unwilling to be so thoroughly suspicious. Yet we cannot deny that the dopamine-riddled stimulation has hampered us. I check my phone often – even when out with my wife and friends – for emails and texts. Sometimes email, texts, Facebook, and so on begin to feel like a kind of a master.
In my ministry environment – campus ministry – there’s much discussion about the pros and cons about the effects of all this media on students, ministry tactics, etc. Yet the Harvard students that I work with don’t Twitter and only check email and Facebook a few times per day. The ability to focus has always been important for success, but we’ve added another significant layer to it over the past few decades with video games, web surfing, email, and social networking. For all their other problems, these students have realized something – something that Christians should all have seen. They’ve realized just how easily we become enslaved to even the most seemingly innocuous things.
T. S. Eliot already lamented this modern condition eighty-some years ago: “All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance… / Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” (“Choruses from ‘The Rock’,” I.11,15,16). The point the gospel makes here is clear. We use all this technology for one reason or another – or maybe some strange combination of control, comfort, and pleasure. These ends are cruel masters when they take over the core of our personality – that much more cruel when they wear a seemingly benign mask like a social networking site or an RSS feed. What is it we want in all of multitasking?
D.A. Carson - The Fate Of Biblical Theology
StaffJune 15, 2010
We enjoy the chance to share with you a special interview series with a preeminent scholar, D.A. Carson. He sat down with us and provided answers richly honest and thoughtful. Here in this clip, we ask him the question: What would be the fate of biblical theology going forward?
D.A. Carson - Controversies on Justification
StaffJune 15, 2010
Continuing with our interview series with D.A. Carson, in this clip we ask him: What are your thoughts about where the controversies on justification are headed?
D.A. Carson - The Evangelical Movement
StaffJune 15, 2010
Continuing with our interview series with D.A. Carson, in this clip we ask him: Why is the unity of the evangelical movement both of greater concern today and also more fragile today?
Friday Roundup! Week of 6/11/10
StaffJune 11, 2010
Blog: Freedom to Rest Video Clip - May 14, 2010 by Stephen Um
Sermon: One Anothering- May 16, 2010 by Stephen Um
Blog: Cocoons of Partisan Information - May 18, 2010 by Richard Lints
Blog: The Portrait of a Tenacious Persistence - May 19, 2010 by Stephen Um
Article: Understanding God’s Plan: A Sketch of Covenant Theology, Part 7 - May 21, 2010 by Jeremy M. Mullen
Blog: D.A. Carson: Thoughts on the Gospel Coalition - May 21, 2010 by James Hsiao
Sermon: Rejection, A Son, And Yahweh- May 23, 2010 by Stephen Um
Blog: Blessings and Curses of Partisanship- May 25, 2010 by Richard Lints
Series: God’s Story from Old Testament Narratives - May 25, 2010 by Stephen Um
Sermon: Pilgrim’s Regress - May 30, 2010 by Stephen Um
Blog: Bumping into Our Differences - June 03, 2010 by Richard Lints
Sermon: The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob - June 06, 2010 by Stephen Um
Blog: Christians in a LOST Culture - June 08, 2010 by Jeremy M. Mullen
Article: On Ministry and Revolving Doors Practical Challenges and Ideas for Ministry in a Mobile Society - June 10, 2010 by Stephen Um
Blog: How to listen to a Sermon - June 11, 2010 by James Hsiao
How to Listen to a Sermon
StaffJune 11, 2010
From the Twitterverse, @PastorMark shares a fine little gem from Monergism.com. George Whitefield explains how to listen to a sermon. Click here to read.
Yes! We are on Twitter! If you like to follow us, find us at tcfgc. Thanks!
Christians in a LOST Culture
Jeremy M. MullenJune 08, 2010
[SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched the full television series LOST, this blog post will spoil a lot of details for you.]
A little over two weeks ago LOST concluded its run on television with a much-celebrated series finale. The show, as most everyone knows, was full of mystery; and the finale promised to wrap up the plot. Naturally, the finale left some people satisfied, and others extremely unhappy (for example, Emily Nussbaum’s bitter response in New York Magazine). Personally, I liked it, but do think that it was lacking in some significant ways. The conclusion of LOST gives us a good window into how Christians engage culture because I’ve known a lot of Christians who enjoyed it. Furthermore, it was full of tensions over faith and reason/science, religious imagery, and biblical allusions.
First, LOST exposes the desire for easy cultural engagement. Several people I spoke with were disappointed in what they called Buddhist and pluralistic themes at the end. Yet, leaving the question of whether those labels are appropriate aside, I wondered what was expected. Many of us want to see a particular cultural artifact – a film, a TV series, a painting, a song – and be able to say, “Ah, that’s it! That’s the gospel.” We don’t want to retreat into the awful subculture of Christian entertainment; but then we’re often disappointed when various artifacts fail to point us back to Christ. Yet consider LOST. There were certainly Christological aspects to different characters – Charlie’s death in the Looking Glass, Jack’s battle with the Smoke Monster and sacrifice for the island, Hugo’s eventual acceptance of his role as the new Jacob, and perhaps even Locke’s baiting role. The show certainly unmasked the darkness in the human heart time and again (even if it tried to say there was some good inside). Finally, the church at its conclusion was a beautiful vision of reunion and acceptance – perhaps what Locke meant way back in the first season when he said, “I’ve looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw was beautiful.” The cultural engagement that many Christians seek is wholesale acceptance; yet such a course is a path to disappointment. Instead, we would be wiser to look for glimpses of the gospel in what is around us – realizing that it takes the brokenness of this world more seriously than any other vision of reality and offers a solution more radical than ever could have been imagined.
Second, LOST exposes the complexity of any cultural project – Christian or otherwise. The general disagreement about the success of LOST’s finale demonstrates that within any artistic medium there is a seemingly endless number of questions. The point is simple to illustrate by one question: what made LOST great? The writing of the characters? The acting? The scope and intricacies of the plot? The cinematography? The sound editing and technical accomplishment? The audience response? All of these details played into the greatness. Perhaps it could have been a better conclusion if all of those things had come together to everyone’s satisfaction; but such a thing is difficult to image. With a grid of Christian faith, we add another level of discussion, but also potential confusion. For example, those who were disappointed in the pluralistic themes of LOST’s finale were probably looking for something propositional in the finale. Understanding the sophistication of any particular medium is part of the wisdom needed to think as a Christian about life in the world.
If you’re a Christian thinking about culture – particularly about art – what are you looking for? Are you looking for a complete restatement of the gospel message? Shouldn’t we be wiser than that?
Bumping into Our Differences
Richard LintsJune 03, 2010
Why do churches that confess the same gospel look and feel so different across different cultural and social locations? Why are evangelical churches in Boston so different on one side of the Charles River from those on the other side? In part it’s because our God given identity is thoroughly embedded in those social locations. We are by nature social creatures. We cannot escape that. The peculiar shape of our social experiences leaves an indelible footprint on us. Churches have indelible footprints on them as well. Coming to accept and embrace the different footprints is not always easy. It is like blending together two very different personalities into one marriage. (Ephesians 5) Bumping into real differences is something most of us would like to avoid.
Part of what makes it uncomfortable is that our own cultural idols can be exposed as we bump up against differences. As we know, it is always easier to spot some one else’s idols than one’s own. Accepting our differences and being open to having our own idols exposed is at the heart of the diverse cultural locations of the church across time, across the globe or even across the Charles. Darryl Guder (The Continuing Conversion of the Church, Eerdmans, 2002) has written of the need for the “continuing conversion” of the church in its cross-cultural interactions. All cultural translations of the Gospel bear some imprint of their social location which stands in need of correction and which are only corrected as the Gospel bumps up against it from another social location.
The inevitable bumping up against our differences requires that the church hold together two theological affirmations about how God works. By the power of the Spirit, our differences may enrich each other and they may also expose the latent idolatries peculiar to each context. Differences can be obstacles to overcome or they may be pieces of the puzzle that belong together. Telling the difference is a matter of pastoral wisdom. The kind of wisdom all too few of us possess in our highly partisan world.
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The Center for Gospel Culture exists to establish the centrality of the gospel as the basis for developing a gospel culture worldview in renewing every dimension of an individual's life, so that individuals would be able to think, act, and live in line with the truth of the gospel.
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