Third, all human actions have a moral component and direction. Everything we do, all day long, is aiding or hindering us in our maturity in Christ. Nothing is neutral. So when we have said that something is "not a sin," this does not mean it is impossible to sin with that something. Some things, Scripture teaches, are not at all sin, like wealth, but it is still difficult to avoid sinning with it. And so it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a teenager to enter the kingdom of heaven listening to N’ Sync.
But because of an immature "all or nothing" mentality in the evangelical world, as soon as anything is pronounced not inherently sinful, everybody rushes off to splash about in their Christian liberty. And this is why the evangelical world today is crowded out to the borders with the culturally retarded. Cultural issues are always maturity issues, and maturity issues are not amoral.
To jumpstart our discussion, Ken Myers has helpfully affirmed the distinction of high culture, folk culture, and pop culture. In contrast to the first two categories, pop culture is a consumption item. Both high and folk culture are vehicles which can readily carry "the permanant things" across generations. Some aspects of pop culture might be retrofitted to be able to do this, but this would actually be a conversion into high or folk culture. Even still, the categories are not watertight. Jazz is a combination of folk and high culture, and the blues (today) are a folk enclave within pop culture. But pure pop culture, sui generis, according to its own advocates, is momentary, each element of which is designed for extinction after its fifteen minutes of fame. Most practitioners, remember Milli Vanilli now, appear to understand this and get off the stage with alacrity, fifteen minutes on the dot, while others, like Robert Plant and Keith Richards, keep hanging around for some reason.
Of course, sin and rebellion can be expressed in any of the three types of culture. High culture can express rebellion against God at a high level, but it is not the greatest threat to us, because when the avant-garde goes stupid virtually no one else pays any serious attention. Rebellious culture is at its most dangerous when it is seductive, initially attractive, and this is why pop culture presents such a danger. A Penthouse model looks more like a real woman than does a fragmented Picasso, which is why she seduces more men. Rebellious high culture only presents a problem to really smart intellectualoids—the only ones in the world actually vulnerable to the really stupid idea, as modern architecture shows us. Pop culture, on the other hand, has enough of a connection to the immediate desires and lusts of everyman to present a much broader threat.
And yet another factor to consider is the question of meaning. We all understand that a particular audible sound might be an obscenity in one language and perfectly inoffensive in another. The sound is the same but the moral point varies. The issue is what it means—and it is in the meaning that we find the human intention to obey or disobey God. Hence the meaning is essential in discussions of whether anything is sinful or not.
Debates with Christians who embrace pop culture are frequently hamstrung by the tenacity with which they insist on discussing the audible sound only, and never the actual meaning of the word. Modern evangelicals have a clear eye this way; they have a true imitative genius. They can copy anything the world produces, down to slightest flourish or embellishment. Whether trafficking in guitar licks or designer logos, they can always ape the real thing with exactitude. The only thing they don’t know is what it all means. Modern evangelicals are like a drunk Japanese businessman in a kareoke bar singing along with the Stones. In his own boozy way, he knows everything about the song except what it is about.
Say we are dealing with a young believer who has dyed his hair purple. I am giving him counsel and I tell him (as I would tell him) that this was sinful. He would want me to look up "purple hair" in my concordance, and show him where the Bible prohibits it. But this is as unreasonable as the demand to find a list of English obscenities in a Greek lexicon. The Bible condemns rebellion, and the purple hair means rebellion. If he agrees, he has admitted the sin. If he disagrees, then he is an empurpled ignoramus, as the Sex Pistols would readily tell him, were they here.
This means that as we deal with the various manifestations of pop culture, we must learn to closely follow the teaching of the apostle Paul. In the realm of adiaphora, things indifferent, all things are lawful (in se), but not all things are necessary (will this get our culture where we as Christians want it to go?). Christians who are concerned for cultural reformation therefore have to reject the lowest common denominator tendency which assumes that anything that is okay is therefore okay. It should be so easy.
A constant diet of pop culture is only legitimate if you don’t want to grow up. Put another way, pop items as such are frequently inoffensive. But in the phrase pop culture, the word culture entails a direction, a tendency. It is the duty of any who aspire to be thinking Christians to ask what that direction is. And the second question concerns whether we want to go there. Because pop culture represents a full-scale revolt against cultural maturity, our answer should be that of course we do not want to go there.
So then, on to particulars. Parents need to teach their kids to ask pointed questions about music and movies, clothing and jewelry, and whatever other cultural stampede anybody thinks up next. The questions should all revolve around the central question of what it actually means. And when we come to understand the foundational meaning of the movie Titanic, body piercing, rap music, and shrink-wrapped Twinkies, we should not be surprised when it all comes out with the same basic message—do what you feel, and go with the flow.
Contrary to this, the biblical imperative must be the discipline of thinking like a Christian. Legalistic traditionalists don’t mind if the kids don’t think about pop culture, as long as they abstain from it—ignorance and purity together. Come out from among them, and be ye separate. Don’t think—just don’t. Meantime, the kids who stay neck-deep in pop culture are contaminated and ignorant. But both sides share an ignorance of what is really going on.

Read the rest at http://www.credenda.org/issues/12-3thema.php

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