- Jan 25, 2009
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Can definately understand what you're saying. Although I don't feel comfortable using Harry Potter overall and don't think it's a paticularly safe resource to utilize for teaching, one would not be honest in saying there are no themes present in it which can be applied to the lives of believers - as it concerns things like good overcoming evil, loyalty to friends and other things.
I've seen the same principle whenever it comes to outreach or discussing with friends on music/culture. A pracitical example would be discussing some lyrics by Tupac (EDITED of course, Ephesians 5:3-7,)and showing where what he said was of merit (lest were not on the same page that every culture/religion has an aspect of Truth in it), what was off and directing people toward the larger picture of CHRIST/HIS WORDS.
I'm definitely all for Christians engaging [responsibly] with media..and I think Christian engagement with media can and should be seen as a two-way conversation. God can and does speak, even through sources we may consider unlikely. Recall Acts 17 at Mars Hill - there was an issue of cultural concession in Pauls's time for the sake of spreading the Gospel ties right in to the issue of using movies in culture to do the same today. Paul capitalized on the "unknown God" and used it as a springboard to tell them about the one true God...but in another sense, he quoted a mystical love poem written to Zeus, as if it's subject were the one true God. It's really not a far cry from "grooving to the latest song to Zeus saying it should be sung to Yahweh"..........saying, essentially, "this is what you've been worshiping, ignorantly, and this is the fuller meaning of what you've been doing"....and I do think one can see that as "justifying" what they've been doing, not simply contradicting the worship of "the unknown god".
I think part of the struggle that occurs is that it often seems that just because a good principle or teaching can be gleamed from something, it is taken as a sign that the source one gleams from is approvable. And that always opens the door for things when there's not wisdom or caution. I don't, for example, think that Tupac having many powerful points in his music is a sign that one should listen to the music of Tupac - or other musicians in what they put out since you implicitly allow for a cross-cultural exchange of thought. The same thing goes for media. One can watch horror films like "Nightmare on Elm Street" or "Jason" and other films - and perhaps see some excellent points on leadership or being resourceful when seeing how the characters react....but that wouldn't mean one goes looking for things in those films/digesting them. Same with other films, be it those with sexual joking in them or extreme gore in them.
A lot of people ended up being compromised in differing ways when it came to wishing to learn - and although some may be called to deal with such (just as Daniel and his friends had to study the literature/language of the Babylonians in Daniel 1), I wonder how often it opens the door for things. The entire concept of allowance not being something that indicates acceptance/the best decisions ( 1 Corinthians 6:11-13/1 Corinthians 10:22-24 )
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, you'd not see that relationship last long. A lot of women seem to have an obsession with Dark Romance and some of it seems just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer saga with her own relationship with a Vampire named Angel.
