Culture Wars and Blog Wars

Joshua Claybourn got a lot of flak for a post he made about filthy lyrics in some current pop songs. Even though he gave ample warning, some were angry that he posted some of the lyrics on his blog. I think their anger is misplaced. Claybourn did not post the lyrics gratuitously or to titillate. He did it because he was making a point, because he was trying to educate.

I think the flak he got illustrates the attitude many Christians take towards the world. They want to hide from everything and pretend the bad stuff doesn't exist. Well, it does exist. How are Christians supposed to have some relevance to the culture if we're not aware of what's going on? How are we going to respond?

I'm not saying that Christians need to go out and immerse themselves in all that's filthy in our culture to understand it. But Christians should not be sheltered and naive either. As Christ said, "be gentle as a dove yet wise as a serpent."

Claybourn makes this point more eloquently than I can:

Half of the population doesn’t think twice about it, and the other half finds it revolting. What’s wrong with this picture? On the one hand, you have Christians fleeing the scene and hiding from anything non-Christian in our culture. On the other hand, you have younger people (Christian and non-Christian) seeing little harm in the music. I think it would be naïve and foolish to think they’re not exposed to foul language and music frequently, even if they attend a Christian school. The alarming thing here is that these are the number one and number two "songs" in the country. Hundreds of thousands of people paid money for the CD, and an exponentially larger number listen to it on the radio or their computer.

Like I said, the anger at reposting the lyrics is misplaced. How about directing the anger at the "artists" themselves and at a culture that makes these people millionaires?

All in all, it's a good debate. Read Claybourn's posts, the comments and other posts that he links to.