Paul L. Caron
Dean





Sunday, September 22, 2024

Taste And See If The Show Is Good: How A Christian Can Revel In Breaking Bad And Better Call Saul

Christianity Today, Taste and See If the Show is Good:

Streaming ServicesTaste. As the saying goes, there’s no accounting for it—but Christians are certainly inclined to try. We’re told to turn our thoughts to “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable” (Phil. 4:8). So which paintings and novels and TV shows qualify?

I think this is the wrong question to ask. As CT’s culture editor, I often encounter writers trying to discuss their favorite pop albums or hit summer movies this way. Don’t worry, they argue, this is actually Christian! Or at least it has Christian themes. The film mentions gardens and water and wine. The song touches on love and hope in ways that resonate with Scripture. It’s okay for Christians to like this show because it’s not just good TV. It’s true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.

This kind of analysis usually falls flat. It tends to feel like a stretch—silly at best, disingenuous at worst. And yet, I understand the appeal. We don’t want the works of art we love to run counter to the claims of our faith. We want to follow Paul’s injunction to “set our minds on things above,” so we go looking for loftiness in sitcoms and pop songs (Col. 3:2). We fear returning to a reflexive fundamentalism that sees “worldly” music, literature, or cinema as inherently dangerous.

Truth is, the best music, literature, and cinema do reference our faith, in a way. These works tell stories, and Christianity tells the grand story underneath them all. Insofar as works of art tell the truth about human nature and the world in which we live, we’ll be able to find those threads of connection—even if only as simple as “sin is real.”

The gospel of Jesus makes sense of sacrifice and typifies love, and distinguishes life from death. Now, as in the beginning, there is the Word, undergirding comedy and tragedy, absurdity and futility, suffering and joy. In that sense, every artwork is that Athenian altar of Acts 17, inscribed to a too-often unknown God.

But whether a television show gets us thinking about what’s noble and pure often has less to do with the show itself and more to do with us as viewers. For Paul, the altar to the unknown God was the basis for a sermon pointing to the God he knew in Christ Jesus. Yet for thousands of Athenians who’d passed it day in and day out for decades, it made no such connection.

Rephrasing my earlier question, then: Which paintings and novels and TV shows qualify for me?

Which pieces of art can move each of us—with our unique aesthetic sensibilities, our God-given proclivities for particular jokes, our besetting sins—to reflect on what’s admirable and right?

Posing the question this way doesn’t disregard the guidelines in Philippians 4:8. Some films or songs or texts—such as those with wildly gratuitous violence or pornographic sexuality—will never help any of us meditate on things above. Art isn’t like meat sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 8:4–8); it’s not all neutral for the Christian. Not everything is on the table.

Yet this approach does allow for personality, flexibility, and yes, taste. I reveled in the award-winning show Breaking Bad and its companion, Better Call Saul. Those series are violent, but they didn’t tempt me to wrath. I spent the days after each episode meditating on good intentions and underlying motives and how susceptible we are to faulty explanations of our own behavior. ...

This makes the task of the Christian critic at once more difficult and more interesting. Our job is not to justify our taste in culture but to explain what we see from a vantage point oriented to Christ. Not, This art is actually kinda Christian, but rather, Here’s what I realized as a Christian encountering this art. ...

This is how I hope my own taste will come to operate as a Christian culture critic: as a bellwether for the admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. As an aid to my faith. As a means of encountering God in a brushstroke, a laugh line, a well-written truth.

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https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/09/taste-and-see-if-the-show-is-good-how-a-christian-can-revel-in-breaking-bad-and-better-call-saul.html

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