By Kelly Monroe Kullberg

A Faith and Culture Devotional is a treasure book of God’s glory from 70 believers who are, themselves, treasures. Dallas Willard, Walter Bradley, Dick Keyes, Frederica Matthewes-Green, Erwin McManus, Scot McKnight, Os Guinness, Bill Edgar, Bruce Herman, Catherine Claire Larson, John Eldredge …

They’re helping me see God’s glory as I learn about ancient empires, DNA, Tolkien & joy, flight, Rockwell, the search for intimacy, String theory, J.S. Bach, the Periodic Table, the fall of Rome, Quantum physics, Dylan, Dark matter, U2, Paradise Lost, T.S. Eliot, the genius of Jesus, the Great Awakenings and the Resurrection.

Somehow I’d missed that Rembrandt painted his Return of the Prodigal after losing five of his own children, and two wives. I didn’t know that missionaries (and the Gospel) so impressed Charles Darwin on his early voyage. Who knew that Oscar Wilde read Pascal’s Pensees while Wilde was in jail for “crimes of gross indecency” then came to Christ for mercy (thus he could write the end of Dorian Gray as an offer of salvation). I missed that Picasso was such a cad, though his tragic late-in-life confession does have the merit of sincerity.

Faith and culture? Why bother? In one day a tsunami, or band of terrorists, can devastate decades of culture-making. Including countless human lives. Some of us are in slight shock, if not in mourning….

… 2008 was and 2009 may be, for many, years to suggest that life on earth, in this old order, holds no guarantees. There is the tanking economy. There are culturally-savvy billionaire(s) and their creative reframing of policies of death in vaguely spiritual and otherwise acceptable language. (A strong opinion, though sufficiently vague wording, I hope). But, truly, anything can and does happen in this world.

Things can, and do, fall apart. On a personal level: I left for an overnight hiking trip last summer and came home to find my mother (my best lifelong friend) unconscious in a hospital I.C.U. for eight days. (After weeks in the hospital, she miraculously survived, but I’m struck by the inevitable loss of her, some day.) Three other friends died in their 50s.

I’ve realized that our time here is short. I need to wake up. Soon. Now. To love and feel, think and act, well. It helps a bit to have some treasures of many books in one book.

Chesterton felt that the whole earth, after the Fall, because of the Fall, was something of an epic shipwreck. And that anything good was the result of painstaking redemption, like hauling up silverware and heirlooms from the bottom of the ocean. So it is with culture-making – hard, and because of love. (Chesterton also believed that “Satan fell from the force of gravity.” So perhaps I should lighten up.)

Faith and culture? Yeah. From Genesis onward, including an epic flood, faith has inspired believers to take the raw material of God’s creation and create culture (or as Andy Crouch likes to say, instances of culture) — to build in the ruins, to farm, to study, to dance, to paint, to sing, to write books, to love and nurture new life, to drill wells for fresh water, to visit prisoners with hope, to find cures for disease. Faith sees “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” and, in response, worships and creates.

Reminders, inklings, and actual knowledge of the glory of God, his beauty and genius, builds my faith in the otherwise “impossible.” On a good day, I begin to look at ruins, despair, chaos in new ways. I admire New York artist Mako Fujimura when overlooking the devastation on September 12, 2001 (as discussed in the last week of FCD). I wonder along with him, wow, this is really bad, but what might God have in mind and heart here? What is the path of redemption? How does faith in a risen savior create beauty and life, again, in culture(s)?

So, our A Faith and Culture Devotional offers daily reminders of the Redeemer’s work in the world He loves. Hand to the plow.

By Lael Arrington

In his op-ed piece, “Lessons from Michael Jackson,” Faith and Culture Devotional contributor Mark Joseph invites us to step back from both the man and his work and remind ourselves of our values. Mark is a music producer (The Passion of the Christ rock CD) editor of entertainment and culture news Bullypulpit.com, and author of Faith, God & Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Two more lessons from Michael Jackson: Like many of us over forty, Michael Jackson, with his modern penchant for hyper-performance, spectacle, and artifice connected less and less with a new generation that values just the opposite. (See F&CD p.276 “The Purpose of History”). As many postmoderns lose confidence in discovering revealed or objective Truth they see the big shiny machine of progress and don’t believe it any more. Rather than seeing progress they see only motion. People who live with integrity and humanity provide a small but trustworthy point of reference in the shifting sands.

It’s the same lesson that UnChristian author and Barna Group president David Kinnaman urged our listeners to consider when we pre-recorded a Things that Matter Most interview with him this week on what a new generation really thinks about Christians. The research shows that today’s 16-29 year olds have an aversion to artifice, masks and hypocrisy. They long for authenticity and transparency. Outsiders respect Christians who acknowledge their insecurities and failings and who don’t pretend (see F&CD John Eldredge’s “Major and Minor Themes” p. 151) that following Jesus is all happy-clappy and “Victory in Jesus.”

On January 11,1992, in a telling snapshot of this cultural shift from artifice to authenticity, Jackson’s album Dangerous was displaced from its number one spot atop the charts by Nirvana’s Nevermind. To many in the younger generation Jackson’s cover art on the modern, lushly produced successor to Thriller and Bad attained new heights of artifice, featuring Jackson’s eyes peering out from behind the Sargent Pepperesque artwork, as if the entire album cover were another of the masks of which Michael was so fond.

The cover art of the more postmodern Nevermind evoked the antithesis of Jackson’s Neverland world of pretence and grandiose self-reference, over-production and over-the-top videos. The iconic Jackson cover was toppled by the ironic Nirvana cover—the bright-eyed water baby swimming for the lure of the buck, a not so subtle rejection of the fame and success Jackson relentlessly pursued. The deeply hopeful master of a modern utopian universe gave way to a garage band from Seattle who took their postmodern nihilism straight up.

Stripped down and raw, Nirvana’s music and videos helped reset the button of cultural relevance. Rolling Stone magazine celebrated the band’s “brutal roar and soothing melodies,” the “cryptic beauty of Cobain’s lyrics and the howling intimacy of his singing.” “We are the world/we are the children/we are the ones to make a brighter day so let’s start giving” was written on a different planet, in a different age than “Here we are now/Entertain us/I feel stupid and contagious/I’m worse at what I do best/And for this gift I feel blessed/Our little group has always been/And always will until the end.” The younger generation still enjoys partying with Michael’s grooves, but their unfulfilled longings for a North Star and real hope still ripple through music (and politics).

As it turned out, Jackson’s attempts to manage the physical demands of one last run at meaning and purpose in megasuccess may have been just as deadly as Cobain’s despair of finding it there (or anywhere else).

Lesson number two from Jackson’s memorial service and UnChristian. Kinnaman’s research also showed that young people are weary of Christians’ judgmental, condemning ways. They long to see followers of Jesus Christ reflect his grace. So, as I ponder how some of Michael’s lyrics are in conflict w/ Christian values, how he really never “got it” that having kids sleep in his bed was “Dangerous,” even the stories of his drug abuse and possible injury to children, I take caution to not fall in step with either the idol worship of the fans or the snotty, judgmentalism of the tabloid press.

Before I condemn him for his artifice, his naïve utopianism or his attempt to live in a fantasy land of his own making, I wonder what I would do if I couldn’t go to a movie or a bookstore without things grinding to a halt, crowds pressing in for a look-see or an autograph. I wonder, if I could rarely go out to play as a child or hang w/ acquaintances or associates who didn’t want a piece of me as an adult, if I might cherish the company of animals and children. If I had a pile of money and couldn’t leave the ranch, what would I have built? (Something with a book store, coffee shop and literary lights?)

This Jackson quote from Mark Joseph’s post last week at bullypulpit.com has haunted me:
“I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That’s all. That’s the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.”

Many Christians were moved by the closing prayer of Pastor Lucious Smith at Michael’s memorial. A call to responsibility to God and others, yet full of grace, I think the outsiders quoted in UnChristian may have appreciated it as well:

“Our Heavenly Father, we thank you this day for the memory of Michael Jackson that means so much to us, even right now. Thank you for the gift of music he gave us. Thank you for the man that he was and what he sought to do with his life. We pray that you would remind us that we truly can make a difference if we make up our minds to do so. Help us to take a message of love and peace and healing with us as we go. Let us demonstrate that love when we go to school. Let us demonstrate that love when we go to work. Let us demonstrate that love as we walk the streets of our city, and let us no longer turn a blind eye to the needs that we walk by every day. Let us stop judging people by the color of their skin and the accent of their voice. Let us rather look in the heart of every man, woman, boy and girl and try to reach them with the love that Michael Jackson showed us in his music.

“But even now the King of Pop must bow his knee to the King of Kings. And we pray that you would remind us Lord, that our lives are but dust. We are here for a moment and then we are gone. Thank you, Lord, for how Michael impacted us and how we might impact others. For we pray that this moment will not be forgotten as an event to have been enjoyed but as a reminder that we too can make a change. Bless us and keep us with the love by which you kept Michael. And we offer this prayer in the glorious name of Jesus our Lord, that all who agree say…Amen.”