An idea from the reading....

An idea that I found particularly interesting from the reading, was the idea that we should address things such as sex and violence and that they are not necessarily a "bad" thing. In the bible, it heavily discusses these issues and they are not taken lightly. Should we live in a world where we can pretend these things don't exist? As Christians is that what we are called to do? Close out the world..... I don't think so and I don't think the author did either. He talks about the idea that Christian writers and producers should exclude these very real things from their productions, however instead of glorifying them, actually representing them in a true light is important. Mass media as we know it, is HUGE. Our media diets are also extremely large. We live in a day that is consumed with messages. America loves violence and lets face it... Sex sells... So as Christians, what should we do. We should speak, engage in conversation about the pros and cons of these topics. The worst thing we could possibly do is not do anything at all. We should engage in media and understand and analyze it. Taking this a step further we should discuss films and their content instead of turning away from an R rated film. We could be missing out. As Christians we need to step out of our comfort zones and get comfortable being uncomfortable. Violence and Sex exist, we have to understand that.

Eyes Wide Open

I really feel like the concepts in the book that we discussed were things we really have been assessing all semester. It was good that we read the book in order to bring the ideas back together and almost lay them right in front of us. As Christian students it is so extremely important that we learn things like this. We are all struggling for our own identities and constantly taking in media every day. It's important that we don't shut our selves out from the rest of the world but engage in popular culture with our peers and neighbors. It is important to know and understand the things which others take part of. If we decide to live in a bubble we are not living as testimonies as we should be. Engaging in the culture which we as people have created is good, we should know and understand things that are in our every day world. We should look at things as Christians not pornographically, but in an analytical way. Taking something from the things we engage in. Hopefully by doing these things we will form relationships with friends and people around us so that they might understand what it is to be a Christian and at the same time we live our lives as we are meant to live them.