The third of three sessions discussing engaging with culture at the Southampton Deanery Chapter's study day, 18 May 2010.

1. what do the media do
to us?

2. Marshall McCluhan

4. It is just the literature that we read for
‘amusement’, or ‘purely for pleasure’ that
may have the greatest and least suspected
influence upon us. It is the literature that
we read with the least effort that can have
the easiest and most insidious influence
upon us.
T.S. Eliot
Selected Essays (Faber and Faber, 1932)

5. The media
shape our
reality

8. ‘I think my image is one of being powerful,
in control.’
Shakira

9. ‘the frantic desire for
the almost real’
(Umberto Eco)

12. How do we respond?

13. 5 dimensions
to think about

14. Aesthetics

15. Emotions

16. morality
16

17. beliefs

18. spirituality

19. Helping
Responding
others to
personally
respond
People
Christians who are not
Christians
19

21. No single piece of our
mental world is to be
hermetically sealed off
from the rest, and there
is not a square inch in
the whole domain of
our human existence
over which Christ, who
is Sovereign over all,
does not cry: ‘Mine!’
Abraham Kuyper
21

22. Two faces of reality
Humans are God’s is
re !
lt u f u l
image-bearers Cu er
wo nd
Humans are rebels
against God
CULT
URE I
TERR S
IBL 22

23. living in the world

24. Do not conform to the pattern
of this world. (Romans 12:1)

25. pressure to conform

26. wrong thinking

27. right thinking

28. Christian values

29. Love the Lord your
God with all your
heart and with all your
soul and with all your
mind and with all your
strength. . . . Love your
neighbour as yourself.
Mark 12:30–31, NIV

30. Paul in As

31. engaging the world

32. Engaging with
popular worldviews
• The Agora looking northwest from Acropolis
32

33. Observing culture carefully
• Agora, altar to 12 gods (nw corner of
agora)
• Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia,
Apollo, Artemis, Hephæstus, Athena, Ares,
Aphrodite and Hermes
33

34. bridge-building
© Steve9091, 2007. Used under a Creative Commons licence

35. making connections

36. shared starting point

37. shared language

38. positive interaction

39. Preaching Jesus
39

40. engaging with worldviews

41. challenging

42. affirming

43. Arguing for Christian
truth claims
43

44. How can we develop a Christian mind,
which is both shaped by the truths of
historic, biblical Christianity, and acquainted
with the realities of the contemporary
world? How can we relate the Word to
the world, understanding the world in the
light of the Word, and even understanding
the Word in the light of the world? . . .
44

45. We have to begin with a double refusal.
We refuse to become either so absorbed
in the Word, that we escape into it and fail
to let it confront the world, or so
absorbed in the world, that we conform
to it and fail to subject it to the judgement
of the Word. Escapism and conformity are
opposite mistakes, but neither is a
Christian option.
45

46. In place of this double refusal we are
called to double listening, listening both to
the Word and to the world. . . . We listen
to the Word with humble reverence,
anxious to understand it, and resolved to
believe and obey what we come to
understand.
46

47. We listen to the world with critical
alertness, anxious to understand it too,
and resolved not necessarily to believe
and obey it, but to sympathise with it and
to seek grace to discover how the gospel
relates to it. . . .
47

48. 'Double listening', however, contains no
element of self-contradiction. . . . These
voices will often contradict one another,
but our purpose in listening to them both
is to discover how they relate to each
other. Double listening is indispensable to
Christian discipleship and Christian
mission.
John Stott
The Contemporary Christiant, pp. 27–29
48

49. There are more idols in the world than
there are realities.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Gods

50. good things

51. ultimate things

52. We think that idols are bad things, but that
is almost never the case. The greater the
good, the more likely we are to expect
that it can satisfy our deepest needs and
hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit
god, especially the very best things in life.
Tim Keller

55. We love idols. We trust idols. We obey
idols. We look to idols to love us and
provide value, beauty, sense of significance
and worth.
Tim Keller

56. love

57. trust

58. obey

59. worship

60. what do we love most?

62. what do we trust?

64. idols will always let us down

65. These gods, who did not make the heavens
and the earth, will perish from the earth and
from under the heavens.
But God made the earth by his power; he
founded the world by his wisdom and
stretched out the heavens by his
understanding.
Jeremiah 10:10–12

66. All who make idols are nothing,
and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are
blind;
they are ignorant, to their own shame.
Isaiah 44:9

68. what do we obey?

71. we were made to worship

72. idolatry = seeking ultimate peace

73. Jesus = perfect image of God

74. fulfilment

75. forgiveness

76. freedom

77. FREEDOM
77

78. HAPPINESS
78

79. 13 Conversations

80. LOVE
80

81. fulfilment

82. PEACE
82

83. www.damaris.org
www.culturewatch.org
www.tonywatkins.org
tonywatkins_
facebook.com/tonywatkinspage