Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center on Johnstone Street. In a recent sub stack, Rod Dreer described an art exhibit in Austria entitled, and I quote, You shall make for yourself an image. As the name suggests, the point of the installation is to blaspheme Christianity, particularly during the season of Advent. One photograph in the exhibit was entitled, I am the Mother Too, featured a man dressed as Mary holding the baby Jesus. The caption reads, The allusion to the Virgin Mary is clear.
The artist addresses the fears and struggles of Bangladesh's severely oppressed and socially isolated LGBTQI plus community. End quote. And another piece, latex nubs are arranged to look like maggots in the shape of a man crucified on a cross. The exhibition's description for this one says, the artist transforms one of Western culture's most potent symbols into a tactile, erotically charged object. End quote.
But the most scandalous piece is Mary holding Jesus after his death. Except in this version, it's a naked woman in a suggestive pose cradling a Jesus who died not from crucifixion, but from an overdose of heroin. In one sense, the entire Exhibits should just be dismissed as a childish, borish attempt to break taboos. It is a particularly crass example of desecration, the growing tendency in Western society to not merely deny but also violate transcendent truth, objective beauty, and goodness. To a much lesser degree, the insistent backstorying of movie villains is a tamer example of desecration.
With sequels, remakes, and reimaginings, well-loved stories are retold in a way that encourages the audience to reconsider the good guys and bad guys. The heroes are deeply flawed. The villains are misunderstood. No one should judge between them. Take, for example, the new Wicked movie.
The whole point of Wicked for Good, as the title suggests, is to re-envision the story of Oz, making Dorothy a minor character and the Wicked Witch of the West the heroine. Sleeping Beauty received a similar treatment back in 2014. A live-action prequel was told from the perspective of the evil sorceress Maleficent. And Netflix just announced a new movie called Steps. It's an updated version of Cinderella, in which the originally abusive stepsisters are reimagined as kind and misunderstood.
While an occasional movie along these lines might be interesting, the frequency of these is so commonplace. That, as Jonathan Peugeot put it in describing the Viennese art show, is just tedious and boring. Not to mention, like a Broadway lineup that features theater versions of mediocre 90s movies, it just reflects a whole crisis of creativity. And that should make sense to us because art mostly reflects the worldview and values of a culture. Having rejected a creator, it's no wonder we've lost creativity.
But we've also lost truth, beauty, and goodness. Nothing is admirable anymore to be aspired to. No standard remains to hold us back from the moral abyss. Eventually, desecration will make sense to those who are convinced that the sacred is nothing but someone's random moral imposition on us. In contrast, the Christian vision of life begins with God.
The God is the source of all meaning and all goodness. Because the Christ that the Vienna exhibit so profanes actually invaded human history at the incarnation, because he died and rose again, history has meaning and our life has hope. Years ago, Chuck Coulson rightly described the Christian life as the proper understanding of the good life. And I quote, What does it take to create the good life? A firm sense of right and wrong and a determination to order one's life accordingly?
When men and women act in accord with their true nature, they feel a sense of harmony, contentment, and joy. This is happiness, the fruit of virtue. Despite sin, struggle, and despair, God is sovereign. Creation is still good, though fallen. Beauty, truth, and morality are not illusions.
And to recognize all these things is simply to acknowledge reality. Desecration is a rejection of reality. And all this points to a reason that Christian art and Christian storytelling are so important and effective callings, not merely to provide alternatives to the death works of a desecrating culture, but rather, as Dr. Gary Phillips would often say, the artist's task is to paraphrase reality. Those who grasp the essentials of reality are able to remind the world of the Creator.
and all that is true and good and beautiful. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
And you can find a version of this commentary to download and share with others at breakpoint.org. Hi, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center. If you've ever taken a close look at a really old church building, most of the time you can find a cornerstone. A lot of times, the cornerstone will bear the names of the founders who built the church, not just to last during their time. but for generations to come.
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