Stop Asking ‘How Much Is Too Much?’
“How much is too much?” Wrong question.
“How much is too much” is one of the worst questions to ask about any pop-cultural Thing.
But how often is it exactly the assumed question behind how we approach stories and media.
Bloggerpastor Trevin Wax dares to touch this topic again at The Gospel Coalition.1
My goal is not to create an artificial line, a legalistic rule that we cling to as a mark of purity. Instead, it’s a question of discernment, and that’s why I am left wondering: Is there anything to which we would simply say, “No matter how much artistry may be involved in this film, it uses copious amounts of sewage to get across its point. Stay away, for your own health.”
On Facebook the column received comments within the usual range, from …
Some days other believers drive me so crazy, that I don’t want to be associated with any of them. This article is one of those reasons. More important things to focus on. Seriously.
To …
Compromising. Plain and simple. Holiness is no longer a popular topic. You cannot drink down the things of this world and expect to be mightily used by God.
“Stop saying that!”
But I’m a total smashable pagan-rock-music broken record here when I insist that “how much is too much” is the wrong question.
The real question is so absurdly simple that Christians usually gloss over it as if to say: Pshaw, everyone knows that.
We don’t. Of stories and media, we must ask the Ultimate Question. And that Ultimate Question should be:
- What is the chief end of man?
With its pop-culture cousin close behind:
- What is the chief end of story?
That may be half the problem solved right there.
The other half begins to be solved when we find a better answer than those partial-truth responses such as “to educate me,” “to entertain me,” “to morally edify me,” “to be Art For Its Own Sake,” or else all of these answers applied to children.2
Update, Jan. 30. A companion SpecFaith column explores this issue further: No Story Is Safe.
- Christians and Movies: Are We Contextualizing or Compromising? is a sequel to Trevin Wax’s Jan. 6 post Evangelicals and Hollywood Muck. ↩
- My own attempt at the better answer to the Ultimate Question is in Beauty and Truth 4: The Chief End of Story. ↩
And I’m over here wondering what the end goal of this separatism is, as opposed to what it seems to actually be doing. Is it purity, or is it stagnation?
Christians do understand that if they love Jesus, they will be in some way separate from the world. They will live distinct lives and often subvert culture.
Biblical believers only disagree on how to do that.
There is not only one way to be separate from the world. As if it’s as simple as saying “just avoid a slippery slope” or “you wouldn’t eat cookies made with only 5 percent dog poop” or even “look at what The World does, then do the opposite.”
The Biblical Christian’s whole view of life purpose must change from inside-out.
The 5% dog doo illustration drives me bonkers every time. It’s not that simple. Sometimes it’s more like choosing between the two goblets in the Princess Bride–there’s no obvious clue to which is poisoned
*spoilers*
They both are.
Beautiful illustration! All our options are poisoned, but we have to drink of something anyways eventually, or there would be no point to living at all.
Purveyors of the “dog doo illustration” should quit getting their morals from outside the Bible, and instead read Jesus’s explicit rebuttal of this notion:
Of course, this doesn’t mean that for all people, hey, it’s all good, and don’t worry about things corrupting you. As with the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus actually reminds us that God’s standard is infinitely stricter than we could ever imagine with all our petty rules. If we could keep out defilement simply by not consuming certain things, that’s still challenging, but not impossible. But if the source of the “dog doo” is actually our own hearts, it’s hopeless!
… Hopeless, that is, save for the One who changes filthy hearts of stone into clean hearts of flesh, thanks to His life, death, and resurrection.