Wow.
I remember “waking up” to the idea that all my old doper albums were not evil. Some guy in here quoted Savoy Brown’s Hellbound Train (which I just downloaded.... SB was a fantastic blues band in the day). I remember the freedom I felt when I realized that art is just man expressing his “mannishness”(that will be a clue for some of you), including passion, desires, longings, celebrations, despair, frustrations, hatreds, loves, etc. It is a kind of verbal, visual and musical mosaic of what it means to be made in the image of God. Therefore, ALL art is “good” in some sense. “The spiritual man appraises all things.” (apostle Paul to the Corinthians, and Corinth was a cesspool of sensuality)
However, IF you are a Xn (and what idiocy prompts self acknowledged pagans to think they have the slightest clue about what is being discussed here? You are dolts, and frankly should shut up and sit in the corner and listen. This is a family conversation and to be blunt, you ain’t family and have no clue what you are vomiting out in your ignorance)... IF you are a Xn, you also know that the image of God that creates wit, beauty, goodness, cleverness and all that is good in art is produced by terribly twisted men and women. Sometimes, the very twistedness is what is celebrated. In fact, the very first “poem” by fallen man in the book of Genesis sounds like some hip hop artist “Listen all you women....some punk disrespected me and I popped a cap in his @$$... killed the nigga, I did. Same thing gonna happen to you if you f**k wit me!”... bring the lyrics of Gen 4.23 forward a few thousand years and you get the same arrogant impudent swaggering celebration of hate and violence. That is what fallen man does in his art. Instead of celebrating his glory, he celebrates his shame.
THERE IS NO ART, CHRISTIAN OR OTHERWISE, which does not express this twistedness. It is up to the person with the Spirit of God and a bible to say “this is true, this is not, this is a clever way of saying what is true, this is a lie, and this is a tasteless pile of howling out ‘I am dead and I love death.’ “
We should honor what is good, what is true, and what is clever in art, including technically proficient ways of expressing lostness. The fundies are WRONG there. They imagine that you can draw some artificial line and have “pure” art. Ain’t no such animal. You just look silly.
There comes a line, though, whether it is wise to say “there is nothing good here that can possibly outweigh the appeal to bad” It is why I can’t listen to heavy doses of black metal, I don’t watch porn, and I have to ask myself “does this really help me understand how my culture thinks, or is this just appealing to my base nature that Christ died to redeem?” It is easy to kid myself.
That is what Piper is advocating. I think he is dead on correct.
Wow.