Nirvana’s In Utero just turned 20. Reflecting on his angsty obsession with the band as a teenager, David Zahl grapples with how Christians should think about their media consumption:
The real issue … is not that we make a questionable movie or band that much more attractive with our restrictions, it’s that we miss out on an opportunity to ask a deeper and ultimately more biblical question–what is it inside of us that makes us want to consume what we actually want to consume?
After all, the Bible is fairly unclear on the subject of appropriate television. We may be able to cobble together an answer, it may even make good sense, but it will inevitably differ from that of our neighbor. Fortunately, Jesus more or less directly addresses the High Fidelity quandary. He is recorded in Mark as saying that, “Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” (Mark 14b-15). Sin flows inside-out rather than outside-in. It is inherited, not achieved, as the St. Paul writes in Romans 5.
In other words, for a piece of culture to gain emotional or spiritual traction in the viewer or consumer, it has to find an internal foothold first. Which is another way of saying that we listen to pop music because we are miserable, not the other way around. The enemy is not out there. Indeed, when we blame or scapegoat media for our problems with anger, or lust, or anxiety, we are inevitably ignoring the logs in our own eyes.
The Dish 