Seeing the beauty of the Creator through creation in our culture

I came across this essay on the Web site today of a church in Portland, Imago Dei Community, and thought it related quite well in a time where God and culture are viewed as two separate entitites. The article examined the dangers of Christians being absent from today's culture or embracing it much too passively. Rather, we must engage the music, arts, and literature of society as a way of seeing the questions that people raise today but, sadly, go unanswered much of the time. We have to see the beauty in the creation that our fellow humans have come up with for what it truly is: A glimpse of the magnificant glory of God.
I was talking with Rob Gaskin, one of the pastors at Karis Community Church here in Columbia, and he said that even graffiti is created in the form of a question. I completely agree. It is an artist expressing themselves through colors. Here are a view quotes from the Imago Dei article. I'd highly recommend reading it completely.



"Somewhere between isolating ourselves from culture on the one end, and passively immersing ourselves in it on the other, is a place of being able to constructively engage and participate as active agents in culture. It is the creative tension of being in the world, while not being of it. Our desire is to help spark conversation on what it looks like to engage culture from within as followers of Christ"



"God’s identity as Redeemer reveals itself in popular culture as God speaks of Himself and reveals His glory through the images, stories, and symbols of popular culture. God can speak to us through Picasso’s Guernica of the suffering He has identified with in the cross of Christ, through Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath of the hope of redemption, through the recent movie Half Nelson of the power of community amidst broken people, through Radiohead’s Idioteque of a voice of grace winding through the chaotic frenzy of a world destroying itself."












"We need not fear pop culture but can enter into it in the Spirit of Christ and our union with him to discern that which is beautiful, pure and true from that which is degrading, abusive and shameful. It is from such a posture within culture, rather than outside of it, that the redemptive voice of Christ can be heard."



http://www.imagodeicommunity.com/worship--beauty/cultural-engagement/cultural-engagement-vision/