Christ and Pop Culture
Every week, our writers will be sharing some of their favorite finds from around the internet. Check back every week for great articles, insane news items, and interesting diversions.
Drew
I wrote on how Batman is a Christ-figure in Batman: Arkham City for Think Christian.
Britton Peele shares a brief history of Christian videogame interpretation as well as a defense of how he can be a Christian and play Grand Theft Auto IV.
Matthew Lee Anderson gives a helpful summary of the Mohler/Wallis debate on Social Justice and the Church.
Hold Steady’s lead singer, Craig Finn recently announced a new album, “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts,” that is inspired by the TV show, Friday Night Lights.
Bethany Keely-Jonker says it’s unbiblical to affirm “In God We Trust.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 made the University of Louisville lose a football game.
Adam Rico on 8 Ways Not to Procrastinate.
Our very own Rich Clark has an interesting interview up at Kill Screen with Jennifer Estaris covering videogames, children, and creativity.
Jonathan
I really enjoyed this interview with Chuck Klosterman, where he offered thoughts on everything from reality to writing.
I was absolutely awestruck by these time lapse photog shots of earth. They seem almost unreal.
Carissa
William Deresiewicz writes, “The millennial affect is the affect of the salesman.”
Virtual schools are on the rise. And did you know that Florida and Idaho require all public high school students to take at least one course (in Idaho, two courses) online? I didn’t.
I’m generally bored with both Twilight and Twilight commentary at this point, but here’s one piece everyone should read: Sarah Blackwood writes, “The Twilight series challenges what I call the ‘Buffy Summers Maxim’: that teen heroines be physically empowered, often at the expense of emotional clarity.”
Rich
This is really kind of delightful in all the ways it defies expectations: A game developer who worked on Saint’s Row 2 writes a post-mortem (normally an examination of what went wrong and right in the course of the development of a game) about the collapse of his former marriage– and he writes it from a Christian perspective. It’s an extremely refreshing read, and contains a lot of wisdom.Gus Mastrapa gives us “Scenes From The Line For Modern Warfare 3”. Really insightful.
If you’ve been playing Skyrim lately (hasn’t everyone?) you’ll find this to be pretty funny, I think.
The editor-in-chief of Kill Screen comes clean: he was totally a fake female games critic back in the day. This is a very fascinating and provocative article.
Brad
This is your Pumpkin on Drugs. Any questions?
This guy is not afraid. Double down, baby, double down.
A World War II Candy Bomber? Great story I bet you’ve never heard before.
When Tim Tebow took over at QB for Denver, they were 1-4. Now they are 5-5. I’m starting to become a fan, and I don’t even like the NFL.
Jason
David Brooks on the vanity of assuming moral superiority: “How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.”
So Community is going on hiatus. It’s not getting canceled, but still, this isn’t an encouraging thought. Here’s a business case for why NBC shouldn’t cancel the show.
GOOD has produced an interesting infographic exploring “The World of Megachurches”. For example, did you know that the average salary of a megachurch senior/lead pastor is $147,000 and that a megachurch’s annual budget was, on average, nearly $5.7 million in 2010?
Here’s a science question that school never prepared me for: “Should Gay, Endangered Penguins Be Forced to Mate?”
Also, is science capable of solving the “problem” of beauty? “…I am not an atheist [and] here’s why: The flip side of the problem of evil is the problem of beauty. If there really is no God, if the world was not in some sense designed for us, why is it so heartbreakingly lovely?”
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In