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   Pop culture versus God

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Topic: Pop culture versus God (Read 453 times)

AmberJ
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Pop culture versus God
« on: Nov 2^nd, 2006, 9:07pm »

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(from toronto star)
Branded by the light
Oct. 31, 2006. 01:00 AM
JEN GERSON
LIFE WRITER

They enter oblivious, hands outstretched, fat cheeks and watery eyes staring skyward to the Lord.

They are to leave warriors. Convinced by arguments crafted from statistics and fear, these children of God are told they are to be the salvation of a generation in decline, one beset by the perils of pop culture, advertising and corporate greed.

They absorb those lessons, squealing in delight whenever a speaker mentions the righteousness of Jesus.

Then they head to McDonald's.

This is downtown Hamilton, Friday night: A coliseum crowds with 8,000 teenagers and young adults proclaiming the inevitable victory of moral right at the only Canadian stop for the controversial Acquire the Fire Christian youth rally. At times, it is a disturbing taste of the militant new flavour of faith. At other times, it is a concert for small-town kids who want to spend a night in the big city and shop.

After the preaching, Christian rock bands coo to the crowd within Copps Coliseum. The music is on par with most pre-fab pop rock, but the lyrics are of God and worship. The kids wave their hands in the air, thousands of fingers reaching for a state of grace. When they dance, they jump in time to the sound of bass and move to an unseen heartbeat.

They are Good Kids.

The teenagers at the rally are mostly in their mid-teens, have grown up within Christian churches and have travelled from small towns with their local youth groups. They wear sneakers, hoodies and swaths of denim. The girls sport silver earrings that brush their shoulders, the colours of the sweaters, jackets and bags layered and co-ordinated as if rehearsed. The boys' hair curls at the end from being washed and brushed too little.

Standing on a stage decorated with coloured lights that sparkle and shift, Ron Luce, a 43-year-old father of two, paints a grim picture of what it is to be young in North America: There's a war to be waged.

Luce is the founder of Teen Mania Ministries, the organization behind the event. He is the author of dozens of Christian books, with such comforting titles as Battlecry for a Generation and Rise Up: Basic Training for Warriors.

He's also a charismatic keynote speaker. His face and frame are blown up on TV screens, 50 feet wide and repeated in triplicate across the front of the coliseum.

"They don't care that if you buy the clothes on their show, you might get date raped," he says. They don't care that if you listen to their show, you are more likely to have sex and get STDs.

"They don't care if you live in pain or are unable to have children for the rest of your life."

The "They" to whom he refers is an unnamed amorphous cabal, a twisted and insidious intelligence responsible for the moral downfall of young America. In the name of profiteering, "They" make young people buy revealing clothing, have sex, get diseases, die and/or commit suicide. "They" are never named in full, but "Their" ranks include, but are not limited to, MTV and the rest of the media and pop culture, in general.

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`Now we're preparing for battle, for the end of times. Now it's more like we're preparing for a spiritual battle with the devil.'

19-year-old Charles Roorda, who has been attending Acquire the Fire events for a decade

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It's as if sex and drugs are as new as the TV stations that broadcast them.

Those in and outside the religion have labelled Luce's ideas on Christianity as extreme. Protestors follow him when he tours stateside, accusing the leader of being a forerunner to a Christian fascist movement.

Luce disagrees with such a portrayal. "We're trying to educate kids about how pop culture is putting them in a trance," he says in a phone interview prior to the rally. "I call these people terrorists. They're virtue terrorists because they're ripping any kind of moral virtue from our kids. They're worse than Al Qaeda because they give kids a piece of candy with poison in it and then laugh as they take their money to the bank as (the kids) die morally."

The anti-corporate message could be a front for Adbusters. But a healthy respect for capitalism is kept alive. Edgy, unhemmed T-shirts, nail and wire crosses on black thread, Bibles bound in leather, marked with abstract floral motifs (for the girls) and thorns (for the guys) are for sale. There's also army-inspired caps, camouflage-green field bags and wax-back fabric badges embroidered with stars and stripes.

"It's an eye-opening experience," says 19-year-old Charles Roorda of Brampton, of the event. "When I go back, it helps to see what's going on in the real world."

It is spiritual warfare, after all. And Roorda, who has been coming to Acquire the Fire events for a decade, says he's seen how urgent the message has become.

"When I first started coming here, it was more defensive. The event was just to know God," he says. "Now we're preparing for battle, for the end of times. Now it's more like we're preparing for a spiritual battle with the devil."

The weapons are prayer and scripture and the inevitable power of right. The enemy shifts, but is ever present: Starbucks, Abercrombie & Fitch, Roots.

"They think of you as cattle," Luce explains from the stage. To make the point, a cowhide is brought out and a volunteer is asked to take a branding iron to its hind end. "That brand sears beneath the skin," he says. The iron is taken away. Encircled in red is a triangular flag on a stick one of the event's logos.

The message is simple: If you're going to be branded by anything, be branded by God. Strip yourself of Nike and embrace Luce's entrepreneurial brand of Christianity.

"If you look at a lot of kids, they are passive. (Pop culture) is so cool and titillating that it's irresistible," he says. MTV is turning young teenaged males into "mooks," he says irresponsible, drunken, Jackass-worshipping frat-boys, credit card in hand, stumbling about the malls of North America in an Elysian stupor. The girls are their mid-rift baring bait.

"Last year they told us to hate the world. To throw out all of our secular CDs," says 17-year-old Diego Lopez from Mississauga, taking a break from a game of hacky sack. He wears a toque and a Jesus Fish pendant from a thick silver chain. But the message was too extreme for him. "I believe that as long as you know what you believe in and you don't compromise those beliefs, you'll be fine."

Others say, while crowding the nearby food courts at lunch, that when they took Luce's advice and sacrificed their music, they felt a closer connection with God.

"We're being taught to live life not by what people tell you to," says 15-year-old Dylan Wrigglesworth of Acton. The speakers at the rally "tell you that you should not be branded, but then they tell you how to live. What they say is good, but the way they go about it is wrong."

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AmberJ
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Re: Pop culture versus God
« Reply #1 on: Nov 2^nd, 2006, 9:10pm »

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First, I am not trying to offend anyone. This piece just really seems odd to me. I have attended Christian conferences wiht my fiance that have been very spiritual. Every year he is asked to go to ATF and refuses.. I can now understand why...

After reading this there are lot of comments mentioned that I'd like to ask Ron Luce about...

"we were told to hate the world"--umm last time I checked Jesus Christ wants everyone to love their enemy

I find it funny that Ron Luce is against capitalism, yet he didn't hesitate to sell his propoganda..

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yesteach
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Re: Pop culture versus God
« Reply #2 on: Nov 4^th, 2006, 8:10am »

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I thought it odd that this is suddenly in the news... ATF (or something like it) has been around for the last 15-20 years... and now suddenly it's news worthy.

As for the "hate the world" comment... I have a feeling (having been in a church that expounded this philosophy) it's that we are to hate the "things of the world" or worldly possessions - not become absorbed in "things" period. I don't agree with all Luce's tactics, but I do agree that children are becoming more and more influenced by "worldly things." I see it every day, it's all about what you have, not who you are as a person, that matters... a rather sad state for children to be growing up in.

I have a friend who doesn't spend time with her kids unless she is taking them to "practice" of some sort. When they're home, they stay up stairs in their 'playroom.' I've never seen her sit down and spend time with them - and these kids are in intermediate and junior high, now. But they both have every new toy, every new game, the latest fad of clothes, shoes, etc. and they only are interested in what they are getting... As "people" they're so horribly ill-behaved that my daughter (who used to babysit for her) refused to have anything to do with them and would not babysit them. The little boy (when he was about 9) told her she had to do whatever he told her because his parents were paying her to be there.. she told him, in not so polite terms, that his PARENTS were paying her, not HIM, and that HE had nothing to say about it.... that was the last summer she kept them. I have seen this boy, from the time he was small, punch other kids because they got in the way of his video game. He has hit his sister for the same reason. And I don't mean, push/hit kind of thing.. I mean punch in the stomach to the point the other kid is on the floor is tears... they yell a little, the game gets blamed for the problem, and he'd be told "You aren't playing that video game anymore this week!" An hour later, he'd be back upstairs playing the video game again, and no one did a thing about it. The prestige of the "game" was more important to his parents... the game was more important to him that the physical well being of his "friends" and sister. Maybe sometimes it wouldn't hurt to throw away the "world"... Sad

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There are only 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.

AmberJ
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Re: Pop culture versus God
« Reply #3 on: Nov 4^th, 2006, 6:55pm »

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oh I agree people need to refocus themselves. My fiance's parents spend hours taking his siblings to sports practices, music lessons, friends houses etc. But his parents also monitor what they watch, listen to, read and they are not allowed to have any sort of activities on Sundays since that is the Lords Day

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