Cultural War: Art’s Expression as Tool - PART 2

In Philippines 4:8, God advises us: “ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Reflecting on the verse above, are we seeking for these values when we are entertaining ourselves? Is the music, movies, concerts, plays, dancing, pictures, sculptures reflecting these values? At this instant, while I am typing these thoughts, there are a spiritual world acting around us. There are angels in my and in your house that are protecting us, however, there is also a text in 1 Peter 5:8 that says:  “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around  like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Often, we underestimate the power that the devil can have over our lives but he can only act out trough legality. Spiritual beings need spiritual doors to walk in and they are governed by spiritual laws. Regardless of our awareness towards these spiritual doors, it won’t change the fact that they do exist. What could be a spiritual door? Art expression can be a spiritual door. All art expression can be considered as spiritual doors.

Cultural War: Art’s Expressions as a Tool

 How much of what we are seen related to tragedy in this world are, genuinely, feel by us? Often, we go through our daily lives hearing horrendous news in our screens but, truly, how many of us forget about what we just seen in the next minute? 

Right now, while I am writing these thoughts, a horrific war between Iran and Israel is happening and many of us are living as if nothing is happening. Why is this, I’ve asked myself? And the most logical answer I can think of is we are submerged into a spiritual blindness. 

How can we then be able to reverse this issue? Well, we can start from historical context. 

Throughout the history of our civilization, we’ve seen religious symbols been used to ridicule those whom proclaimed their faith, especially, Christians. In the 80’s, for exemple, we often saw and still see the singer Madonna bringing a sexualized image of Jesus in her video clips and shows among others blasphemies. 

Many art expressions such as music, literature, fashion, painting, plastic arts, theatre inspire us embracing the evil until we can get used to, conforming our souls into these dark psique ideas until we can no longer be able to be sensitive towards them. Now days, bizarres scenes and events do not shock us like used to in the past and this is exactly what we can not loose track of: our past, our history! It’s necessary to know our past in order to not repeat the same mistakes in our present. 

Fashion isn’t a topic of my interest but lately I’ve been watching some of it events that take place in Milan and France. Let’s not forget this: fashion industry plays a huge piece in society, it dictates how society should dressed, how our kids should be dressed and there is always an intention behind each trend, there is always a message to be deliver and implement into society. Recently a known brand was involved in a scandal after clearly associate image of children and sexual items in one of their commercials. It was clearly a pedophilia propaganda. The brand was cancelled for a short period of time, however, soon after, all artists and internet influencers were advertising the brand again. What we can learn from this episode? Little by little and without realizing we are accepting it becoming part of this culture and bringing these ideas to our lives. We need to lift up with beauty, grace against to this dangerous culture and knowledge is our biggest weapon. 

Let’s dig into Greek Mythology to understand how we’ve got here. First, it’s important to know that all art expressions had its origin in the practice of worship. All, there is not exception. 

All art forms were developed exclusively with the intention of cult. Second, it’s also important that we understand that beauty as much as truth are not relative. They are crystal clear as water! With this been said, we need then to live by the truth and the truth is: nothing, absolutely nothing is neutral. Spiritually speaking, nothing is neutral. This does means that a dance, a song, a poem, for exemple, 

are intentionally sending you a message. When we are worshipping our God, we’re invoking His name, we’re invoking the presence of the Holy Spirit and the same way we do when we are playing a song that was not inspired by the things from above, the sacred things, we are also invoking other things.