The following is a transcript of the chapel message given by Erik Lokkesmoe for the Engaging Weekend Culture chapel message on Friday April 25, 2008.
My first introduction to Asbury wasn't through a glossy college brochure or a friend who went here years ago. I was at Walden Media, working on the film Amazing Grace, and I kept hearing how these students at some small college in Wilmore, contributed to the success of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
So when it came time to create 100,000 DVDs that would introduce the world's greatest abolitionist to the world's most influential leaders, who did we call?
There were a lot of options, of course.
But when it came to finding the best, we called Asbury College - and that is how I first learned of this amazing school - through the creativity of its students.
It isn't all that surprising, really.
You are helping to change Hollywood - not through boycotts - but through artistry and excellence.
If you ask any studio executive, and if they are truly honest, they'll tell you:
The best stories, the most imaginative filmmakers are not coming out of Hollywood - they are coming from places like Wilmore and Wilmington and Walla Walla.
As a result, we are seeing a great democratization of entertainment.
A few weeks ago, three Christian filmmakers made a movie for $50,000, -- it is called the The Cult of Sincerity, and they convinced YouTube to let them be the first feature film to every premiere on the site.
Five years ago that would have been impossible - everything was controlled by the studios -- but now with a Mac, some software, and a borrowed camera, everyone is a filmmaker and every city is a Little Hollywood.
And that's a great thing - God has a history of using the people and the places we least expect to change the world.
Thirteen years ago I graduated from Westmont College with a desire to change the culture. I was not the best student - I majored in beach volleyball and playing pranks. In fact, to this day my greatest achievement at Westmont was putting 100,000 ladybugs in a girls dorm.
But I knew that I loved to write - and I was drawn to politics, and back then, if you wanted to change the world, you went to Washington, D.C.
You fought the culture wars. You passed better laws. You made great speeches. And that is what I did for a decade, working on Capitol Hill as a speechwriter and press secretary.
But year after year nothing changed. The harder I worked, the worse politics seemed to get. The culture wars were intensifying - and I was having more and more trouble reconciling the Gospel of grace with the politics of us vs. them.
God may not have been changing Washington, but he was changing me - and part of that change was moving me into the world of arts and entertainment.
And so with the few minutes we have together, I want to share a few thoughts about how we orbit this giant hairball that we call culture.
Now, imagine with me that all of culture is a massive river - an American River fed by a thousand tributaries from a thousand sources. There are eddies and rapids, and the river rises and falls in different seasons. At times it is a slow and lazy pace, while other times it is dangerous with steep drops and churning whitewater.
For many Christians, the entire river is bad - it must be avoided or even dammed. It is too dangerous or powerful, therefore it must be controlled, restricted.
Some Christians want to change the course of the river - they attempt to steer it, move it in a different direction, slow its current, which is nearly impossible - and many end up creating their own little streams that have little impact on the river.
And other Christians, well, they are taking a joyride own the river in an inner tube - they have no idea what is coming around the bend, they just hoop and holler as they get tossed and turned, letting the river take them wherever it goes.
Maybe you fall into one of those three categories.
But here is something that we tend to forget - the entire river - its jagged rocks and snake-like turns - its undercurrents and sandy shores -- the entire river runs through God's land.
The river is God's, and so is the culture.
As Abraham Kuyper said, "There is not a square inch of creation where Jesus Christ does not say, "This is mine! This belongs to me!"
We shouldn't avoid culture. We shouldn't control it. We shouldn't make separate subcultures.
The only way to change the culture is to go to its very source, where it all begins.
There at the bubbling spring, you will find the artist - the makers and shapers of culture.
Everything else - from business to science, an especially politics - everything is downstream from the creative.
The most influential force in our culture is not the politician - it's not a Senator or even the President - it is the artist.
They are the ones that are informing the moral imagination of the culture - through stories and songs and symbols and styles -- and as Napoleon rightly said, "Imagination rules the world."
"The bard, the artist, the creator of theater, the poet, the teller of takes," wrote a professor, "have all been the creators of culture, the refiners of social life, the conscience of humanity who clarify its virtues."
Poets and musicians, actors and fashion designers are shaping the hearts and minds of the world. They are feeding the river-- for better or for worse.
Politicians, as I learned on Capitol Hill, are simply following the current. When a bill reaches the floor of the Senate, that issue has been shaped years before by the culture - by the time it goes up for a vote, it has already been decided. It led an ancient philosopher to say: give me the songs of the nation and I care not who writes its laws.
Don't mistake my words -- politics and science, education and missions are all important. We need godly people working in every sphere of society.
But if we really want to shape the culture, we must be at the places where culture is created - the cultural fountainheads - and that means working on Broadway and Madison Avenue, in Hollywood, at CNN and MTV and Apple.
One MTV executive proudly claimed, "I can determine what kids will wear tomorrow, by what I put on the air today." He is right. So we need redemptive people as executives at MTV.
One of my friends was a writer on That 70's Show - he will tell you it was not the best content for the culture. He describes the writer's room - an unhappy and lonely place where no other writer went to church or even knew a Christian. Someone asked him, "How can you be a Christian and write for That 70's Show?" He then said, "Imagine how bad the show would have been if I wasn't there?"
This would freak out my grandparents generation - and probably a lot of my parent's generation. Many had trouble reconciling their calling and their Christianity. They perpetuated the myth that full-time Christian service was the most noble calling, and if you weren't a pastor or missionary, then your secular work was intended to support those who were. The arts, in their view, were only useful if they were a tool for evangelism.
My generation has blurred the lines between sacred and secular - we find truth in places outside the church, in films like The Mission and music like U2, we read books by Francis Schaeffer, and yet we still struggle with what "Christian" really means at the box office and the Billboard charts - should we only make G-rated movies, are we selling out if we never write songs about Jesus? For us, the arts are a bit like a junior high school dance, where we all feel awkward about what to do and we are certain that our parents are spying on us through the gym door.
It is one of the reasons why I believe my generation will never do the things that we all dream of doing in the culture. We simply are not good enough; we are not prayerful or patient enough; our imaginations are under-developed and our theology on the arts is still under-construction.
Our role is simply to clear the brush, to build soil - as Robert Frost said.
Then there is the generation coming up fast in our rear-view mirror.
They - or I should say you - you don't see the bold indelible lines drawn between sacred and secular, and you don't see much grace or love in the culture wars. You believe that the arts are more influential than politics, and you move effortlessly between the Church and the wider culture. It makes perfect sense to you that we should be in Hollywood and on Wall Street; not as a means to evangelize but to make the fullness of creation fuller.
You are good enough, talented enough, prayerful and patient enough to do the things we have always dreamed of doing in the culture. For you, the arts are a conversation-starter, and a discovery of what it means to be human and more than human.
And I have little doubt that you will create the next Walden Medias, you will be the future Bob Dylans, you will work at places like XM Radio, Paramount Studios, and Harper Collins.
Some of you may walk red carpets and hold little gold statues and see your name on the bestsellers list - I hope so - but realize that God has in mind something far more glorious than that.
God wants your imagination to fly beyond the stars, as Francis Schaeffer said. He wants you to love your neighbor by offering recreation - and re-creation. He wants you to see beyond the temporal, the tame, and the timid - to discover the untamed Lion who is good , but not safe.
And God wants you to have an impact. He doesn't need us, of course.
And he doesn't expect everything we paint or build or design to change the world. Art doesn't need an audience beyond our Father. Think about His own creation - the mountain flower than no one will ever see, or the golden beach that no one will ever visit, or the fish too deep in the ocean for anyone to ever photograph. God creates for His own pleasure, and we are called to do the same.
But here is what we need if we are going to really have a renewal in our culture.
We need to be citizens of the Upside-Down Kingdom.
The only way to turn a culture right side up is to live upside down.
Jesus astonished the crowds by always doing the unexpected - he dined with outcasts, he said the first shall be last, he talked with the woman at the well, he picked the most faithless and uneducated disciples, and he died like a criminal.
For us it means admiring the poor and unknown more than the rich and famous. It can mean heading off to Uganda or Thailand to fight modern-day slavery. It can mean buying a used car in order to give a little more to someone in need.
The culture is desperate for authenticity. We are no longer amazed by technology or medical miracles or the tallest sky-scraper. We are amazed by people who do the exact opposite of what everyone expects.
Next, we need to see goodness, truth, and beauty in the most unlikely places and people. It is an under-developed doctrine called common grace, and basically, it means that all of God's creation bears His image - His imago dei - as well as his character. Everyone- redeemed or not - is capable of creating beauty, loving unselfishly, and performing heroic acts of courage and sacrifice - just think of 9/11
If you are like me, you can name dozens of books and songs and films - made by unbelievers - that have shaped our love for God's word and God's world.
Dr. Richard Mouw wrote a column called: Why God Enjoys Baseball, in which He describes God delight in the speed of the pitcher, the power of a slugger, the roar of the crowd after a great catch.
He delights in it because it brings Him glory, whether people acknowledge it or not.
For us, common grace frees us to acknowledge a valid argument made by our political adversary.
It frees us to give a standing ovation to a Broadway dancer that may not share our lifestyle or our faith.
It frees us to see truth in a song by Lynkin Park or a film like Fight Club.
Common grace lets us sing with boldness and belief - this is my father's world! He shines in all that's fair!
We can finally stop playing with mudpies in the slums and start enjoying a holiday at the sea.
Next, we need to be the most creative people on the planet. We need to be originators not imitators in the culture.
As Michelangelo said, we must criticize by creating something beautiful. Stop complaining and start creating. The only way to drive out bad culture, C.S. Lewis said, is to create good culture. Again, the pure spring that is the source of the river.
And finally, we need to use our art and entertainment to start conversations not force a conversion.
Conversations not conversions.
For many decades we have used exclamation points and periods.
We have made emotional declarations - this is right! - exclamation point.
And we have made definitive statements that leave little room for dialogue or disagreement. Period. The end. No more listening.
We need more questions.
Then consider Jesus. He was the Answer, right, but he asked more than 150 questions in the Gospels alone. He told stories and asked questions.
Art is all about the conversation; it is about asking tough questions and leaving space for personal discovery. We need to begin trusting the Spirit and trusting the audience - it is ok not to give all the answers.
The books we write should linger with the reader long after the last page is turned. The paintings we paint should stay with the viewer long after the gallery is closed. The films we produce should haunt the audience long after the credit roll.
Art is mystery. The way it is created, and the way it is interpreted.
We need books that linger with the reader long after the last page is turned. We need paintings that stay with the viewer long after the gallery is closed. We need films that stalk the audience long after the credits roll.
Wilberforce called these types of questions: launchers.
When he was invited to a social gathering, he would sit down and think about who would be attending - he would then write out a list of questions to ask the guests. Every question was designed to move the social conversation from pleasantries to personal discoveries. Mrs. Johnson, how is your sick son? Mr. Hawkins, what does the future hold for England?
Great art does the same. It keeps us thinking and talking. And in a pre-Christian world, as artists who desire to glorify God and love our neighbors, that is what we should be about.
So, live upside-down. See the good, the true, and the beautiful. Become the most creative people on the planet. Start conversations.
I will leave you with this quote:
Art asks hard questions. Art incinerates polyester dreams of inner healing and cheap grace. Art hurts, slaps, and defines. Art is interested in truth: in bad words spoken by bad people, in good words spoken by good people, in sin and goodness, in life, sex, birth, color, texture, death, love, hate, nature, man, religion, music, God, fire, water, and air. Art tears down, builds up, and redefine. Art is uncomfortable. Good art - which means truth-telling art - is good in itself, even when it is about bad things.