Week in and week out, it is the sermon which takes the largest share of my time and energy with regards to spurring spiritual growth in the body of Christ. However, no less significant are the opportunities that occur spontaneously after the morning service or at the grocery store or just hanging out after youth group Sunday evening. On one such recent Sunday evening, I found myself chatting with a few of our youth about such topics as psychology, purity and Lady Gaga.

I really appreciate the straightforward questions our youth raise. Sometimes, as adults, our fears keep us from asking the tough questions. Or if we do ask them, we tend to beat around the bush. Not so with youth. They just “get it out there.”

After that recent conversation, I read a blog forwarded to me by a youth which defended the value of Lady Gaga as thought-provoking art. The message was especially pointed to Christians who dismiss Lady Gaga because she isn’t always very “lady”-like. The author went as far as to compare Lady Gaga to the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel in view of their common use of rather shocking behavior to deliver a message (think meat-dress, for Gaga, and cooking food over human excrement, in the case of Ezekiel). He concludes, “I do know that there is more going on in the Lady Gaga experiment than the typical pop garbage many deride.”

This “pro”-Gaga article represents an ethos among many Christians which, for lack of a better word, is enamored with thought-provoking artists, even if, or especially if, they bash cherished Christian values. Instead of being dismissive or even condemning of such art, this ethos encourages engagement, appreciation, and recognition by Christians.

And it isn’t just art coming from outside of Christendom. Blue Like Jazz, the recent movie inspired by the best-selling Don Miller book, is a case in point. Obscenity-laced dialogue, combined with the sexually explicit material and the portrayal of excessive alcohol and drug use, make Blue Like Jazz well-worthy of its PG-13 rating (as director Steve Taylor proudly warned our pre-screening audience just before the movie began).

Yet, even more significant is how enamored Blue Like Jazz is with the anti-Christian lifestyles it represents. In the book, Miller is enamored with the free-loving hippy community he finds himself living with. And in the movie, his character is enamored with the hedonistic lifestyle and anti-God sentiment pervasive on his very non-Christian college campus.

Interestingly, the only group that his character is not enamored with is evangelical Christians (portrayed primarily by a cheesy, inauthentic youth minister *SPOILER ALERT* who gets the main character’s mother pregnant by means of an extra-marital affair).

Certainly, it is refreshing to see a film written and directed by Christians that avoids cheesy dialogue, one-dimensional acting and over the top platitudes. As well, the importance of authenticity in the Christian community is a message which needs to be heard.

However, does authenticity require us to engage in excessive alcohol use and “experimentation” with drugs (Prov. 23:29-32)? Does authenticity require us to attack evangelical values like honoring the marriage bed (Heb. 13:4), avoiding coarse joking and obscenity (Eph 5:4), and refusing to affirm ungodly behavior (Rom. 1:32)? Does authenticity mean that we must chuck an evangelical Christian heritage out the window?

I sense that it may be easier to become enamored with such lifestyles when you’ve never personally experienced their ugly consequences. As one who has seen, first hand, the destructiveness of such behaviors in my own upbringing, I have very little enticement to “experiment.” And as a pastor who is often trying to help pick up the pieces for families ravaged by such behaviors, I am hard-pressed to find too much praise for Christian ministries which legitimize such experimentation by preaching a pseudo-freedom.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not encouraging the legalistic, self-righteous Christianity so ably caricatured by Blue Like Jazz. Nor am I advocating that believers need to play judge and jury with every form of artistic expression or literature with which they disagree.

Yet it is helpful to note that the same disciple who recorded the words “for God so loved the world” (John 3:16) also wrote “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). While we should love the people in the world, we must be careful not to become enamored with worldly ways. Instead, may we all grow to be more enamored with Christ, seeking to live in obedience to His will and in loving service to each other (Gal. 5:13-26).

In Christ, Pastor Dan