Does Christ Redeem Cultural Expressions?

We have studied some statements by Shai Linne and boiled them down to four propositions.
1) Rap is a medium.
2) Media are morally neutral until informed by content.
3) Christ’s act of redemption means that even media formerly used for evil can now be used for God’s glory.
4) This is what Shai Linne is doing with rap.

We have considered the first two, and now we turn our attention to the last two. Linne’s statements about redemption are fairly common views in this debate. In essence, such views see Christ as redeeming sinners and their ways, meaning that those now-redeemed sinners can turn those redeemed ways toward Christ and His glory.

What does Scripture say about our redemption? First Peter 1:18-19 is probably one of our clearest answers:

1 Peter 1:18-19 18 knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

Notice who or what is redeemed. Believers are redeemed. What are they redeemed from? They are bought out of their former futile ways or behavior. If culture is in fact an expression of a belief system, then culture would be the conduct that emerges from that collective view of ultimate reality. Peter says that Christ redeems us from this very thing: from the culture that emerged from the futile and aimless views, propagated from one generation to another. Christians are in the process of progressively being changed from this old way of thinking and acting into a new way.

Here’s the key question: Does Christ redeem the futile ways themselves? Does He redeem the ways in which we expressed our ungodliness, so that they may now be enlisted in His service? Or to carry the logic through, does He redeem the cultural artifacts that were used to express ungodliness? Here we do not mean, does Christ redeem the computer that was used for pornography, or does Christ redeem the sound system that was used for raucous parties. It is nonsense to speak of a redeemed computer or a redeemed boom-box. What we mean is, are there cultural expressions, such as music genres, certain leisure activities or forms of recreation, that Christ redeems and transforms?

First, we note that this would be an argument from silence, because the Scripture only speaks of believers being redeemed. Second, if Christ redeems us from futile ways, what will the implications be for those cultural artifacts that propagated those ways? A man who was a nudist and owned a nudist colony can be redeemed, and he is therefore redeemed from the futile way of nudity. What will that do to the cultural artifact of the nudist colony that propagated this sinful behavior? Well, put simply, it does not redeem it. The nudist colony ceases to exist, and the land it was on is now used for something God-glorifying. But it does not become a Christian nudist colony, for no such thing can exist. The cultural artifact of a nudist colony could not be redeemed or transformed. It could only be abandoned. It was itself a sinful expression of sinful hearts, and sinful behavior is not what Christ redeems. He redeems people from sinful behavior.
[To pre-empt my friendly objectors: Yes, I have chosen nudity as an example because we'd all agree that people need to be redeemed from nudism, and nudism has a vehicle that promotes it – the nudist colony. If you feel that this is an unfair comparison to rap, will you not concede that people need to be redeemed from what 99% of rap propagates? Won't you agree that rap is usually used as a vehicle for these ungodly values? Is there no way that the shoe fits - that the form was developed because it suits the content?]

If rap emerged from a worldview that did not have Christ at its center, and was used to express values and beliefs that were hostile to Christ, then the form itself is linked to its original worldview and purpose. Christ did not come to redeem arrogance, pride, murder, fornication, greed, rape, rebellion, illegal drug-use, gangsterism, hatred, and so forth. He came to redeem people from those things. To then say that Christ redeems the form that emerged from futile ways is to misunderstand what form is, and to misunderstand what redemption does and for whom.

Form is not a placeholder; it is an expression. If expressions are sinful, Christ does not redeem them. Redemption is not a hard-scrubbing of sinful barnacles off a neutral object. Redemption is Christ’s buying humans out of sinful ways so that they may glorify God.

Despite accusations to the contrary, I hope my readers understand that I bear no hostility to rappers like Linne. Like Paul, I am thankful whenever the gospel is preached, even if the method or motive when doing so is not commendable (Phil 1:18). However, it’s some of the responses to these articles and other recent similar ones that are very telling, and curiously disproportionate, if this matter is indeed the non-issue and matter of preference that such responses usually say it is.

Regardless of how bystanders interpret my motives, my understanding of the Christian imagination and the affections leads me to see that matters like this are not peripheral, stylistic matters of personal preference. They go to the heart of how we imagine God, which is foundational and fundamental. We don’t want to be idolaters. That’s my agenda.

Are Media ‘By Definition’ Morally Neutral?

In Shai Linne’s statements, we identified four propositions:

1) Rap is a medium.
2) Media are morally neutral until informed by content.
3) Christ’s act of redemption means that even media formerly used for evil can now be used for God’s glory.
4) This is what Shai Linne is doing with rap.

Last post, we considered Linne’s notion that rap is a medium like cameras or canvases. We saw that equating rap with media such as these is unhelpful, for the simple reason that such devices do not carry messages of their own. Rap, as a form, already has expressive value, and contains meaning before the lyrics are added. (Careful readers, please note: Linne was not simply using an analogy. Linne said that rap is a medium. That’s not an analogy, it’s a predication.) In short, we found that Linne’s use of medium contains equivocation.

We now consider the idea that media are morally neutral until informed by content. In Linne’s words, a medium is by definition morally neutral until informed by content. That is to say, what makes a medium a medium is that it carries no moral value, no aesthetic contribution, no enlargement or diminution of the rightness or wrongness of the message it conveys. Once it has such moral value, by Linne’s definition, it is no longer solely a medium.

To falsify Linne’s statement, we need either or both of two things to be true. We must find a medium which carries moral value apart from its having been ‘informed by content’ – invalidating his definition – or we must simply show that rap does not conform to this definition of medium. Strangely enough, supporters of Linne’s view will attribute to rap creative beauty, missing the point that this already places it in the realm of the moral, for what is beautiful is good, and what is ugly is evil. Since we have already dealt with rap being a medium in a different way to canvases in the last post, let’s briefly consider the idea of ‘contentless’ media being intrinsically morally neutral.

Do we really have to say “Marshall McLuhan”? One would think that 47 years of the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ having been in the common tongue would have influenced evangelicals on this topic, but alas. And it wasn’t only McLuhan. Ken Myers wrote All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes in 1989, asking Christians if popular culture was a worthy or fitting medium to communicate the transcendant. Neil Postman wrote a whole book in 1985 on how the medium of television influences how political debate, serious discussion and news are changed in their meanings by television. In Postman’s view, the medium of television shapes the message – turning all it carries into a form of entertainment.

Knowing the media shape messages is hardly a recent idea, or even a minority view. Indeed, the discussion continues with newer media. Articles abound on the effects of social media on communication, the effect of seeing only the image of a preacher on a screen in a campus church, or the Googlization of knowledge. When something can shape a message, it is no longer morally neutral. It can so limit or transform a message as to make it less (or more) true, noble, just, pure, lovely, virtuous, or praiseworthy. It can falsify a message, beautify a message, trivialise a message, or ennoble a message. This is moral value.

Of course the medium has moral value, for the medium has a form. That form presents possibilities, limitations and meanings of its own. Sending the message “Can’t wait to see you on Friday” on a piece of decorated writing paper to a friend carries a very different meaning from having it inscribed on a butcher’s knife and mailing it anonymously. Further, the medium carries value, perceptions, and associations through how it is used, who uses it, when it is used and where. Indeed, this was much of Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 8 to 10. Though dealing with the neutral substance of food, and the seemingly meaningless idols of the Gentiles, Paul showed how the use of that food had moral meaning. Identification, association, edification, and a use of freedom responsibly were among the matters that gave huge moral meaning to the decisions that the Corinthians had to make. Arguing for the intrinsic neutrality of a medium is almost irrelevant if such a medium shapes meaning the moment it is used, or transmits messages. Truth be told, most media have this before they are ‘informed by content’.

In short, media are not morally neutral until informed by content. Instead, media are more or less ingressive to the messages they carry. And some are positively hostile or contradictory to the original ideas and affections of the messages they carry.

One of the necessary paths to correct conclusions in the worship wars is not to unthinkingly accept commonly believed platitudes and assumptions. It is necessary to take the time to consider notions such as ‘a medium is by definition morally neutral’, even when those notions come from those who we think are on the right side of the theological barricades, and whose convictions and example carry weight. In fact, in those cases, it is especially necessary.

Is Rap Really a Canvas?

The following abridged discussion took place here.

Credo Mag: In the past you have been criticized for redeeming such a “depraved genre” as hip-hop. What is your response to this criticism?

Shai Linne: Arguments against “depraved genres” are ultimately arguments against redemption itself, because depraved genres are the products of depraved human beings- who need redemption. (In fact, “depraved genre” is a misnomer because it’s ascribing moral value to a medium, which by definition is morally neutral until informed by content.) Once God has redeemed a person, it’s fitting for the Christian to take the “genres” or vehicles  (such as books, cameras, canvasses, the internet, language, musical forms, etc.) that he or she once used for evil and now use them to promote the glory of God. Those who make the objection (especially as they use the internet to do so) are often unaware that they themselves use “depraved genres” all the time.

Shai Linne’s response to the question can be boiled down to four propositions:
1) Rap is a medium.
2) Media are morally neutral until informed by content.
3) Christ’s act of redemption means that even media formerly used for evil can now be used for God’s glory.
4) This is what Shai Linne is doing with rap.

I’d like to consider these propositions, and then weigh the validity of the argument. Let’s begin with the first: rap is a medium.

What is a medium? What does Shai Linne mean by medium? A dictionary definition of medium would say something like a medium is a means of conveying something. Fairly vague, and unhelpfully broad. Air can be a medium for airplanes, water a medium for fish, and wires a medium for electricity.

In the context of the discussion, Shai Linne is talking about media for messages. That is, he is focusing on those media that can communicate ideas – be they musical ideas, images, or messages written in language and recorded on a screen or a book. He later gives the following as examples of such media: “books, cameras, canvasses, the internet, language, musical forms, etc.” Leaving aside that those are very unlike things to be grouped together, it seems clear that he is limiting his discussion to media that can carry messages.

Linne regards the musical genre of rap as a medium. That is, rap, and we would assume, other genres of music, are simply media for messages to be added to them– on the order of cameras and canvasses. To be fair, perhaps he has defended this assertion elsewhere. However, here the validity of the idea is simply assumed to be true.

I would say, for Linne’s assertion to be true, rap must be like other media of messages in the same way. In Linne’s categorization, these media carry no messages of their own. That is, cameras have no messages of their own until a message is added – until an image is captured. The device only communicates the story of its pictures once those pictures are added. Canvases have no messages of their own until a message is added – until a picture is painted. The canvas only communicates the ideas of the painting once they have been added.

Does rap qualify as a medium in this sense? That is, can we extract rap as a set of rhythms and verbal intonations, that remain meaningless until lyrics are added? Is rap like canvas, film or memory space in a computer?

To answer that, let’s propose an experiment. Imagine hearing a rap song in a language foreign to you. The message of the lyrics is for all practical intents and purposes meaningless to you. All you can make out is the music and the intonation of the rapper. This is as close as we can get to Linne’s idea of rap as ‘medium without message’. As you listen, does the music carry the neutral significance of a blank screen? Is it film awaiting an image, creating in you no responses whatsoever? Is it a blank sheet of paper, or 100 megabytes of space waiting to be used? Do you really feel nothing, and make no associations, and experience no like or dislike for the music?

I doubt it. I think we hear it the way we hear the neighbours arguing. We can’t always make out the words, but we understand the mood, and therefore we understand the significance. An angry tone of voice may be a medium to communicate an idea, but it is more than a medium. It is a form – a shape into which the words will be poured. It has a particular shape by its volume and tempo and pitch. And before we add the words to it, it is a shape which already has a meaning of its own.

If the reply comes that such interpretations of rap come through association or by how rap is used, my answer is, how does that help the idea that rap is like a camera or a canvas? In fact, it tends to weaken such a notion. It shows that rap, for whatever reason, carries meaning in ways that devices and technologies do not. If rap is a medium, then it is a medium in a very different  way to media like devices and canvases. It is more of a mold that will shape the words placed into it– and ought not to be compared to radios, MP3 players or computer screens.