stuff Christian culture likes

More on “Christian” Gaming

Popular gaming blog Kotaku has an interesting article on a Christian Game Developers conference they tagged along to recently. Telling mostly for this para on what adding “Christian” in front of a media type does for a non-Christian audience. I’ve written a bit about Christian video game stuff before, this is basically an update on that front.

““Christian,” as an adjective, arrives with a lot of freight in the secular world, especially as branding within entertainment media and markets. For example: Christian TV programming, Christian radio, Christian rock, Christian books and bookstores. To the secular mainstream, it’s all assumed to mean insipid edutainment, ulterior-motive prosleytization or oogity-boogity intolerance. So Christian game developers, simply by identifying themselves as such, are up against that assumption of intent.”

The article is a worthwhile read if you’re interested in gaming specifically, or Christian isolationist approaches to the arts in general, because it shows a nice way to approach participation in a cultural/media industry.

July 20, 2011

In praise of hot wives

Dear person who writes their online profiles mindful that your wife reads it,

We get it. You love your wife. You think she’s hot. That’s why you got married.

The rest of us may be inclined to disagree. We may believe that our own wife is hotter.

The fact that you need to reassure yourself that your wife is hot is great. But it comes across as, umm, a bit overstated.

Regards,
Nathan.

You might be wondering why I’m posting this. Well, I was trawling the archives of the Stuff Christian Culture Likes and came across this post. It’s one of my favourites.

Here’s Stephy’s take:

Fortunately, Christian hotness standards are not quite the same as conventional (secular) hotness standards. Value is supposed to be placed on the person rather than on appearance. Even so, hotness is still a valuable commodity even in Christian culture. The public declaration of a spouse’s hotness is a lovely gesture, but can become disquieting when expressed so frequently and fervently. It can begin to sound as if they are trying to convince themselves of something. Could thou protest too much?

My absolute favourite part though, and the part that makes this utterly postworthy, is if you do a bit of a phrase search on Twitter (I can’t guarantee that the results you get will be the same and/or safe for work/your holiness) you get a bunch of people talking about their hot wives. And a startling percentage are Christians. From my quick profile check of the people at this link I would say that close to 80% of the people using the phrase on Twitter either define themselves as Christians in their little description or tweet regularly about the Bible.

How odd.

For the record, I think my wife is hot – but seriously – I don’t need to tell you that.

January 14, 2010

Stuff “Christ Followers” like…

On the one hand these videos are really funny and poke legitimate fun at “bumper sticker” Christian sub-culture.

On the other hand, they’re pretty dumb and based on the pursuit of the Holy Grail of Christian authenticity. The “Christ Follower” totally listens to U2… he even says so… in the third video.

Both extremes are dumb… just as they are when it comes to the Mac v PC ads being spoofed – as this SMH article so humourously points out…

I hope the video is actually mocking both ideas – but I get the impression it’s pushing people to define themselves as “Christ followers” rather than Christians, as though the label is so loaded with negative ideas that it needs replacing. I end up feeling just as frustrated by both of them.

When you boil it down, both Macs and PCs are computers, and both the characters in these videos are sinners forgiven through the work of Jesus.

Besides there’s nothing more fake than the relentless pursuit of authenticity.

November 3, 2009