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Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture
By: William Romanowski

Romanowski offers an alternative to the typical Christian approach of critiquing popular movies (Actually, what he says applies to popular art in general, but I'm a movie buff, so I've contextualized his approach for my situation). Rather than becoming obsessed with counting swear words, dead bodies, and bare breasts; Romanowski suggests that we analyze a movie by using a three part method he describes as: subject, content, and evaluate.

Subject: What was the movie about? What was its main theme? What major topic(s) was it trying to address? What were its secondary themes?

Content: What is the artist trying to say about the subject? What is being communicated about love, family, social issues, war, etc.?

Evaluate: How does the artist's treatment of the topic compare to the Christian understanding of God, evil, human nature, redemption, gender roles, social issues, etc.? Does this movie support, challenge, or contradict the biblical vision of reality, which Romanowski describes like this:

--God is at work in the world, and an invisible spiritual realm exists.
--Believing people inhabit the landscape, and faith is integral to all of life.
--Human sin is real, and evil exists.
--God offers forgiveness and the possibility of redemption.

To read highlights of each chapter go to www.brazospress.com/eyeswideopen/

 

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