Take Care When You Suspend Disbelief

I was checking out Walt Mueller’s blog, and he posted an excerpt from Nancy Pearcy’s book, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning that I wanted to share here:

Beliefs have always shaped history. . . . The (Nazi) gas chambers disproved once for all any misguided notion that ideas are neutral. Today ideologies determine how the state governs, how the economy is managed, how the news is framed in the media, and how the education system shapes the next generation. Wrestling with worldview questions is no mere intellectual exercise. It should always be done with an overwhelming sense that we are dealing with questions of life-and-death-importance. . . For young people, learning the skills of worldview awareness can literally mean the difference between spiritual life or death. Ideas exert enormous power when set to music in a YouTube video or translated into glowing images on the theater screen. . . . When you go to the theater, do you simply let the story wash over you? Or do you have the skills to analyze what a film is saying? . . . T.S. Eliot once noted that the serious books we read do not influence us nearly as much as the books we read for fun (or the movies we watch for entertainment). Why? Because when we are relaxing, our guard is down and we engage in the “suspension of disbelief” that allows us to enter imaginatively into the story. As a result, the assumptions of the author or screenwriter may go unnoticed and seep all the more deeply in our consciousness. When we “suspend disbelief,” we must take care not to suspend our “critical faculties.”

This is also a great reminder of why the Church must be salt and light in music, movie, and the arts.  It’s also a warning to us to make sure we look upon culture through the lens of a Christian worldview lest we be taken in.

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Shane Vander Hart

Editor & Founder at Caffeinated Thoughts

Shane Vander Hart is the founder and editor-in-chief of Caffeinated Thoughts.  He is also the President of 4:15 Communications, LLC, a social media & communications consulting/management firm.  Prior to this Shane spent 20 years in youth ministry serving in church, parachurch, and school settings.  He has also served as an interim pastor and is a sought-after speaker and pulpit fill-in.  Shane has been married to his wife Cheryl since 1993 and they have three kids.  Shane and his family reside near Des Moines, IA.

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