A friend of mine once made an observation that struck me as rather profound. We were both in high school at the time, en route to the annual March for Life in Washington D.C. “You know, the culture thinks that teenagers with bad attitudes and brightly-dyed hair are being rebellious,” he commented. “But that’s not true. Our culture expects teenagers to act like that. The real rebels are the kids who care about truth, and religion, and tradition. We are the true rebels.” My friend’s statement has stayed with me to this day, and I think that in many ways he was right. In a culture that questions all authority (even legitimate authority), rebellion has become the norm. Rebellion is actually no longer rebellious because it
is expected and encouraged.
In this post-Christian culture, living a life shaped by Catholic morality has become an authentic form of rebellion. Chesterton wrote that “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” Modern society prides itself on being open-minded and accepting, yet it is decisively un-accepting of the Gospel. Objective truth has no place in our culture, and this is where true rebellion comes into play.
There are those who try to live a Christian life while still participating fully in what our culture offers. To have a foot in both worlds, so to speak. They are afraid, perhaps, of being viewed as “weird” or “different” by their neighbors, friends, and family. Speaking about American anti-Catholicism in a lecture given in 2014, Archbishop Charles Chaput stated that “The effect of being seen as outsiders has always fueled a Catholic
passion to fit in; to find a way into the mainstream; to excel by the standards of the people who disdain us.” The problem with fitting in, however, is that the cultural stream Chesterton writes about is moving faster than many of us might realize. Even if we just passively consume what the culture gives us, our minds are being bombarded by ideas that contradict the Catholic Faith, and traditional Judeo-Christian values in general. Stories, entertainment, and visual media are powerful. We would do well to remember that.
Without completely retreating from the culture, we still ought to treat cultural fads with some caution. The latest Disney movie or Netflix show might be popular and entertaining, but will it build you into the kind of person God is calling you to be? Mature Christians
should be able to weed out falsehoods in their entertainment from time to time, but I believe that in general we are called to a higher standard in regards to our consumption of art. Chesterton said that “Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.” Even if most of a TV show is wholesome, those “questionable” scenes can start to fill our minds with the thoughts of the world, instead
of those of God. It is obvious that Hollywood does not share our values or worldview, a reality that is increasingly on display in the entertainment it creates. Is the art we enjoy helping us swim upstream? Or is it imperceptibly pulling us along like a “dead thing?”
We are called to live our lives as a witness to the Truth, and that should change everything about us. In the words of Fr. Pedro Arrupe, “What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evening, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.”
We are called to be living witnesses for Christ, regardless of where the cultural winds blow. And perhaps in today’s culture, we must swim upstream just to stay afloat.
This article first appeared in 2021, in vol. 25, number 2 of Gilbert – The Magazine for the Society of G.K. Chesterton.
Aidan Jones 