My first exposure to the line of complaint about Christian artists was someone in college who listened to secular music because of the low quality of Christian music production. It took me a while to get what was going on (I was very late to exposure to anything but a very limited set of media, and one of my expansions was DC Talk who actually were pretty decent artists without attaching the religious label). Anyway, I finally figured out that there are two reasons this complaint exists:
- some people say we have to consider Christian media “the absolute best” because it is Christian. I can’t accept that argument: things are well done artistically on many elements. I think this argument is just an oversimplification (and we should denounce it here) as being a Christian-side argument to “not think”.
- others use lower artistic quality as an excuse to pursue media that they actually have a conscience problem with (e.g. something that hits them in an area of weakness). I think people should be realistic about that and their excuse is removed by actually admitting that some of what we have in the “Christian” arena isn’t of the same artistic quality of the secular arena. But if it’s an area where someone needs options away from a problem, giving it some effort can generally find an option (especially today).

The bottom line is that the “real” Christian media draws from a much smaller pool of artists and therefore will have much smaller field of the extremely talented—it’s just a statistics thing. There’s some interesting potential for good artists to discover the creator, but I don’t expect it…the devil masquerades as an angel of light.

Here is my question about some secular works: do we really want to do “better” than the world at certain things? I can list quite a few sellers and secular commentaries on (popular!) clothing which clearly promote sex as the primary reason for the clothes.

Some people do go to the opposite extreme. I suspect that you have some opinions about it, and I was impressed with your sister’s view on that subject.

With that said, I have been around women who feel that women are stuck-up if they do not go topless to the beach. This may be an “extreme” example in some Americans minds, but a lot of what is being evaluated may be better to avoid. Sometimes “extreme” and “minor” are simply what we have become accustomed to.

While secular media may do a better job at titillating or shocking me (e.g. the foul mouth of comedians that is supposed to be extremely entertaining), my version of “better” in this context is something where the technical aspects of the art were done to their maximum potential.

Whenever people say that something is not on the level of something else, it may be a marketing ploy that they have not recognized. There are certainly other cases but I have seen this one as well.