Engaging Culture

My name is Logan Mauldin. I make a living by working a security guard at the UPS Worldport Hub in Louisville. I’m married to a beautiful woman that I do not deserve. And God has blessed us with three beautiful children, Benjamin, Zoë, and Joseph. This is my personal site. I write here mainly about movies. I’m fascinated by the way our culture flocks to the movie theater and gives it’s money to vote on these different works of modern art. I think you will find that I am a bit more liberal in my tastes than some other Christian movie reviewers out there. I will watch almost any movie that is placed before me, an I attempt to withhold judgment until I have given the film its chance to speak, much like a courteous debater would not interrupt his opponent to shout his rebuttal. I know that non-Christians and the Hollywood machine is not the enemy. Hollywood produces that which will make money and the things that make money are the things that people go see. So every movie release is a sort of sociological test. I happen to believe that those stories that are most popular are the ones that bear a resemblance to the gospel story. With that in mind, I try to bring the narrative of the movie around to shine light on the meta-narrative of the gospel of Jesus Christ found in the Bible.

When I’m not watching movies, which my wife says is far too much. I enjoy reading (theology, philosophy, and history mostly), working on computers, and furthering my study of sociology. I’m fascinated by people, and Culture is what people make: Movies, music, television, literature, technology, fashion, fads, marketing, science, philosophy, psychology, the list goes on and on.

When I say that I want to engage with culture, I mean that I wish to do what Jesus and Paul did. They understood that they lived in a culture and that if they were to reach that culture effectively they had to understand their culture and start a dialogue with it. They didn’t stand at a distance and bark condemnation. Neither did they get so deep in it that people couldn’t tell that they were different. They were in their world and spoke to their world and about their world, but there was no mistake at the end of the day that this world was not their home.

As Christians we should not be secularist nor sectarian. We shouldn’t be uncritical or hypercritical. We shouldn’t thoughtlessly participate in or seek to withdraw from culture altogether (if that is even possible). Instead, it is my hope that Christians would be convinced of the truth of scripture in such a way that they are inspired to critically and winsomely engage culture by recognizing and celebrating what is good, redeeming and renewing what is broken, giving grace and relying upon conscience for what is gray, and rejecting that which is evil. I hope you enjoy the site. Leave me a comment or contact me.