At this point, you may still have concerns about engaging popular culture with your children. Isn’t being a pop culture parent simply optional? Don’t you have more important things to teach your children, such as biblical worldviews, apologetics, or career readiness?

Later we will answer these concerns in more detail. For now, we’ll provide the main reason cultural engagement is a vital part of our parental calling. This “impossible” mission—which we must choose to accept—is a way to glorify God by enjoying him forever through his gifts. We do this in three ways: by worshiping and enjoying personal relationships with God through Jesus by the Holy Spirit, by reflecting his grace in relationship with our children and other Christians, and by letting that grace shine to those who need to know God—that is, bringing his gospel to our friends and neighbors. We can’t do any of this apart from making and engaging culture.

1. God made us to worship him through culture.

As human beings, we’ve been created in God’s image. God has made us to be creative. He called Adam and Eve to create culture, even as he called them to fill the earth with children (see Genesis 1:28). Of course, sin has since entered the world, warping our culture making. But even now, we find goodness reflected in culture because it is created by people made in the image of their Creator. Humans may bend and distort and even deny God’s image, but we cannot erase it. Nor can we avoid reflecting the beauty, love, power, and awesomeness of God in the culture we create. Popular culture is not popular because people are lazy, ignorant, and wicked. It is popular because our works include awesomeness that reflects our awesome Creator and Redeemer. People hunger for that grace without knowing quite what it is they truly hunger for. Popular culture is popular precisely because of the grace to be found in it, however distorted. We and our children can find this grace if we are willing to look for it.

True, these reflections of grace are twisted by sin. But even then, we can train our children to expose these false gospels by comparing them with Jesus. In the light of his glory and grace, idols will grow strangely dim as the true gospel light shines in our imaginations.

Whether a popular entertainment reflects grace or reflects idolatry—either way—we and our children can respond by exploring the gospel more clearly. We can actually catch glimpses of God’s glory through popular cultural works.

2. God made us to enjoy healthy relationships through culture.

Whatever we do, our children will grow to love culture and entertainments of some kind. As they mature, they’ll also become nostalgic for their favorites—not only from their family home but their cultural home. If we as parents make the effort to enter into this world, we will find that over time we can build healthy relationships and deep communication with our children. We and our children will have the same cultural landmarks. We’ll get the same references and share inside jokes. And we’ll have the memories of discovering imagined lands together, comparing their graces and idols with the gospel, and glorifying God as we’ve enjoyed the creations of humans made in his image.

This is precisely what Jesus did. When he wanted to rebuild the ruined relationship between him and us, he entered our territory to live with us. Popular culture gives
us the same chance. We can enter into our children’s worlds, look through their eyes, and discover what they see as awesome and worthy. Engaging popular culture with our kids builds the kind of relationships needed to discuss the deep and serious challenges of life.

We also have relationships that extend beyond our families. Christians belong to churches. The local church is called to disciple saints as the gathered people of God. Churches can be an excellent resource for guidance in engaging culture together. We can be “iron sharpening iron” for one another if we are willing to engage together. In this way, the church as a whole grows in wisdom.

But apart from the church’s labor, enjoying popular culture should be part of our patterns of collective rest. We glorify God in our work (our own jobs and the church’s mission) but also in our recreation. Enjoying popular culture is part of our rest together. It has always been so for the people of God. Both Old and New Testaments include many examples of bountiful celebrations. No God-exalting party brimming with rest, happiness, and feasts is complete without popular culture. We were meant to share stories, songs, games, and other popular cultural works, whether spoken around a campfire or shared on a smartphone.

3. God made us to take his gospel to a world that needs him.

As we engage culture together, we become equipped as ambassadors to our culture (2 Corinthians 5:20). Christians call this the Great Commission, the command Jesus gave his followers: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20).

As sons and daughters of the King, our Great Commission is to serve as ambassadors of Jesus to people around us. Wise ambassadors get to know the culture of their host country, studying the heart and soul of the people they are trying to reach. Our homes should become extensions of our churches—Kingdom embassies. These are our mission headquarters. We should be intentional about enjoying popular culture in the home. We don’t only recreate and enjoy stories together as families. We also engage popular culture to train for our God-given mission in the world.

As we engage our world’s favorite stories, songs, and games, we become familiar with our neighbors’ cultural categories. We grow to discern their desires, hopes, dreams, and fears, finding natural doorways into their worlds. So, as we worship God by sharing in acts of creation and build relationships with our children and others in the church, we’re also training for Christ’s mission to the whole world: to love non-Christians wisely, speak into their lives winsomely, and serve them by bringing healing into their lives.

Training our kids for this mission—that’s the challenge and privilege of Christian parents. In your hands, that challenge of popular culture can become a natural ally in this calling.