Matt Rawle - The Salvation of Doctor Who: A Small Group Study Connecting Christ and Culture

THE SALVATION OF DOCTOR WHO

MATT RAWLE

THE SALVATION OF
DOCTOR WHO

A SMALL GROUP STUDY
CONNECTING CHRIST AND CULTURE

THE SALVATION OF DOCTOR WHO

A SMALL GROUP STUDY
CONNECTING CHRIST AND CULTURE

Copyright 2015 by Abingdon Press
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Scripture quotations unless noted otherwise are from the Common English Bible. Copyright 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com .

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To Marlene and Rick Rawle

What comes to mind when you hear someone refer to pop culture?

Maybe you think about the newest playlist on Spotify or the new releases on Netflix or the top-grossing smartphone apps. Or maybe you think of something more under the radar. Sometimes pop culture begins with a small, fanatic fan base who loves a relatively unknown book, movie, band, or artist. Maybe theres the band you never hear on the radio but everyones talking about. Or that series of novels you think looks weird but that inspires legions of people to write fan fiction surrounding its main characters. Sometimes, instead of becoming trendy, these artists retain a faithful, insider following. They become less pop and more cult, becoming what is known as a cult classic.

Regardless if you picture an example of pop culture as an innovative hit like Breaking Bad or something more fanatic and underground like Firefly, theres no denying that the popular music, books, television, movies, and media have much to say about the world in which we live. The word culture is used often, by many different people in many different ways, but in its simplest form, culture is simply an expression of how a community understands itself. God, our Creator, supplies us with the raw ingredients of humanitytalents, time, creativity, desires, ingenuityand culture is whatever we cook up. Stories, songs, recipes, traditions, art, and language are all displays of how we interpret the world and our place in it.

So what role does God play in our culturein our day-to-day lives and in the work of our hands, which produces music and art and literature and plays and movies and technology? Throughout history, people have debated this issue and adamantly drawn a dividing line between that which should be considered sacred (that which is explicitly religious in nature) and that which should be considered secular (that is, everything else). At first glance, these may be seemingly easy judgments to make, but when we stop to examine what God has to say about this division, we might be surprised at what we find.

Scripture says that all things were made through Christ (John 1:3), and through Christ all things were reconciled to God (Colossians 1:20). In other words, everything and everyone in our world contains a spark of the divineeverything is sacred, and whether or not we choose to live in that truth depends on our perspective. For example, think of sunlight as a holy (sacred) gift from God. God offers us sunlight so that we can see the world around us. We can celebrate the sacred by creating things that enhance the light in our homes, such as larger windows or skylights, or we can hang heavy drapes and close the shutters in order to diminish the sacred and shut out the light. Our sacred work is letting in as much light as possible, and those things that keep the light out need to be rejected or transformed.

Through Jesus, God put on flesh and walked among us, in our world, in order to re-narrate what it means to be a child of God. God assumed culture and transformed it. So now all is sacred, and in everything we are to see and proclaim his glory. I truly believe we are called not to reject the culture we live in, but to re-narrate its meaningto tell Gods story in the midst of it. Jesus didnt reject the cross (the sin of our world); rather, Jesus accepted it and transformed it from a death instrument into a symbol of life and reconciliation.

Sometimes its easy to see God in the midst of culturein the stories of Scripture and in reverent hymns and worshipful icons. Other times the divine is more veiledhidden in a novel, concealed in classic rock, obscured by an impressionists palate.

As we walk with Christ, we discover the divine all around us, and in turn, the world invites us into a deeper picture of its Creator. Through this lens of Gods redemption story, we are invited to look at culture in a new and inviting way. We are invited to dive into the realms of literature, art, and entertainment to explore and discover how God is working in and through us and in the world around us to tell his great story of redemption.

The Pop in Culture series is a collection of studies about faith and popular culture. Each study uses a work of pop culture as a way to examine questions and issues of the Christian faith. Studies consist of a book, DVD, and leader guide. Our hope and prayer is that the studies will open our eyes to the spiritual truths that exist all around us in books, movies, music, and television.

How we understand identity, our connection with time, and the importance of salvation are all themes in the popular British television program Doctor Who. First airing in 1963, Doctor Who is one of the longest running and most influential shows in the history of television. Over the last fifty years, the audience has traveled with the main characterknown only as the Doctoracross all of time and space as he fights in the battle between good and evil.