Beauty, Culture, and Catechesis: When Entertainment Becomes Liturgy

No Such Thing as Neutral Entertainment

I had a conversation with a friend recently about this year’s halftime performance—how creative it was, how beautiful the presentation looked, and how refreshing it felt to see a public message of love over hate. I understood what he meant. In a culture that feels increasingly fractured, it’s easy to crave anything that sounds like unity.

But I couldn’t help but think that a discussion about this particular event pointed to something much deeper than a 20-minute break in the game of the year.

I raised questions about motive, message, and formation—about the way modern entertainment doesn’t simply reflect culture but actively shapes it. He clarified that he wasn’t endorsing an artist’s lifestyle or beliefs, only appreciating cultural storytelling and artistic excellence.

Fair enough.

For me, that’s exactly where the real issue sits.

We have been trained to think we can consume art as if it were neutral: admire the beauty without absorbing the values, enjoy the spectacle without being shaped by the story, celebrate the vibe without being discipled by the worldview underneath it.

But historically, societies have always understood what many modern Christians forget: music, imagery, ritual, and story are among the most powerful tools for shaping belief and desire. That’s not conspiratorial. It’s basic anthropology. It’s “philosophy 101.” People become what they repeatedly celebrate.

So my concern isn’t whether someone approves of every belief an artist holds. I think we can all think of people that we disagree with on multiple levels, who produce some pretty moving art and literature. I, myself, could not disagree more with Tom Cruise's metaphysics, yet I am captivated by what he puts to film in the Mission: Impossible series. My concern is simpler but also more complex simultaneously:

Who is forming us—and what are we being trained to love?

The “Occult Ritual” Claim—and the Bigger Point Beneath It

Why the concern? Why does it matter what a performer believes personally? Ultimately, certain symbols, lyrics, and themes can function as liturgy—a repeated set of rituals and messages that train a crowd. Could “La Nueva Religión” (what the artist titled his debut tour) be a self-conscious attempt to disciple audiences into a new spiritual vision? Shouldn't it be important to at least ask the question?

I am not a Satanic-panic type of person. I don't necessarily think that the enemy of our souls is behind every push and pull of pop culture, especially when there is no great evidence to back up such claims. I think an even-handed approach should be taken -- not everything is the hand of evil, but there is a father of lies who seeks to destroy the souls of those God loves. I certainly don't know the artist's mind or heart, but specific song lyrics, tour names, and music videos are testable evidence. Christians can be discerning without becoming credulous. While we should be careful not to treat every provocative aesthetic choice as airtight proof of a specific agenda, we should also allow cumulative evidence to make its case. After all, our faith is a reasonable one.

But here’s what I think is crucial to remember:

Entertainment catechizes. It trains the heart. It normalizes what once shocked us. It makes rebellion feel like freedom. It makes sin feel like a soundtrack.

And it does this not primarily through argument, but through repetition, emotion, and embodiment—through the very things that bypass the intellect and go straight for the affections.

That’s why “motives” aren’t a tangent. They’re part of the point. When an artist openly frames their project as a “new religion” (whether said sincerely, ironically, or commercially), Christians should at least pause and ask what kind of formation is happening—especially when the audience includes children who don’t yet have categories to evaluate what they’re seeing and hearing.

This isn’t about “canceling a musician.” It’s about taking discipleship seriously.

Because the uncomfortable truth is that discipleship is happening either way.

If we aren’t intentionally forming our loves through Scripture, prayer, worship, and Christian community, we will be formed by whatever we repeatedly give our attention to—screens, algorithms, celebrities, and the moral imagination they sell us.

And the question isn’t whether we’re being discipled.

The question is: by whom?

Culture as Liturgy

One of the reasons I can’t treat major entertainment events as “just entertainment” is because history won’t let me.

The Romans understood this with brutal clarity. Give the people bread and circuses—keep them fed, keep them entertained—and you can stabilize the masses while shaping what they love, fear, and celebrate. That wasn’t an accident; it was a strategy. The crowd didn’t need to read a philosopher to be formed; they only needed to show up, cheer, and absorb the story being acted out in front of them. Public spectacle trained public imagination.

And we shouldn’t flatter ourselves that we’ve grown beyond that. If anything, we’ve industrialized it. We don’t gather at the Colosseum a few times a year—we carry the arena in our pockets. Algorithms don’t merely deliver content; they deliver formation through repetition. Over time, you start to love what you laugh at, normalize what you used to resist, and crave what you once would have found repulsive.

That’s why I used the word “liturgy” in the conversation that sparked all this. Not because every halftime show is a cathedral service, but because liturgy is simply a patterned set of practices that trains the heart toward a vision of the good life. And entertainment—especially when it’s immersive, repeated, embodied, and celebrated by millions—functions that way.

It teaches without sounding like teaching.

It disciples without calling itself discipleship.

It doesn’t argue; it forms. It doesn’t persuade mainly through reasons; it persuades through rhythm, image, desire, and belonging. And that’s precisely what makes it powerful. You can reject an argument you hear. It’s much harder to notice when your instincts, appetites, and reflexes are being rewired.

This is why the Bible’s call to discernment is not optional. Jesus doesn’t tell His people to be naïve. He tells us to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Notice the balance: innocence is not ignorance. Purity is not passivity. Wisdom means we learn how deception actually works—especially deception that comes packaged as something beautiful, funny, “just cultural,” or “just a vibe.”

And the New Testament is relentless on this point. Over and over again, believers are warned about false teaching, counterfeit gospels, wolves dressed like sheep, and seductive ideas that sound compassionate while quietly severing people from truth. That’s not because Christians are supposed to live suspicious of everything. It’s because the early church lived in a world full of rival lords, rival gospels, and rival “salvations.” The threat wasn’t only open persecution—it was subtle distortion.

Which is exactly why Paul’s language is so active. We are called to “demolish arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5). That’s not a passive calling. It assumes conflict—not physical conflict, but intellectual and spiritual conflict: competing truth claims, competing moral visions, competing objects of worship. The question isn’t whether the world is discipling. It is. The question is whether we recognize it.

So when a Christian says, “I just liked the beauty of the performance,” I get it. I’m not opposed to beauty. I’m not trying to turn every cultural moment into a panic. But I also can’t pretend beauty is spiritually neutral—because Scripture, history, and human nature all say otherwise. Beauty can lift us toward God. But beauty can also be used to sell a lie.

That’s why the issue isn’t merely what we watch.

It’s what we are being trained to celebrate.

And whether the story being rehearsed—again and again—moves us toward Christ, or slowly catechizes us into a rival gospel.

“Watch Out”: Discernment as a Christian Duty

One of the things that strikes me most when reading the New Testament is how little it resembles a passive or naïve faith. Far from assuming believers will simply “absorb” truth by proximity, the apostles repeatedly warn that false teaching is inevitable—and often attractive.

Paul doesn’t tell the Ephesian elders that danger might come. He tells them it will. “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock,” he says, adding that even from within the church some will arise “speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). That last phrase matters. False teaching isn’t just about being wrong; it’s about drawing disciples. It competes for allegiance.

The same urgency shows up in Galatians, where Paul expresses shock that believers are so quickly deserting the true gospel for a counterfeit one that sounded spiritual, compassionate, and reasonable. His language is jarring—“even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). That’s not the tone of someone who thinks ideas are harmless.

John echoes this concern when he tells believers to “test the spirits” rather than assume every spiritual-sounding message is from God (1 John 4:1). And in Colossians, Paul warns Christians not to be taken captive by philosophy, empty deceit, and traditions that feel wise but ultimately pull people away from Christ (Col. 2:8). Again, notice the imagery: captivity, deception, drift. These are slow processes, not usually loud ones.

All of this matters because false teaching rarely announces itself as false. It often borrows Christian language, mimics moral concern, and wraps itself in beauty, justice, liberation, or love. That’s why discernment is not suspicion for suspicion’s sake—it’s faithfulness. The Bible does not call believers to fear culture, but it absolutely calls us to evaluate it.

And evaluation is not the same thing as outrage.

This is where I think many conversations go sideways. On one extreme, everything becomes demonic panic. On the other, everything becomes cultural shrugging. Scripture offers a third way: clear-eyed discernment rooted in truth and love. We are told to “hold fast to what is good” while also abstaining from what is evil (1 Thess. 5:21–22). That assumes discernment—testing, weighing, thinking, and sometimes saying no.

Which brings us back to entertainment.

When Christians insist that a performance, artist, or cultural moment is “off-limits from critique” because it’s beautiful or culturally significant, we’re not being gracious—we’re being careless. The New Testament doesn’t give us permission to disengage our minds simply because something is moving or popular. In fact, popularity has often been a warning sign. Jesus Himself says false prophets will be convincing, not crude; appealing, not obviously destructive.

So the question isn’t whether we’re allowed to enjoy culture. Of course we are. The question is whether we’re willing to watch out—to ask what messages are being repeated, what loves are being shaped, and what vision of the good life is being held up for imitation.

That kind of discernment isn’t passive. It takes effort. It takes thought. And sometimes it takes the courage to be misunderstood.

But if the New Testament is clear about anything, it’s this: following Christ means paying attention to what competes with Him. Not because He’s fragile—but because we are.

And that’s precisely why this conversation matters.

Demonic Panic?

When I raised concerns in that previously mentioned conversation, I wasn’t trying to accuse anyone of endorsing everything an artist believes or does. My concern was narrower—and, I think, more important.

Bad Bunny is unusually explicit about wanting to shape culture. He doesn’t merely create music; he frames his work in ideological and symbolic terms. He has branded tours and projects under the name La Nueva Religión—“the new religion.” That alone should at least invite reflection. When an artist describes his work using religious language, Christians are right to pause and ask what kind of vision of life is being offered.

This doesn’t require assuming secret rituals or decoding every symbol as if it were a cipher. It requires something far simpler: taking artists at their word and paying attention to patterns. Across his music videos, lyrics, and performances, Bad Bunny consistently celebrates themes of radical self-expression, sexual liberation (and sexual identity liberation), the denigration of women, the breaking of cultural norms/rules, and individualistic moral autonomy (nothing is right or wrong, just what the individual thinks)—ideas that might broadly be described as a hedonistic or postmodern vision of the good life. One album title famously translates to “I do whatever I want.” Another song’s chorus openly celebrates doing “evil things.” These aren’t isolated moments; they form a coherent moral imagination.

Entertainment has always done this. Stories teach us what to admire. Music trains our emotional reflexes. Repetition normalizes what once shocked us. Over time, what we celebrate becomes what we excuse—and eventually what we imitate.

What heightened my concern is not merely what is being portrayed, but how it is being platformed. When a performance is broadcast into tens of millions of homes, on a day when families gather and children are watching, the stakes are different. Children don’t yet have the categories to separate aesthetic enjoyment from moral formation. They receive before they evaluate. That’s not a flaw; it’s how formation works.

This is where my friend and I missed each other. He was talking about appreciating beauty and cultural expression. I was talking about catechesis.

What I think it comes down to is this: entertainment is not neutral. Modern media functions liturgically. It repeats stories, symbols, and desires until they feel natural or perhaps even desired. It doesn’t ask for belief upfront; it cultivates appetite first.

That’s why Scripture repeatedly warns believers to be alert. The danger the apostles point to is rarely blatant persecution; it is a slow drift. False teaching that sounds compassionate. Freedom that quietly hollows out meaning. Liberation that ends up enslaving desire rather than ordering it. The enemy roams around looking for someone whom he may devour. It is not a passive play.

So when I asked, “Why would people platform this?” I wasn’t suggesting a shadowy cabal. I was asking a simpler question about incentives and formation. Platforms profit from attention. Artists profit from transgression. And transgression, when packaged beautifully, sells extremely well. That doesn’t make every performer a villain—but it does mean Christians should resist the instinct to turn off discernment simply because something is visually impressive or culturally celebrated.

This isn’t about panic. And it certainly isn’t about withdrawing from culture. Scripture makes it clear that Christians are not called to passivity. We are commanded to disciple—to proclaim Christ, to teach the nations, and to speak the truth so that people might hear, believe, and call upon the Lord (Matthew 28:19–20; Romans 10:14). At the same time, the Bible is equally clear about how we do this. When people are caught in sin, we are to seek their restoration with gentleness, watching ourselves carefully lest we too be drawn into corruption (Galatians 6:1). Discernment, then, is not cruelty, and truth-telling is not hostility. Faithfulness requires both conviction and humility—holding fast to Christ while refusing to be shaped by the very darkness we are called to confront.

The reality is, we are creatures of worship and whether we like it or not, we are always being discipled. The only real question is whether we are paying attention to who is doing the discipling—and whether their vision aligns with the One who said that truth, not autonomy, is what actually sets us free.

Fixed on Jesus

None of this is written from a place of fear, and it certainly isn’t written from a place of superiority. Christians are not spectators standing outside culture, shaking our heads. We are people who know firsthand how easily the heart is drawn toward lesser loves. We don’t watch the world from above; we walk in it with open eyes and dependent hearts.

Scripture tells us that the ultimate problem is not “out there.” It is in us. We are not merely shaped by culture; we are already inclined to be shaped because we are creatures of worship. That is why discernment is not about pride, and vigilance is not about suspicion—it is about love. Love for God. Love for our children. Love for those being quietly discipled by stories that promise freedom but cannot deliver it.

It is also crucial to remember that He is the one who unifies us, not our political preferences, what kind of music we like, what our family of origin is, or anything else. We are family because of the work of Christ on the cross. What makes us the same is that we have all fallen short of the glory of God. We all choose ways that don't lead us to God, even after we come to faith in Jesus. And we must all choose to put Christ before and above all other things in our lives. Apart from Him, we are dead in our sins. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. Even our righteous deeds amount to nothing apart from His grace—and without Him, we do not realize how blind we truly are.

The good news of the gospel is that we don't stay there. The Holy Spirit will complete the work He has begun in us. He calls us back, away from the ways of the world that lead to death. He calls us to the "renewing of our minds" -- the systematic dismantling of our attitudes and ideas that do not honor God in the light of the truth of His word. And then He continues to call us to be a part of the greatest rescue operation the world has ever known behind enemy lines.

The call of the church, then, is not retreat and not outrage. It is formation. We do not counter bad ideas by yelling at them; we counter them by offering better ones. We respond to counterfeit beauty by holding up the true and better beauty of Christ. We answer rival gospels not with panic, but with patient, faithful discipleship—rooted in Scripture, practiced in community, and sustained by prayer.

This also means remembering that the people caught up in these cultural currents are not enemies to be defeated, but neighbors to be loved. The spiritual war is happening around them and they, whether they know it or not, are swept up in it. Our battle is not against flesh and blood. When Scripture calls us to restore those caught in sin gently, it assumes that restoration is possible—and that none of us are immune to drift. We speak truth not to win arguments, but to win hearts, beginning with our own.

In the end, the question is not whether culture will form us. It will. The question is whether we will be intentional about who does the forming. Christ does not merely warn us about false shepherds; He presents Himself as the Good Shepherd—the One who knows His sheep, calls them by name, and leads them into life.

If we fix our loves on Him, order our lives around His Word, and practice discernment with humility and courage, we will not be shaped by every passing spectacle. We will be formed instead by the One who is Truth Himself.

And that is not a call to fear.

It is a call to faithfulness.

PS: I love the work of C.S. Lewis and tried desperately to work these in, but could not find the place. Please forgive the afterthought.