Cigarettes will not give you cancer in the short run.

John Piper began his answer with a platitude about "the freedom that we have in Christ". He ends by saying, "Nobody's going to go to Hell because of this...in the short run."

He opines that Scripture is not explicit on forbidding "using a screen to put the lyrics up or to put the scene of a waterfall behind it or to make the waterfall actually move behind it...". He claims to be—and I believe he is—persuaded of the power and validity of preaching, and he thinks the use of video and drama largely is a token of unbelief in the power of preaching. It is hard to draw a crisp line from this "freedom in Christ" to an accommodation of tokens of unbelief.

As I said Friday, this is a perfect picture of our time: a threadbare phrase to mollify the crowd followed by a passionate assertion about the primacy of expositional preaching.

Couple this with the predictable incompetence of Evangelicals when it comes to "the arts in the church". Anyone who requires pictures of your fishing trip in order to understand the metaphor of fishing for men does not need art, he needs a caring nursery worker with a diaper bag. And recall the excitement of the philistines over on Gundersen Drive when they discover a "story of redemption" embedded in an R-rated trivialization of the human condition.

If you want to experience an imaginative and beautiful articulation of the Christian faith, I will tell you what you should do. First, stay away from churches. You're not likely to stumble across very many hymns of the church there; instead you'll get some sappy, effeminate doggerel superimposed on a film about a waterfall.

Second, go to the library and read what Christians have written.

Third, go to the concert hall and listen to the art of Bach, Mendelssohn, Cucu, Rachmaninoff, Balakirev, Pärt.... You will get to hear some pretty persuasive stuff partly because music directors who are serious about culture won't indulge your appetite for garbage with some piffle about your freedom in Christ.

It's true that Scripture does not explicitly name moving pictures as something to be condemned; nor does it say anything explicit about passing out methamphetamines in the Primary Sunday School class. Strangely, though, Scripture is pretty unambiguous about any attempt to trivialize God, his word, or our faith. It doesn't take a Walter Pater to work out that this might well include the inept mimicry of adolescents with film cameras.

Whoever thought that using dramatic entertainments would "backfire" and work against the preaching of the cross? Who could ever have anticipated that long-term harm might occur if we confused preaching with theatrical amusements?

Who beside the Church, I mean?