"What it meant to be human..."

Susan Sontag, Social Critic With Verve, Dies at 71

I just read Dick Staub's Staublog where he quotes Margalit Fox's article in the NYT:

"What united Ms. Sontag's output was a propulsive desire to define the forces that shape the modernist sensibility. And in so doing, she sought to explain what it meant to be human in the waning years of the 20th century." (italics added).
The New York Times > Books > Susan Sontag, Social Critic With Verve, Dies at 71:

He goes on to describe his admiration for Susan Sontag "because such intelligence, independent, interdisciplinary thought and communication that is insightful and incites is a gift from God and I find them so lacking in people who say they know this God intimately."

I must confess that I, too, admire the traits he ascribes to Sontag. There is a part of me who would love to see them ascribed to me when I die. But then I wonder: Is this the battle to fight? Are we advancing the kingdom by analyzing culture from a heavenly perspective?

At first blush, my answer is no. The world doesn't want to hear about culture from God's perspective. They don't like what they hear. After all, Paul clearly tells us in 1 Corinthians 1 that God has "made foolish the wisdom of the world" and that "the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing".

Yet I know from experience that as I relate His story of creation and salvation in terms people can relate to, it has a positive effect. For example, Donnel Wyche tells of how his father uses the Matrix movies to help people grasp spiritual concepts (even though the movies themselves preach an eastern perspective of existence). NT Wright speaks of a "hermeneutic of love" that respects the "otherness" of the loved and receives them as they are. Perhaps this is the basis for engaging at an intellectual level. Not for the world, in general, but for the sake of those who find it important. After all, God loves the intellectual elite as much as the poor and downtrodden.