Prince seemed to understand and appreciate one vital worldview forming fundamental in a way that is vigorously (and you might say religiously) avoided by most professing Christians permeating the culture that he reshaped and molded through his decidedly anti-Christ approach to music.
Everything is theological.
Everything is spiritual.
Music is a vehicle for spirituality. It is a medium for the expression of theology.
Just like everything else.
All art and all work is spiritual. All art and all work is ministerial. All art and all work is theological.
Prince understood this at some level, which is more than can be said for many of his loudest (and often on target) critics.
While his understanding and application of terms like “spiritual” were far from the Truth revealed to God’s people by His grace through His Word and Spirit within them, Prince certainly understood that everything had a spiritual component.
Every physical action and physical pursuit undertaken anywhere in God’s creation is an action and pursuit that is being undertaken as a testimony to the theology of the one playing the guitar, painting the house, writing the book, or running the marathon using the tools that God has provided to either faithfully proclaim or selfishly intercept His glory.
Thus, everything is targeted for restoration and reconciliation to God by the Gospel-fueled Great Commission.
Consider the following passage:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
~ Colossians 1:15-20
The true Gospel is comprehensive.
It not only touches everything; it defines everything.
When Christians stop taking this seriously, as we have in America for many generations now, and guys like Prince do take their counterfeit gospel-driven worldview seriously, then we end up with what we have in America.
We end up with sexual chaos, gender chaos, family disintegration, and cultural nihilism.
But before we got to where we are now, we surrendered vast realms to the enemy – an enemy who has used them to great and terrible effect.
These fruit of cultural disintegration now on display all around us became possible when we decided that “being spiritual” meant just reading good books (and mainly the best book, of course), huddling up with like-minded folks in Christian ghettos, and not engaging the culture through music, art, literature and the like. When we made our spirituality and gospel nice, neat, small and confined to just saving people’s souls and then maybe, just maybe, reading good books about saving people’s souls while we let the culture rocket downhill around us, we opened the door wide open to those who came before Prince, and those who will come after.
When we decided that film, fiction, satire, music and other arts were somehow separate from spirituality (or even contrary to “true spirituality”), we abandoned the Great Commission in practice and allowed the likes of Prince to do what they have done and will continue to do until and unless the people of God lead the way in repentance and application of the Great Commission mandate to take every thought – every legal, artistic, scientific, educational and economic thought – captive to Christ in accordance with the loving command given us by our King in 2 Corinthians 10:5.
Until we stop complaining about the arts and start taking them captive to Christ, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the gender chaos and cultural destruction promoted by the likes of Prince.
Romans 8:28 makes plain that all things are perfectly used by God to ultimately bring glory to Himself and benefit to His people.
This includes His use of Prince, who, among other things, has revealed to us our great dereliction of duty.
Please check out The Fire Breathing Christian Podcast too, as well as the latest designs at Fire Breathing Tees and the latest memes at the Fire Breathing Memes page.You can also help support the Fire Breathing Christian mission by checking out these books:
Stupid Elephant Tricks – The Other Progressive Party’s War on Christianity takes a painful but much needed look at how Christ-less “conservatism” has captivated Christians and co-opted them into helping march the culture ever deeper into darkness:
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The Beginning of Knowledge: Christ as Truth in Apologetics is an approachable, easy to read introduction to Christ-centered apologetics:
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Apathetic Christianity: The Zombie Religion of American Churchianity explores the tragic true horror story of all-American dead religion masquerading as Christianity:
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On Education is a compilation of some of the most provocative and compelling Fire Breathing Christian articles on the subject of children’s education:
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There Is No “God-Given Right” To Worship False Gods is a compilation of some of the most provocative Fire Breathing Christian articles on the subject of America’s embrace of a satanic approach to religious liberty:
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Fire Breathing Christians – The Common Believer’s Call to Reformation, Revival, and Revolution is the book that first presented the FBC mission to apply the Gospel-fueled Great Commission in every realm of God’s creation:
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An alternate white cover version of Fire Breathing Christians is available:
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There is also an alternate black cover version of Fire Breathing Christians:
Finally, here are a few good intro/reminder links for those of you who are new to Fire Breathing Christian and curious about exactly what’s goin’ on ’round here:
What are you, some kind of [insert label here] or something?!
What’s with that shark-fishie graphic thing?
Intro to Fire: The Power and Purpose of the Common Believer
When the Bible gets hairy. (Or: Is it right for men to have long hair?)
And especially this one: Never forget that apart from God’s grace you and I are complete morons.
Thank you for your support!
Where it concerns movies, you might be interested in the website http://cinemaseekers.com/, which made an effort to catalogue the best spiritual films around the world (see their "great seeking films" section and other articles). They are not Bible-fundamentalist Christians, though, and follow some strange (gnostic?) cultist named Abd-ru-shin.