P.S.

The trouble with blogging as I think of things instead of after I've collected all my thoughts into a homogenous whole is that I'm constantly amending or adding to my posts. In this case it was only fifteen minutes before the Lord showed me something in Hosea that started another rabbit trail and I realized I needed to write a post script. (Is it more grammatically correct to say "post post script" in this case....?)
"And now they sin more and more, and they have made themselves a molten image of their silver, idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen. " ~Hos 13:2 ~
Right here Satan co-oped the gifts God had given men which He intended for His glory. Satan can't create so he uses people and their gifts to make dark, twisted, evil, though quasi-beautiful things. I saw something like that today-- a bronze statue from Korea of a girl caressing a cobra. Story goes the snake is the household god who fell in love with the daughter, assumed human shape, wooed her, and when she discovered his true shape, he was so ashamed that he fled and the family fortunes plummeted. Awkward story, and an awkward work of art flowing from it. Well-done, but somehow off. Error and evil are like that: perhaps lovely in a sense, but vaguely wrong. Like all those Enya songs that are dreamy and ethereal and gorgeous.... until you understand the words. This is why I think it's so important to reclaim wonderful tunes or stories or pictures for the Lord's use, because everything with even a remote speck of goodness in it has come from Him and belongs to Him. The creativity that lends itself to evil has been kidnapped, and it's time we made a raid and took it back.
This also gives us a better than average reason not to patronize those who use their God-given gifts for ill: it's literally enemy territory. I dealt with that today too. I had been following a video web serial and because it was so "good"-- by which I mean clever and well-executed, not moral-- I kept watching long after I should have turned it off. Played right into his hands and only got slimed for my erstwhileness. It's frustrating, of course, because so much of the art produced today is neither all good nor all bad. Which is why I say, again, take back the land! Edit out objectionable content, vote with your movie ticket, music purchase, and mouse clicks. Don't settle! There is good art to be made out there, and the world doesn't even know it wants it. Go make it!