The other day I was in my friend’s room and decided to pick up one of her magazines. Her roommate is gone for second semester but the magazines are still mailed to her room. The magazine that I decided to pick up was cosmopolitan. However, I thought I would be reading this by myself, but instead two of my friends decided to sit beside me and we all looked at it together. Normally when I read a magazine I don't really read it. I flip through the pages looking at the pictures, and if something catches my eye, I might read it. If nothing does, there is always hope at the back of the magazine where people tell some of their most embarrassing moments. However, I decided to really look into this magazine. Some of the things in the magazine disgusted me. Whether it was the pictures or some of the topics that were in the magazine. Almost every page you flipped through was either implying sex, or outright talking about sex. I know that my parents do not allow me to receive magazines like that anymore because I have 3 brothers and also many people that come to my house, whether its friends or family members. My parents don't want those kinds of magazines lying around the house, and they do not approve of what they are implying.
The magazine cosmopolitan was clearly the empire works. I found nothing in that magazine that was implying the kingdom.
I think you're right that Cosmo is one of the more extreme examples of the empire at work--whether it's advertising, promoting idolatrous consciousness of image and body type, or endorsing consumer approaches to sex (as in, you have to be the best or your partner will leave you for someone else). That said, being created by human beings who were made in the image of God, Cosmo should display something redemptive, even if it's just that the publication is reaching for things God made good--the human body and sex, for example. Even a strip club or pornography is trying (if even in an extremely distorted way) to fill a space God created for sexual desire, beauty and human connection. Crazy, isn't it, that God still has a hold on the things we think are the most far gone?
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