Once the creator's intent, and ability to consistently and effectively convey that intent, have been determined, it's essential to then assess the content of any work of art. Is what the creator is saying good? Does it make logical sense, and does it fit into what we know about the world, human nature, God, and history? Or is it humanistic, cliche, pernicious, false?
In our time, it's considered passe, uncharitable, and to some extent even dangerous to make value judgements of any kind. The typical postmodern bilge about "it may not be right for me, but it's right for you" or "one must find truth/peace/meaning in one's own way" have conditioned entire populations to refrain from judging anything on strictly moral grounds, instead reducing all art criticism to "I like it" or "I don't like it" or to mere intellectual posturing.
Even Christians have largely accepted these conditions. Instead of holding everything up to Scripture for comparison and analysis, we retreat into the fallible and usually inaccurate territory of trying to "feel" whether things are good or not. Unfortunately, our feelings are too susceptible to sin, illogic and confusion to ever be appropriate guides. This is why the Medievals insisted emotion must be subservient to the reason, and the reason to divine authority; without this graduated chain of command, we're left with the slavery of solipsistic subjectivity.
As a result, we have Christians who love the movie Braveheart, Christians who read the Twilight novels religiously, Christians who listen to Eminem on a regular basis, all because they've (consciously or unconsciously) jettisoned the idea that there's an ideal standard of good and bad by which to evaluate everything. I'm not arguing for monasticism; watch Braveheart, read Twilight, listen to Eminem: but do so from a judgemental standpoint, determining whether these things are the types of things Christians ought to fill their minds with on a regular basis.
This is the real crux of the issue: people on both sides try to force a dichotomy, and dichotomies are nearly always false. On the one hand are those who say we (as Christians) shouldn't engage the culture at all, that even the most minimal contact with secular art will pollute us beyond repair, and that there's nothing the world has to offer us on any level. On the other hand are those Christians who assume that interacting with art means we have to accept it all willy-nilly and immerse ourselves in it if we want to have any kind of voice.
The truth is less narrow and less broad than both of those. Christ never tells us to close our eyes, put our hands over our ears, shut our mouths, or tie our hands behind our backs. He tells us to be in the world, but not of it. In other words, live among people, but don't let them carry you away with false beliefs or sinful behavior. In a very real sense, this requires knowing something of the culture in order to combat it and offer something more real in response.
What is wrong is to accept anything with a meaningless, vapid or pernicious message as an integral part of our daily lives. I wouldn't now why Braveheart is a bad movie if I'd never watched it, but if I continued to watch it over and over again knowing it is bad, that's when I've crossed the line of reasonableness and godly character. Maybe many viewers don't know why it's bad, but that simply reflects lack of absorption in the one thing we ought to revisit every day as often as possible: God's Word.
It's frankly disturbing how many people say they haven't got time to read their Bible, but they spend hours (or even one hour) watching television or listening to music or reading comics every single day, seemingly unaware of the hypocrisy. There is only one sure standard by which to judge all things, and that is God's Word, and any Christian who attempts to "engage" the culture on any level without the protection of Scripture is doomed to failure or complete defeat.
Christians ought to understand the culture around them, and we all have a responsibility to respond in a biblical manner: what we should never do is replace our adherence to God's Word with this understanding. Ironically, it is such an exchange that makes any insight gained utterly meaningless, and which simultaneously undercuts any witness or responsible voice we might have. To understand art, we must understand the Bible, and we must understand it more thoroughly and more faithfully than any painting, novel, album, statue, or film.
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