A couple weekends ago marked the first of a (hopefully) annual art show, put on by a group that calls itself “Reclaim the Arts.” It was an ambitious event that sought to delve into visual arts, music, and poetry. In addition to the musical performances (one of which was none other than “the adopted”), poetry readings, and illustrations on display, there were several break-out sessions. These sessions ranged from simple art lessons, to tips on decorating a home. There were also several theologically robust discussions on art and its place in the church.
I think I could describe the evening as being thick in a sort of happy tension. The tension manifested itself through the discussions in the break-out sessions, and it’s this tension that I intend to focus this blog post on.
From what I could gather, the individuals involved were discontented with a lack of real appreciation for the arts in American Christendom. The tension was this great discontentment, and the happiness was the fact that we all had the same discontentment, and were thus all at the art show to redeem art and place it in it’s proper God-glorifying place. The evening was, in my opinion, a positive response to the serious indictment that Christian art is, for the most part, lame. I think the best way for me to explain this indictment is by describing some of its apparent causes.
Fear
One of the causes for this epidemic of bad art at the hands of Christians is fear. Legalism, it seems, has snuck into the church in yet another arena: creativity. Even if it’s not explicitly stated, many Christians feel like their artwork is not honoring to God unless it has some clear-cut “christian” theme woven into it. This is, I think, an upshot of a shaky worldview and a lazy theology. Examples of this at work would be a painter who only paints scenes from the Bible, or a songwriter who stresses over what kind of music he’s allowed to write about. There becomes a creative limit to what the artist is allowed to do; as if to say that the Christian artist has stepped outside of the lines of what is acceptable christian art if he has neglected to include a cross in his painting, or that a Christian songwriter has failed to glorify God if his song is a story about a man on a train rather than a man in the belly of a fish. This root of fear causes lousy art because it forces the artist to fearfully tip-toe around subject matter rather than allowing art to be the bold expression of creativity like it’s supposed to be.
A person having a “shaky worldview” might be taken to mean being “ignorant of a worldview” or “inconsistent with a worldview.” With a worldview, one...well... views the world--the ENTIRE world. This means that there is virtually no subject matter off limits for a Christian. Even porn can be addressed by a Christian, as long as it is dealt with through the lense of a biblical worldview, which obviously would conclude that porn is a perversion of the good and holy practice of marital sex. We can learn from St. Augustine in regards to this issue, who once wrote, “Love God and do what you please.” This doesn’t mean that a person who loves God has a license to sin. For a person who loves God can’t simultaneously love sin; the point is that if one loves God, one will find it hard to zealously do things that are displeasing to him. Therefore, this fear that leads to wimpy art can be combated with a consistent worldview. For a Christian to create godly art, a Christian must be godly, and then create art.
What I mean by “lazy theology” can be understood as the lack of care to distinguish what is biblical philosophy and what is dualistic gnosticism. Too often Christians are content with identifying matter as evil and spirit as good. This is not a biblical concept, in fact, it’s anti-biblical. God, according to Scripture, created matter and called it good. He called bodies and trees and animals and food good. This means that a person isn’t less holy for writing about a sunrise without explicitly mentioning Jesus, just as God isn’t less holy for orchestrating a sunrise without explicitly mentioning Jesus. The point is that everything God created testifies of God’s creating it. So God--and his children--get dibs on creativity. We don’t have to necessarily always use a star to point to the Word that created it (though this may be very helpful and useful for evangelism), because the star itself is intrinsically and consistently always pointing to its Creator. One might get this concept by thinking of the fact that the microscopic society that exists in every cell was glorifying God before a microscope ever existed, and likewise, stars we see only today with extremely powerful telescopes were glorifying God before telescopes were invented. Matter is good, and it glorifies God, and we don’t have to “get spiritual” to get godly.
Low Standards
Another cause for bad Christian art is low standards. Over time, it has sadly become expected for Christian art to be less impressive than secular art. This is the upshot of a vicious cycle of supply and demand: people who comfortably live in “Christian” subcultural bubbles have been lulled by boring art, and they in turn only expect boring art, and naturally, boring art is what they get. So Christian artists are off the hook and are allowed to make puny art because their audience only demands puny art. When this is addressed, the safe-house often sought is “truthful content.” As if to say that as long as your message is correct, you don’t have to worry about presenting it well. This should be an unacceptable cycle for the regenerate artist, because (as we we will see in a moment) our example is supposed to be the artist whose finished work can be described only as “perfect with excellent execution.” (that’s a propaganda quote)
Failure to Recognize Beauty
This is perhaps the most serious offense of all: many times bad art put out by Christians is the result of a failure to recognize beauty itself. People like G.K. Chesterton, or C.S. Lewis would--I have no doubt--have a strong rebuke in reply to this indictment. They did not take for granted the artwork of God; they walked around with a consciousness grasped by wonder. Chesterton wrote about how magnificent it is that people have noses. Lewis wrote about utilizing a babbling brook for doxology. These men were not numb to the beauty of God’s artwork, instead they were utterly raw to it, constantly being knocked off balance and penetrated by the shape of a leaf or the sound of a bird singing. And we, in this day and age, have absolutely no excuse for our lack of wonder! We see things on a microscopic level that Lewis and Chesterton wouldn’t dream of. We see stars bending color. It turns out that God was more precise and detailed than we would have ever thought possible, and it doesn’t appear that the rate of revealed depth of this precision will slow down. If a person in Lewis’ time could be brought low by the night sky, shouldn’t a person in our time be flattened by the sight of an imploding star?
When we see the beauty of all of God’s creativity, we find a bar that has been set; and it is a LOFTY bar! If we are the children of the living God, and we are made to reflect him in our artwork, and if he created all of this, then us settling for lousy art is not only a shame, it’s a spiritual offense--dare I say: blasphemy.
The Reclaim the Arts show is just a tiny expression of a consciousness I pray infects the entire church like a lethal virus. Lethal is the right word, for it will obliterate the fear stemmed from shaky worldviews and lazy theology; it will shake sluggish artists out of their stupor of supply and demand; and it will open the childlike eyes of wonder to once again recognize beauty.
Pray with me, Christians. Our stuff should be the best stuff. What’s at stake is the very character of God shown in us to the rest of the world.
