Give me more!

This is actually the second half of my previous article, Really? Is that all you got?. So, I continue the thought and idea of a Christian making Christian art and what that can honestly and authentically look like, which may or may not be what everyone’s or even the artist’s prescribed notions say it should look like.

Not everyone who says to me “Lord, lord”

Let’s push ourselves even further here. Just because you are a Christian does not mean everything you make has to be Christian or biblically themed. Or another way, just because you make art as a Christian does not automatically mean you make or even should make “Christian” art or art about being a Christian.

You can paint a flower simply because the flower moves you, or as Suzy Schultz says it, “puts a lump in your throat”. You don’t need to make it “shine like the glory of God!”, or hide a cross in the petals, or look like what you imagine the archangel Michael might look like. All those things fall into our need to justify our art. We may be trying to justify the work to ourselves, to make it worth the resources expended. We may feel it needs to reflect or illustrate Christian or spiritual ideals.

I am not saying that creating art which communicates your spirituality is bad or irrelevant. And if this is part of your process to working out your voice or your ideas, that’s cool. My point is that you need to explore why you are creating what you are creating. You are tasked with discovering your voice, not another artist’s or scripture’s voice or someone else’s justification for art.

Is your art what it is because that is what you think other people think you should create? Or that’s what it needs to be so that it fits an imposed Christian framework? This is a very deceptive attitude and may not be as obvious as you think. People rarely are aware of the presuppositions they operate under every day.

Utility

The nature of utility actually makes sense. Why wouldn’t we want something that is useful? There is quite a bit of satisfaction and affirmation in making something that other people will want for explicit, quantifiable reasons. And what is more useful than art that one does not need to question what it is? It is a painting of an angel with a cloven tongue of fire emanating from the head. Well painted, even! In the style of the masters. This is what people want.

Yes. That may well be what people want. People find a great deal of comfort in not being challenged, not needing to question. There is comfort in certainty. But is that what we are called to? One might think so. Every Sunday there is a preacher or evangelist somewhere at a pulpit telling people they need to know “beyond the shadow of a doubt” that they are saved.

But is that what you were really called to? Is certainty what you are called to illustrate? That is a very safe idea. Family-friendly even. But. We are also called to the renewing of our minds. That calling seems to me to require a lot of questioning, not certainty. Think of Jesus’s parables and the disciples questioning of his obliqueness. Jesus wasn’t always clear, either. Deliberately.

Another way to think about this, artists are often called the prophets of our day. How many times did everyone else like hearing what the prophets had to say? How often did the prophets themselves not want to speak the message of what they had to say?

…but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven

There are likely any number of reasons why you are creating what you are creating. Make sure you examine those reasons. Don’t make something because it is what you think you should make, what a Christian should make, or because other people think it is what you should make. Would John have been that voice crying in the wilderness if he were so concerned? Would Elijah have needed to hide if that was all he wanted to tell the people, i.e., what they wanted to hear?

In all honesty, you may not even know why you are creating what you’re creating when you are creating it! The work may not even make sense when you are done. It may be sometime down the road you discover what God wanted to say through you.

If you find yourself creating from scripture, that’s okay. Sometimes it is about process. Every artist has to put in their 10,000 hours making something. All I ask is don’t let yourself settle for being a karaoke Christian.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts, in agreement or not!

blogATnatureofthebeatDOTorg

Joe