Ship the box

There was a commercial from UPS a while back. It starts off with a bunch of corporate higher ups in a conference room having a brain storming session. The narrator says “While every one upstairs is busy thinking outside the box,” (then cuts to a guy in shipping looking at some strange configuration of a product) “You are trying to figure out how to ship the box”.

I appreciate and respect all the theologians and even the artists who seek a theology of or for art. I suppose someone has to do it. I also think about all the discussions by non-artists about beauty, what is or isn’t art, what is faith in art, where is faith in art, where is God in art, what about activism, etc., etc. While all that is worthy of study and discussion (or not), it misses the real pressures of making a living with one’s art making.

In the end the artist is stuck looking at a blank canvas, a blank page, a body in a mirror, a musical instrument in their hands, trying to figure out how to make the art. For some artists, inspiration comes hard. Creating significance seems fleeting. The “dailiness” of art making becomes exercises in futility. All that is difficult enough, then people want me to talk about God in my art? I’m supposed to express what took God pages upon pages, ages upon ages, and chapters upon chapters to express in a collective of books all in my one little painting or my one little song? No pressure, really.

Then, if I am lucky, I may have created something someone else is willing to pay for. And what if no one is buying? Is this what I am really supposed to do? What if I am a dancer or an actor dependent on others’ creative output to ply my craft and expression. What are those playwrights, directors and choreographers really asking me to do? And if I don’t do it, will I ever find work again? The paying art community is a small community. Word gets around quickly.

To be a Christian making a living as an artist is to be in the center of a two front war. You are too Christian (to be a Christian at all) for the art world and too artistic (whatever that means) for the Christian world. The art world doesn’t want to hear about your faith. The Christian world wants you to make only art that can be used in church by other Christians.

It’s all about control

I will be the first to say that things are better in the Church today than they have been in decades. Maybe centuries, but since I haven’t lived that long, I can only speculate. I know of many churches today that have a strong appreciation and understanding of art. That is more than I knew of even ten years ago. Art isn’t just essential. As being created in the image of a creator God, it is unavoidable and just as uncontrollable.

However, I still come across Christians who are not just wary or suspicious of art, but down right fearful. Both suspicion and fear of art is a terrible thing. I still find Christians caught up in some self-made “culture war” thinking they need to “take back” or “redeem the arts”. They think somehow people are the enemy. For some reason they feel the need to control other people, believers or not. But worse, I still come across Christians who are questioning their art or their faith because of all these distractions.

And ultimately, that’s what all the worry really is, a distraction. I had a young artist once ask me what do I do about the Christians at church who question my decision to be and life as an artist, challenging even my Christianity. I said I don’t do anything. I ignore them. Be polite, sure. Smile and say “Thank you very much” and move on. If I have prayed and studied God’s word, and live fully convinced that I am doing what God wants me to be doing, I don’t care what they think. I only care what God thinks. Doing something other than what God has for me to do would be disobedient to him. And it is up to God to deal with those people, not me.

Be the bird

But that means I have to do my part. I have to study and pray. I have to wrestle with the questions before anyone even asks them. I have to be faithful in order to be an artist of faith. Faith is an act. Faith is not a leap. Faith is not unreasonable. Unreasonable “faith” thinks I can pick up a guitar, without ever having learned anything about playing a guitar, and believe I will play like Segovia or Van Halen. That is the epitome of a leap of faith.

Faith takes study, takes prayer, takes practice, takes time. I have to learn so I can forget. I have to be a thinking artist. Art may be about emotion, but being an artist is much more than emotion. It is about your whole being. Art is about the entirety of who you are—mind, body, heart, and soul. If you as an artist skimp on any of that, you will create less than you are capable of. Being a Christian is a lot like being an artist. Fancy that, will you.

Someone once said “Aesthetics is to art what ornithology is to birds”. There are a lot of people who think because they study art (or even just mildly pay attention) they think they know about being an artist. But they are just, at best, ornithologists. They are not the bird. While ornithology is important, it is not the same as being the bird. Keep on being the bird. Better yet, be the bird who is also an ornithologist! Be a thinking artist.

Thanks for stopping by and reading. Write me a note!

blogATnatureofthebeatDOTorg.

Joe