Dear Friends,
We are in the Dog Days of August. Current events do not inspire me. I do not have anything profound to add at the moment to our various cultural upheavals or political arguments. So: over the next three weeks I am going to share with you in serial form something I’ve never published, but might prove edifying for you. It is entitled, “Art, Scripture, and Imagination.” I had the privilege of presenting much of it in Toronto a few years ago for the Runner Academy put on by the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Unless something really strikes me, I will also forego the usual “Miscellany” section. Don’t worry: it’ll be back.
An artist struggles with how to make a painting properly God-honoring. A handsome brass plate on the frame with a well-chosen Bible verse, perhaps?
A screenwriter wonders whether a story that doesn’t end in a tidy Christian conversion can still be God-honoring?
A songwriter is playing the Open Mic night at the corner coffeeshop, and worries that somebody might enjoy her entire performance without figuring out that she loves Jesus.
Often it’s more of an intuition than anything you could clearly articulate. You’re a citizen of heaven living in the earthly here-and-now, and heaven and earth are not exactly meshing. You belong to Jesus, but you’ve still got to go to work on Monday morning. You believe that Jesus makes all the difference, but you do a lot of things for which you don’t seem to need him. This is true whether you’re an artist or not. You’re an accountant preparing tax returns, a mechanic fixing a transmission, or a stay-at-home mom seeking a moment’s sanity by “going to the bathroom.” What does Jesus have to do with any of that?
In various ways we are all trying to bring heaven and earth together, to weave the strange into the familiar, press the claims and demands of Jesus into our vocations, passions and interests, our relationships and lives. We do not want to simply claim to be Christians.
We want to be Christians. At all times and in all weathers.
And this is not just a Christian impulse; it is a human impulse. Everybody wants their vocations to serve some larger, more meaningful purpose. Have you ever listened to a major recording artist on stage pontificating about this or that political cause? You’ve thought to yourself, “Just shut up and sing!” Why does the artist insist on linking their art to various “causes”? Because he or she feels the need to sanctify their work—in this case, by making it a vehicle for some kind of gospel, for good or ill. They practically even use the word. When they say they want to “get the message out” about this or that, they are literally saying they want to “get the good news out”!
At the heart of this universal tension is the relationship between—quite literally—heaven and earth. We want to know how God’s creation “in the beginning” relates to God’s re-creation “in Christ,” how nature relates to special, redemptive grace, and vice-versa. We all want to integrate the two, to live unified lives, but there are ways of doing so that actually destroys unity rather than fostering it. One such way involves treating grace (our identity in Christ) as a mere ornament, a supplemental tack-on to nature, like putting a fish symbol on a business card or on the back of a car. When grace is a mere ornament, it leaves essentially leaves nature alone and unchanged. Nature is really displacing grace. Another way is to think that grace is all that matters—your spiritual life is all that matters—and your natural life is of little to no importance. Let me give you two very practical illustrations of this.
I was recently engaged in what has become something of an American pastime: flipping through Netflix to find something to watch and not actually finding anything I wanted to watch. My eyes landed on a live concert video by pop superstar Justin Timberlake and his band, the Tennessee Kids. I am a musician and I enjoy watching other musicians (which is why most of my illustrations revolve around music—but what I say applies equally to other arts). I thought I’d give it a view, even though I’ve never been a particular fan of his.
The opening sequence of the film shows the star arriving at the arena in Las Vegas and getting prepped for his show. We are introduced to his band, a motley collection of virtuosos—singers, dancers, brass players, percussionists, audio and video specialists, and so forth. Right before the show is set to begin the entire troupe gathers in a circle, joins hands, bows their heads, and a band member prays:
Gracious Father. Thank you for this day. Thank you for our lives, God. Thank you for the gifts that you’ve loaned us. We honor you with them. Thank you for this team. Thank you for the task. Thank you for your faithfulness towards this tour. We thank you in advance for another amazing show, as we turn up in Jesus’ name, Amen!
That last part is joined by everybody with great crescendo of enthusiasm and joy.
To put it mildly, this was not what I was expecting. Justin Timberlake and his entire band just made a full-blown Christian profession on my TV screen. He had my attention.
The band takes the stage, and Mr. Timberlake gets in an elevator underneath. Shortly, he is shot upward onto the stage in front of an adoring throng. He struts and moves (he is an excellent dancer), and sings a—um, “love” song that explores how his lover is like his drug dealer. I will spare you the lyrics.
Look, I appreciated the pregame prayer, ladies and gents. But the dissonance sort of deafened me. You said—no, you cheered that you were “turning up” in the music hall in the name of Jesus Christ. Like you were his representatives, or something. And the very first thing you did upon arrival is celebrate the narcissism of a sex addict’s objectification of his lover.
Many years ago my own band was privileged to perform an opening set for a concert by very well-known artist in the contemporary Christian music world. It was a conference setting, so while we didn’t have Timberlake’s thousands, there were at least hundreds of people. When we had finished, we went and joined the audience, excited to watch the rest of the show.
“Show.” That, as it turns out, was a big problem.
The artist of the hour came out to the stage and began to lecture the audience about the sins of being an audience. According to his way of thinking (which he delivered in passionate tones), putting on a show or entertaining people is wrong. It distracts us from the reality that there is only one audience, and it is, in fact, an “Audience of One”: God himself. Entertainment is bad; worship is good. He then insisted that he would not perform his songs for us; he would only sing them with us. You might have thought the price of admission to hear this man sing about Jesus was in dollars, but no: you, too, had to sing about Jesus. You cannot be the audience, because Jesus took your seat.
It all sounded very humble, pious, and admirably self-deprecating, but I thought it was complete nonsense. I sat there wondering how anybody could think this is true? Is that how it works? God just cancels us out? If he’s in the audience, we’re out? Just sitting there appreciating God’s gifts to another human being (sort of the definition of being “entertained”) means we’re disrespecting God? An artist displaying God’s gifts to other people subtracts from God’s glory? You’d think if God were worried about that, he’d stop handing out talents to people.
As we see, our persistent little question flares up very visibly in the arts and entertainment world, especially when we discover a “crossover” artist. In the mainstream world, a “crossover” artist is somebody who changes musical styles, like Darius Rucker (famous front-man for the 90’s hit rock band Hootie & the Blowfish) suddenly emerging as a country music singer-songwriter. In evangelical-land, however, “crossover” means something very different. It means a Christian artist who starts making music that non-Christians might possibly think about listening to. That is, they start writing songs that aren’t directly about God, and recording albums that aren’t just giant live worship services. When that happens, it’s best to duck! Hand-wringing and accusations commence as people publicly wonder about the artist’s real loyalties: Christ, or the “world”? How can one be true to Jesus in a “secular” context?
Hollywood actor Ethan Hawke once wrote a novel called Ash Wednesday. It’s very raw, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re sensitive about encountering the rough edges of the world. It features Jimmy Heartsock, an AWOL soldier, drug addict, and all-around loser, on a road trip with Christy, his pregnant girlfriend. When they decide to get married, they show up for a meeting with a pastor in Christy’s hometown, who humiliates Jimmy by daring to ask him questions any Sunday School child could answer. Jimmy feels stupid: how is it that only now is he having his first, fleeting thoughts about faith, God, and the meaning of life? The pastor gives him a prayer book, and later that night in their motel room Jimmy is strangely moved by its beautiful thoughts. He starts reading them aloud to Christy.
Christy freaks, completely weirded out at Jimmy Heartsock weeping at things fundamentalist wackos believe.
The overall journey, the road trip itself, is navigating the seam between Jimmy’s own worldliness and… otherworldly virtues like faith, hope, and love. He feels the constant pull of his own familiar addictions, but also, now, by the strange beauty of fidelity and self-sacrifice. By the end he concludes that there just has to be a “third” way, something in between a monastery and a brothel. Cannot one embody virtue in the world?
Is there a “third way,” too, particularly when it comes to the arts? Or are we stuck with either the worldliness of Timberlake’s lip-service to Jesus or the otherworldliness of Mr. Audience of One? Are we to be cloistered monks singing only Jesus songs with Jesus people (like we’re already in heaven), or worldly libertines singing about sex and drugs in Las Vegas (heaven is just pretend)?
Stay tuned for Part Two: The Legitimacy & Context of Art