The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 4
In the last post, we continued to explore the question of why, in an America in which between one-fourth and one-fifth of the populace reportedly profess to be Evangelical Christians, there is such a marked relative scarcity of quality art created by Christians (in the fields of music, film, dance, television, etc.). We have seen that, though Evangelicals claim to know and love the Creator of all beauty, and to be directed by His Word in “every good work” (2 Timothy 3: 16-17) (which includes the Arts), their failure as a community to produce quality art for the Church and the world is in many ways due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the Bible. Two reasons were given for this lack of knowledge: laziness and bad theology. The first of these reasons we saw as primarily related to a self-idolatry which manifests itself in a pursuit of pleasure (personal peace and affluence) which has displaced love and service to God’s Will and Purposes.
The second reason, bad theology, we saw as being partially the result of jettisoning the ethical demands of Scripture for men to serve His Purposes in favor of seeking an emotional experience of God instead. Since it isn’t necessary to know much Scripture to be able to seek a feel-good experience of God, study (or even basic knowledge) of the Bible has drastically fallen off amongst Evangelicals.
In point of fact, Evangelical Christians of this experientialist stripe (which seems, unfortunately, a probable majority of us) only study enough of the Bible to theoretically protect themselves from going to Hell, sickness, or poverty, or to prosper themselves (confess and possess, as the saying goes…). In these cases, Scripture becomes little more than a collection of magical formulas which, mixed with what is thought of as faith, can influence or force God to fulfill the desires of the Christian (of course, those who look at Scripture in this way do spend a good deal of time seeking proof-texts to demonstrate that God exists primarily to fulfill their desires, a quest which is generally mixed with “promptings” or “leadings,” generally attributed to the Holy Spirit, which providentially coincide with the desires of the Christian “claiming” Scripture…).
The problem with the Scripture-as-magic formula approach, of course, is that, rather than trying to discern God’s Will for men, Scripture is seen primarily as a way of influencing God to fulfill man’s desire for, again, personal peace (or ecstatic experience) and affluence. Scripture is searched only to the extent that it serves these selfish ends, and is understood only in the context of how it can be distorted to manipulate God.
Rather than seeing God’s Word as the Heavenly Blueprint of God’s Prescribed Patterns for men’s lives, as that which prepares and guides the man of God for “every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and studying it deeply to understand God’s View of Himself, mankind, and the world He has made, in order to fulfill His Purposes in our lives, the Christian who only seeks his own pleasure in the attempt to control God by His Scripture is limited to surface (and in many ways, erroneous) views of Scripture, God, reality, and of himself as a person.
The irony in all this is that it is only in subjecting ourselves to God’s Purposes for us that men ever truly find security, freedom, or personal peace. In any attempt to control or coerce God for the fulfillment of our own self-generated desires, we ultimately forfeit true peace and security.
The truth of the matter is that we need a knowledge of Scripture to even be able to accurately assess our experience in the world; the deeper and truer our grasp of Biblical Truth, the more accurate our assessment of life is. Without such an accurate assessment of our experience, it is impossible to fulfill the vocations God has designed for us (including that of the artist). To this topic we will, Lord willing, turn in the next post.
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