The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 3

In this last post, we continued to explore the question of why, in an America in which between one-fourth and one-fifth of the population reportedly profess to be Evangelicals, there is such a paucity of quality art created by Christians (in music, dance, television, film, etc.). We saw that, though Evangelicals claim to know and love the Creator of all beauty, and to be directed in “every good work” (2 Timothy 3: 16-17), their communal failure to produce quality art for the Church and the world is a result of their lack of knowledge and understanding of the Bible. Two reasons were advanced for this lack of knowledge: laziness and bad theology, the first of which 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 for and service to God’s Will and Purposes. We will now commence an examination of the contributions of flawed theology to the artistic irrelevance of today’s Evangelical Church to our culture.

Every theological approach (like every ideology or system of thought) is governed by its presuppositions (or axioms). Its assumed primary concerns. In the case of Evangelical theology, it is to be desired that the presuppositions underlying it be drawn from Scripture, God’s Word which tells us how to direct our paths and our works (Psalm 119: 105; 2 Timothy 3: 16-17). This is, of course, the professed goal of all Evangelical theology.

However, in practice, it all too frequently turns out that only part of Scripture’s full-spectrum range of goals for mankind is given attention to as governing theological assumptions. What do I mean by this statement? At present in Western (especially American) Evangelical thought, the primary thing assumed to be sought by Christians is an experienceof God. As an initial step in a Christian’s spiritual life, no doubt, this is proper, since Evangelicals believe that a regenerating personal relationship with Christ is necessary to spiritual rebirth and the beginning of subsequent sanctification.

While it is certainly a good and necessary thing to experience a sustained relationship with God, the feeling of that experience becomes all too often the goal of Christian life (which aberration has given rise to our therapeutically-obsessed culture). Again, it is good and necessary to have a consistent experience of the Christ we are living in relationship with (though the idea that this relationship will always make us feel good is a radical misunderstanding of what relationship with the Sanctifying Christ truly means…). The problem is that, if the goal of feeling good becomes primary, then other equally vital aspects of the kind of life set forth for Christians in Scripture are neglected.

What I have in view here is that the Christian is to be characterized as much (or more, in my perspective) by an ethical concern. For instance, Jesus says in John 14:15, “If you love Me, keep My Commandments,” and, in verse 21 of that chapter, “He who has My Commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (which seems to imply that a continued experience of Jesus is tied up in ethical obedience to Him). Our love for Jesus is to be shown by what we do (ethics), not by how we feel.

The marching orders for Evangelicals are frequently said to be found in the Great Commission’s (Matthew 28: 18-20) mandate to evangelize, yet it is not frequently noted that we are to disciple the nations to “observe all things that I have commanded you,” an ethical consideration. Ephesians 2: 8-10 tells us that “we are His Workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them,” and James 2: 17-18 simply says, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

Obviously, living as Christians entails living obediently by the Bible’s ethical standards, and it is thus necessary to study and learn Scripture, if we are going to be able to do so. Orthopraxy (correct action) requires orthodoxy (correct belief). To do the things we are called to do by God (like being an artist), we must study the Bible to be able to understand how to do our calling (such as art) in ways which please the Lord Who has called us.

Yet, if our primary goal as Christians is to feel good about our relationship with God, then, rather than studying the Bible as a guide for our lives and callings, so that we can live obediently to please God, Bible study becomes only a “quiet time,” when we seek to have some emotional experience of God. Our attendance at church becomes primarily a quest for a feel-good experience, rather than a ministry to God (an ethical action) of praise and an opportunity to hear God speak to us through His Word and Sacraments, equipping us to please Him further by obediently performing His Will outside the walls of the church-building. Bad theology of this sort drives many from church to church seeking an emotional experience (sometimes called a “blessing” or “meeting my spiritual needs,” or any number of other spiritual-sounding euphemisms for self-fixated emotional idolatry), rather than finding a place where they are needed and can help build up Christ’s Body.

To do our callings, we must attend to God’s Word, and we must do so on His terms, not our own, with our focus on the fullness of what He wants us to take away from Scripture, not on a partial understanding which reinforces our self-centeredness and laziness. Lord willing, more on bad theology in the next post.