The Sons of Issachar and the Task of the Christian Artist Revisited Part 2

In my last post, we began to sum up the implications of what it means for the Christian artist to apply one of the two prongs of the model of the sons of Issachar (1 Chr 12:32) to his artistic vocation—“. . .knowing what Israel should do.”  As we saw then, this phrase translates for us into the necessity of knowing the Bible as the divine blueprint for what we are to believe and do, both as individuals and as corporate members of Christ’s Body.  The other prong, by the way, is “understanding the times,” which equates into the need for us to understand our historical and cultural situation in order to influence our society, by our artistry, toward submission to Christ.)  As we saw earlier, the Word of God remains our only guide to the unchanging Truth we must communicate to constantly changing history, societies, and traditions (2 Tim 3:16-17, Isa 8:20, etc.).

We must assess all things through the lens of the Holy Scripture to gauge the worth of those things, and to know how to proceed in moving the culture around us toward obedience to the Law of Christ.  This means, of course, that the Bible is absolutely central to any Christian calling, and Christian artistry is not excepted from that necessity for biblical orientation.  The bottom line is that Christian artists (like all Christians) must know the Bible as to both its content and form, and as to how that content and form impinge upon his vocation.

Now, for most Christians (especially we Evangelicals), this is almost an axiomatic truism.  We’ve heard that we must know Scripture so often that we must have stopped hearing it.  Yet most of us do not know Scripture well at all.  Why not?  There are, I think, two primary reasons for this (though there are many more peripheral reasons):

First, we are lazy.  Western civilization in general (and American culture specifically) has been growing increasingly lazier over the last forty years or so, and the Western Church has not escaped the influence of this trend (if, in fact, there is good evidence we contributed to it greatly).  Despite the fact that, at no time in the Christian Church’s two-millennia history have more helps for individual and congregational Bible study on all levels existed, fewer and fewer people are bothering to use the incredible opportunities to learn God’s Word that have been laid before us.  We increasingly insist on smaller and smaller, less challenging, more easily “digested” increments of Scripture (milk instead of meat, cf. Heb 5:12-14), and only want to sip at this insipid gruel in the few minutes set aside for preaching at the Sunday morning service we graciously interrupt our important lives to attend (provided, or course, it doesn’t run over into the ball game or our lunch time).

We must put aside our laziness and selfish pursuits to study God’s Word and Will.  God does not honor laziness, as the Parable of the Talents (Matt 25) so effectively (and chillingly) teaches.  Solomon the King wrote that the ear of the wise seeks knowledge (Prov 18:15), as does the heart of him who has understanding (Prov 15:14).  The wise, he says, store up knowledge (Prov 10:14), and the one who loves instruction loves knowledge (knowledge is imparted through instruction, (Prov 12:1)).  Proverbs 23:12 delivers a straight command: “Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to words of knowledge.”

Most of us don’t even read Scripture daily, much less study and learn it.  In a time when millions of books, tapes, videos, etc., exist to help us shape our study of the Bible, this is a travesty, and a shame to us all.  Let us cast aside our weight and sin of laziness, to run with endurance our God-given race (Heb 12:1-2).  Lazy one—Repent!

Secondly, American Christians do not know the Bible well because, increasingly, the Church’s understanding of the nature of spirituality has been captured by an extremely experience-oriented doctrine that despises and/or ignores the intellectual and historical aspects of the Faith.  Don’t misunderstand me, here—it isnecessary and desirable that we experience, in a living relationship, the Lord Jesus’ Love and Fellowship.  We must have that ongoing experience as part of our lives if we are to be truly biblical in our faith.  But it is equally important that the objective content of Christian Faith be part of our lives.  Otherwise, we become warped and unbalanced.  Let me point out a few of the results of our current experientially-oriented situation.

As the Church has gradually divested Herself of ties to doctrinal content and historical reality (e.g., who the Bible says Jesus was, and that He really was at all), She has seen rise from her ranks heretics who deny that Jesus was God, or that He truly resurrected from death, or, for that matter, that He lived at all.  These things don’t really matter, these infidels say, it only matters that you know Him in your “spiritual experience” (most of these folks work at seminaries or head up denominations now).  Another group of heretics have fallen prey to the universalistic teaching of the New Ages, saying that doctrine doesn’t matter, just the experience of “the Christ we can all feel and love.”

Admittedly, these are both extreme examples, but they are also both logical extensions of the experience-dominated Christianity all too frequently taught today.  Generally, though, the influence of experientialist teaching has resulted in Christians who know about God, but aren’t that interested in working to know aboutHim, except as it helps them continue to cop their Jesus-buzz (and the less effort they have to expend on that, the better they like it).  The quest for good Christian vibrations can’t be interpreted, in the experientialists’ view, by paltry things like serving the world by bringing biblical Truth to bear across the spectrum of human need and despair, and bringing the culture of dying humanity into line with God’s All-Encompassing Word.

Since, to a greater or lesser degree, the clear majority of Evangelicals today have been influenced by experientialist imbalance, these millions of Bible studies help sell to few Christians, and our Christian bookstores are rife with books of (mostly bad) fiction, quick-fix psycho-babble, and kitschy Jesus junk, with few commentaries, systematic theologies, in-depth study helps, etc.  They don’t sell well (if at all).

This is most curious to me, because the simple truth of the matter is that the quality (and quantity, ultimately) of Christian experience disintegrates increasingly in direct proportion to the lack of knowledge of Scripture’s objective content.  The only way to tell, you see, if an experience is really Christian (and not New Age or neo-orthodox, say) is by checking it against the Bible’s Teaching.  Further, if no check is consistently made of ongoing experiences, and they do depart from orthodox Christian experience, God is highly likely to withdraw Himself from the situation, and guess who steps into the divine vacuum to give a few experiences of his own (2 Cor 11:14-15)?

Biblical balance is desirable (the opposite imbalance, intellectualistic anti-experientialism, results in cold, dead, dry legalism, by the way).

Both of these things (laziness and experientialism) that keep Christians from knowing Scripture must be repudiated and repented of by the Church for a number of reasons (the Anger of God Is a good one that comes to mind), not least of which is the one that ties in to the model provided by Issachar’s sons for the artist today:  We cannot “understand our times” unless we know the Bible.

Knowledge of the Word is primary in our artistic task, because we cannot accurately assess to any depth the times we live in without the comprehensive knowledge imparted by Scripture.  The Bible is the lens to correct our fallen vision.  Like the sons of Issachar, we must work hard, roll up our sleeves, and don those biblical glasses.