The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 16

Over the last four or five weeks, we have seen that a Christian artist’s works, because of General Revelation and the Revelation of God’s Word, can be used by the Holy Spirit as conduits of the communication of Christ’s Reality.  We saw also how contexts (cultural, personal, and corporate) can aid and hinder audiences in their understanding and appreciation of those same works of art.  We saw last week the importance of consistent Biblical behavior (holiness) in individual and corporate Church life to having people take the content of Christian Art seriously.

During the course of this portion of our series, I have emphasized the truth that a Christian’s art does not always have to be explicit in spelling out the entire gospel, though it must never contradict Scripture or encourage sin.  As Christians reflecting the Lordship of Jesus over every aspect of life, it is legitimate to address artistically any area of life, provided the art represents the truth about that area in light of Scripture.

Because of the widespread influence of pietism (a philosophy that rejects the legitimacy of ordinary human life as a vehicle for spiritual Reality), I’ve spent a good deal of space and attention on countering its errors by pointing out the true liberty and tremendous scope of Biblical Christian Art.  However, in the understandable backlash against the legalistic restrictions of pietism on Art, there has too frequently been a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  The answer to pietism, which makes a god of a restrictive view of piety, is notto stop practicing piety.  The answer is to discern what true piety or holiness is in light of the Bible’s teachings, and to embrace and practice Christ’s view of piety and holiness.  To react to pietism to the point of rejecting piety (or holiness) altogether is to answer one error with another.  Scripture, not overreaction to a false doctrine, is what should rule our practice of holiness, in life and art (and everything else, for that matter).

Too many times have I seen Christian artists, in the name of liberty from pietism’s legalisms, fall into one (or both) of two sins, one a sin of activity and the other a sin of inactivity.  The first error, a sin of activity, is to begin to enact a lifestyle of worldliness and spiritual carelessness.  I’ve seen a number of hitherto devout Christian artists drift away from the spiritual disciplines commanded in Scripture of church attendance, frequent prayer, and Bible study into resentment against the Church, nonbiblical ideas of God and salvation, fornication and adultery, drunkenness, and drug use.

This drift has been largely fueled by anger and/or despondency at what these artists considered (correctly) to be unbiblical legalisms and a lack of concern about (or outright disparagement of) Art and artistic vocations by the Church.  In their unguided reactions to the legalisms touted by much of the Evangelical Church in our day, they have overreacted many times into outright sin (two wrongs do not make a right).  The Church has generally viewed these overreactions as a justification for continuing Her legalisms, rather than seeing that these tragic situations are the result of those same legalisms that the Church thinks will keep Her safe from just those same sins.  This series has intended all along to help address this problem, and give some perspective (Biblical, historical, and artistic) and elementary guidelines to help us, as the Church, deal with this problem.

The sin into which these Christian artists have fallen has, of course, been vaunted by the society-at-large as a proof of the hypocrisy and untruth of the Faith.  It has also been tragedy and confusion for those artists who have enacted this sinful overreaction.

The other error which flows from the overreaction to pietism has been one of inactivity, of what I call “hiding under a bushel.”  In this error, artists make the decision to hide, or downplay as much as possible, their faith.  This is normally justified as exemplifying the true freedom of Christian practice, though it is actually driven by anger and/or embarrassment at the Church’s state, or a desire for fame or the world’s good will to the end of becoming famous or successful in the artist’s chosen field of endeavor.

Now, those readers who have followed this series for any length of time can attest to the fact that I argue at length for the necessity of making art that embraces all of life in a Biblically balanced way, and that need not be explicitly theological in order to be truly Christian or a vehicle for God’s Truth.  Nonetheless, to attempt to make art that hides deliberately the Faith that undergirds it, is not Biblical.  It is an assault on the Maker.  As Christian artists, we dare not make art that obscures the Truth of Reality in Christ, lest we fool ourselves into thinking that we can serve God by such a subterfuge.

If we are embarrassed by the Church’s state, the answer is not to distance ourselves from or abandon Her; we should rather be honest about Her failings, and attempt to change Her, showing in our own lives and art what She is to be.  If we are angry, we must forgive, and walk in love (Mark 11:25; Luke 17:4; Eph 4:32; Col 3:13).  If we are so concerned to be famous that we begin to self-consciously suppress our open faith in Christ (even if our goal is to “reveal ourselves as Christians once we’ve made it big”), we must repent and put away our idols, trusting that God will raise us up in the world’s estimation according to His Will, since “Promotion comes from the Lord” (Ps 75:6).

Jesus was very clear on this subject in Matthew 10:32-33: “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”  At risk of our immortal souls, we must never deny, by word or deed, the Lordship of Christ, even if we think that by doing so, we are “evangelizing” or “doing it all for Christ.”  The end still does not justify the means.

Please remember, by saying this I am not saying that all our art must be cast in the mold of a gospel tract (as I’ve explained in the past, that would probably hurt evangelism, as indeed it has).  But neither are we to avoid clear expressions of our faith.  Our art should flow from, and be a reflection of, our lives in Christ, if it is to ring true and be taken seriously at all.  Sometimes we pray.  Sometimes we play.  Sometimes we do business.  Sometimes we go to church.  There is a natural place and balance for all these things as we live out our lives as people (and artists) before the face of Christ.  Our art must reflect the full spectrum of our lives under His Lordship.  Let us never deny Him any part of that, regardless of what the cost may be in this world.

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