The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 9

We continue in this post to consider the question of why, in an America where a huge portion of the population (reportedly one-fourth to one-fifth) are avowedly Evangelical Christians, who believe that Holy Scripture directs believers “in every good work” (1 Timothy 3:16-17) (which necessarily includes the creation of art by Christians), the Church has failed so miserably to produce effective, quality art (music, film, dance, television, etc.).

In previous posts, we saw this failure being in large part due to a lack of knowledge of Scripture by Evangelicals, caused by both laziness motivated by self-worship in pursuit of pleasure and by deficient theology as a result of disregarding the Bible’s ethical demands in favor of feel-good experiences. Such a surface view of Scripture has meant that Evangelicals have lost the ability to see reality (God, themselves, and the world) as it truly is.

Christian art depends in its creation upon a Biblically particularized version of God’s Created Reality. The absence of a correct understanding of that reality leads inexorably to inferior, distorted expressions rightly viewed by both Christians and non-Christians as inaccurate and irrelevant representations of God’s Creation in its depth and beauty. Bad theology inevitably leads to bad art.

We also began to explore the implications for artistry of a deficient doctrine of Creation. We saw that it leads to a denigration of matter as a medium for the spiritual, as well as to a reduction of the multi-dimensional Creation to a uni-dimensional construct fit only for carrying the propaganda of the wicked and the strong (which is all too frequently “baptized” as “Christian” by Evangelicals).

Art is, of course, expressed through culturally-grounded media, which means that such cultural forms must be critically engaged and transformed by the Gospel as part of the advance of God’s Kingdom in service to the Scriptural goal of the Reclamation of All Things (Acts 3:21). This cannot be accomplished except over a period of the passage of time, as God’s Creature, History, moves toward the apotheosis of God’s Purposes for the world.

If, however, an artist’s view of Creation does not sufficiently take into account the fact that the God Who has created all things from nothing (Gen 1; John 1:1-14) and Who upholds all things at all times (Col 1:16-17; Heb 1:13) has not only appointed a beginning, but also a preordained end to all things (1 Cor 15:35-37; Rev 21:1-5; Isaiah 46: 9-11), the artist will inevitably devalue both the potential for accomplishing God’s Purposes in their art in history, as well as the probability that history will fulfill the Purposes for which the Sovereign God has created it.

For most of the Church’s existence, Christians have believed that prophecies such as Habakkuk 2: 14 (“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea”) to mean that God ultimately, as the Creator and Sustainer of Reality, controlled the flow of time in such a way as to inevitably accomplish His Purposes in history.

To cease to believe that God will successfully accomplish His Goals in history is to surrender to a pessimism regarding what God can accomplish through His People in their lives and callings (including art). The upshot of this aberrance in belief is that Christian expectations and aspirations become fixated on escapism, an escape from a world and history doomed to domination by Satan, in which the only hope for man is to escape into Heaven from the Earth, either by death or the Rapture.

The art resulting from such a belief capitulates to the lie that Satan is the lord of history, and that the Evil One has trumped God forever in time by keeping the Lord from doing His Will in our history. Such art emphasizes the Faith as primarily an escape-vehicle rather than a world-and-life-changing force. Again, non-believers will justly judge such art as irrelevant escapism.

Do we as artists believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord of Earth and time as well as Heaven and eternity? Then let our art reflect optimism in His Power rather than pessimism towards His Sovereignty.