The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 15
We have, in past posts, endeavored to consider answers to the question of why, in an America wherein reportedly one-fourth to one-fifth of Americans claim to be Evangelical Christians, the American Church produces such a prodigious amount of shoddy and shallow (e.g., bad) art. We have seen that, despite a (somewhat) deserved reputation to the contrary, Evangelicals generally have a tenuous grasp of the content of Scripture, and an even more ephemeral desire to act upon the things they do know from the Bible.
Since it is the Word of God which instructs the believer in righteousness, so that he can be “thoroughly equipped” for “every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17), and since “every good work” inescapably includes doing art, which every Christian artist is called to do, an ignorance or facile understanding of the Bible inevitably cripples such an artist in his calling to produce art to God’s Glory, resulting in just the sort of inauthentic, shallow art which dominates the artistic output of Evangelical Christianity in our time.
A mistaken grasp of the Doctrines presented in God’s Infallible Word results in predictable deficiencies in views and practices of art. As we’ve seen in past articles, a poor view of God as Sustaining Creator leads to a denigrated view of the value of matter, which is the raw stuff from which art is constructed, and results as well in views of reality which conflict with that presented in Scripture. Any art predicated on these doctrinal bases will be compromised.
We looked previously as well at the implications of unbiblical views of Eschatology (the doctrine of the end and purposes of history), which have resulted in seeing history and time as both evil and theaters of Satan’s victory (rather than as the theater in which God irresistibly accomplishes His Will), producing art which is only escapist and retreatist. Deficient eschatologies also result in a lack of the valuation of the development of skills over time, opting rather for an unbiblical preference for the quick-fix, and the aping of popular artists (generally not Christians) who did take the time to develop and become great (though the quick-fix artists are generally inferior copies, to the embarrassment of the Faith…).
We also began to investigate the implications of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, seeing that a lack of understanding of God’s Tri-Personed Unity leads to a lack of understanding of the nature of symbols, which God created both to reveal Himself to the world and to reflect both the Unity and the Diversity of the Holy Trinity in their combination of both unified and diversified meanings simultaneously (the One and the Many together in balance). This lack of understanding of symbols can’t help but to negatively affect art, since symbols are the building blocks of any sort of artistic expression.
That symbols, like the Holy Trinity, function so mysteriously leads us to our next consideration, that of the place of Mystery in the Nature of God’s Triune Being. It is always to be remembered that men have been created in God’s Image (Gen 1:26-28), intended by God to reflect their Maker both in His Unity and in His Diversity.
Exactly how God exists as One Being in Three Persons is one of the Great Mysteries of life, a Mystery which is replicated in small, creaturely fashion in mankind (who is also a unified being of three parts: body, soul, and spirit). There are, of course, other implications of the Great Mystery of God involved in the Image of God in mankind. We are intended to understand that, while God is the Greatest of All Mysteries, man made in God’s Image is a little mystery.
Men are not simplistic machines subject to simplistic techniques or quick-fix formulas, but, as little mysteries made in the Image of the Mysterious God, must be seen and addressed in terms which reflect that innate mystery. Art is, of course, a perfect medium for representation of, appeal from, and the necessary aspects of mystery, both in its message for, and depiction of, the mysterious life of mankind.
All too often, Evangelicals have reduced the mystery inherent in man, and presented art which is simplistic and propagandistic in appeal, representing the life of man as a uni-dimensional, flat reality, denuding the life of man of its deep, essential mystery, and denigrating the Gospel, the depiction of the God of Mystery, and the symbols of His Presence in worship before God’s Face.
One of the antidotes to such an artist travesty, and to the blasphemy inherent in such travesties, is to turn in repentance to a whole-hearted embrace of the Trinitarian Mystery of the Living God, and an honest representation of that Mystery across the entire spectrum of the artistic expression of God’s Mysterious Creation, especially as that Creation relates to God and His Little Mirrors, the men made in His Image.
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A helpful book on creativity and the Trinity:
