The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 28
In the past twenty-seven issues, we have essayed to assay the reasons that Evangelical Americans, who reportedly comprise betwixt one-fifth and one-fourth of our population, have produced so few examples of quality art of any sort. We have divined that this paucity of works of art is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teaching), despite the fact that artistry is unquestionably one of “every good work” in which Scripture is to instruct Christians (2 Tim 3:16-17).
We saw the negative effects of sub-Biblical beliefs on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and of seeing the world as Satan’s domain, which needs only to be escaped from, rather than redeemed and fulfilled.
We also saw that deficient perspectives on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity lead to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbols as simultaneously revealing both multiple and unified meanings. Deficient Trinitarian views lead as well to seeing men not as mysterious bearers of God’s Image, but as simplistic machines manipulable by quick-fix formulae.
We turned then to a consideration of the implications of Christ’s Incarnation, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body, in order to be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for fallen mankind’s sin by dying in their place. As summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), the Incarnation is realized in Christ Jesus since He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in Manhood, truly God and truly Man…”
In the last issue, we saw that, as One Who was Fully Human as well as Fully Divine, He possessed Senses (as well as Emotions), which demonstrate the reality that human senses are valid vehicles for spirituality, as well as a necessary and intended part of being humans created in God’s Image.
A related truth is that the Lord Jesus, as a Human, also possessed an Imagination (as do all humans). Much of the Evangelical Church, inheriting the dualism of its Pietism, views the imagination with suspicion, seeing it as the origin of the projection of an interpretive gloss, a kind of “lie” onto the world. Yet Jesus constantly exercised His Imagination in the Gospels.
For instance, Jesus regularly applied metaphors to Himself, describing Himself as “the Door” (John 10:7) (though He was not a slab of wood, stone, or metal on hinges), and “the Way” (John 14:6) (though He was not a dirt, gravel, or paved walk-way), and “the Good Shepherd” (John 10:4) (though He was not a sheepherder, but a Carpenter…). Jesus was (literally speaking) none of these things, though He was all these things, metaphorically speaking.
He is the “Way” to God, since He Alone can reconcile men to the Father. He is, thus, a “Door” into a state of forgiveness and salvation. He does care for, protect, and lead into safety His People, just as a shepherd does his flock. However, since Jesus was not literally a door, way, or shepherd, He imaginatively (and accurately) applied these metaphors to Himself to teach us Who and What He is via our imaginations, as we draw comparisons between Jesus’ Purposes and what those metaphors indicate.
The Lord Jesus also utilized imagination when He answered His enemies (Matt 22) or taught about the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 25: 1-13), as He told Parables, stories which didn’t directly answer questions or teach in a discursive way, but which answered or taught by requiring the hearer to imaginatively envision himself as being a character in the Parable (or imagining the circumstances of the Parable in his own life), and drawing conclusions from that imaginative exercise, an exercise which Jesus had to imaginatively envision in the first place.
Jesus’ Exercise of His Imagination shows us definitively that, although fallen men can and do misuse that function, it can and should be used as a holy and normal part of being human. To reject our imagination (the foundation of all the Arts) is to reject a vital part of God’s Image in humanity, and to bring our artistic endeavors into ruin.
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A helpful book on this topic:
