The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 25

We’ve been exploring in these articles the question of why it is that millions of Evangelicals in America have produced so little quality art of any sort, and have seen that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of these teachings), despite the fact that Scripture equips Christians for “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), one of which is creating art.

We examined the damaging effects of deficient theology on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, effects which produce devaluations of matter and time as apropos theaters of God’s Glory, resulting in pessimism about history, and in viewing the world as effectively belonging to Satan, as only something to be escaped from.

Non-Biblical ideas concerning the Holy Trinity lead to a picture of mankind as simplistic machines rather than the bearers of God’s Image, as well as to the destruction of symbol as showing both multiple and unified at the same time.       

We turned then to an examination of the Incarnation of Christ, in Which God joined Himself to Humanity in the God-Man Jesus, “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood; truly God and truly Man” (Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451), and saw that many Evangelicals hold a view of the Incarnation which sees Jesus’ Humanity as only peripheral to His Divinity, and ignore His Humanity, denigrating the human as a legitimate sphere of spirituality.

In the last article, we saw how this aberrant view of the Incarnation can lead to devaluation of the fact of Christ’s Growth and Human Development, which in turn discounts the valuation of regular human growth in time as unimportant to God’s Purposes, so that men are seen in a deformed fashion.

The devaluation of Christ’s Humanity is artistically destructive in other ways, as well. For instance, an improper view of the Lord Jesus’ Emotions (intrinsic as they are to His Humanity) leads to an improper view of the value of human emotion, and thus to a deformed representation of men in worship and art.

It is frequently assumed that the only “spiritual” emotion for Christians to experience or display (especially in worship) is happiness. As a result, songs (and other artistic expressions), especially worship songs, generally seek to urge listeners/worshippers to a state of happiness or manifestations of joy, and other emotional states or expressions are ignored or are considered improper for life and worship.   

Yet God’s Word reveals the Incarnate Lord as experiencing a full range of human emotions: Jesus was joyful, yes (John 17:13), but He also exhibited anger (Mark 3:5), and compassion (Matt 9:36; 15:32; Luke 10:33), and wept (John 11:35) and was sorrowful (Isaiah 53:54; Matt 26:37-38; Mark 14:34).

These cannot have been sinful, because Scripture explicitly tells us that Jesus never sinned, emotionally or otherwise (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Peter 2: 21-22; 1 John 3: 4-5). Since Christ did not sin in experiencing these Emotions, it is obvious that simply experiencing them does not, in itself, constitute sin (though they may, any of them, flow from sins). Rather, we see that this range of emotions are appropriate to human existence in the world, and all of them (as they were with Christ) are suitable for spiritual expression and experience (even worship).

This should not surprise us, since the Psalms, which served as the worship-songbook for ancient Israel (and thus for the Sinless Lord Jesus), express the full range of human emotion, intended for use in worship, such as regret (Ps 51), indignation (Ps 2, 7), sorrow (Ps 12, 137), steadfast trust (Ps 16, 23), adoration (Ps 148, 150), and so forth. These songs are still to be used in Christian worship today (Eph 5: 18-19) and should serve as models for our worship songs today.

Paul instructs us that we are to be imitators of God (Eph 5: 1), and of Paul’s imitation of Christ (1 Cor 11: 1). God has acted in Christ to save us, showing us how to live as humans who serve God even in the full spectrum of human emotion, and we must take that Express Image of God in Christ (Heb 1: 3) and imitate Him in our worship, our art, and in all we do, in light of Christ’s Full Humanity and Divinity.  

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