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feed-our-souls-too · 7 years

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An Open Letter to the Christians and Christian Artists In My Life

Please read this short post first.

“ Over the last year I have found myself struggling greatly with how God, art, the church, and I are meant to mesh. Almost as often as I’ve thought about it, I’ve also stayed silent about it, for a variety of reasons. Mainly they were because I did not feel like I had people to talk to about it and because I felt unsure of my own thoughts… and, well, because I might just talk your ear off if you get me going on the topic, haha.

Maybe I should rewind a little bit and first discuss how I’ve come to view art.

I’m not completely sure how, but as I was growing up the message I received about art was that it was ultimately not important. Somehow I learned that people consider art to be frivolous and that often the church has little use for art and artists. So many little comments have stuck with me, things people said that they never realized told me such a message: the people who talked about the importance of creative gifts like carpentry (but not things like drawing) told me my art was only valuable if it had practical uses; the girl who commented about how “every song Christians write should explicitly mention Jesus” told me my art was only valuable if I was painting Biblical things; those people who’ve said things like “art is nice, but it’s not what people in third world countries need” told me that beauty, that my art is a waste of time; those people who argued over church décor have told me that beauty just creates conflict; and so go the comments that rarely talked directly about art and the comments that didn’t talk about art at all. Yet together they formed my rough picture of what art is. Frivolous. Of little value.

This might help you non-artists to understand a little what it feels like: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-to-discourage-artists-in-the-church

The thing is, I’ve realized that I need it.

I’ve long felt that art was pretty, but unneeded. And I’m afraid the church has unintentionally taught me that. Here I come to what I opened with, that I felt like I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I have realized that I have unintentionally split my close friends into two groups: the Christians and the artists. I have my close Christian friends, who I go to when I need help with God stuff, and my close artist friends, who I go to when I need help with art stuff. Now I know some of you claim both as parts of your identity, so don’t think that I’m ignoring that. The thing is, my artist friends, I don’t know much about your relationships with God. When we talk, it’s rarely about such things. Is Christianity something you just label yourself with? Or do you really want Him? Does He really matter to you? Then again, I could be just as much at fault. I think far more than I act and often I speak even less. I don’t know what you could say you know about my relationship with God. Either way, I have been hesitant to start a conversation about art and faith with friends whose faith I knew so little about.

As for those select few I regularly go to concerning my walk with God, I will be blunt for the sake of honesty: I did not expect you to understand. I’ve wanted to ask for your help, but sometimes I haven’t had the clarity of vision to tell if I am trying to persuade you to tell me to prioritize art when I should actually be acting more practically, or if you actually understand me and how God feels about it. Maybe I didn’t expect you to understand because I felt that no matter how much you supported me, your underlying attitude couldn’t be much different than those Christians I’d encountered through books and the internet and in my own churches. I can’t blame them much though. They just saw art as something that the hungry couldn’t eat and the homeless couldn’t find shelter under. They were just being practical and asking that I be practical too.

But then, you all know me. I’m a bothersome contradiction. I have a need to be practical, yet art isn’t inherently practical (unfortunately, neither is my artistically inclined mind)–but I need art nonetheless.

You know, that’s actually a really scary thing to say… because if I spout all this stuff about the value of art and my need for it, more over the world’s need for it, I feel a lot of pressure to do something great with it. Maybe that’s the reason for writing this, to convince myself to not give up, to work toward something great and whether or not it ends up great in the eyes of anyone besides God is left up to Him. This matters because creating art has always been hard. I lack discipline many days. But these days, I am also discouraged. In my ear, a shadow of myself, the me who is supposed to be practical and responsible and a very good Christian girl–that Good Girl–whispers. She tells me art is impractical and useless in God’s Kingdom. She tells me how I haven’t done a good enough time with my other responsibilities and so I don’t deserve to do art yet, because that’s just an extra in my life. She tells me I’m not good enough anyway and I’ll never be good enough. She asks me unanswerable questions about “What happens if I fail?” She drags me around and get’s me tired with all the things I’m not doing well enough, so that there’s no desire to be creative left.

You see, I’ve also only recently come to realize that I don’t value my own art.

That’s also a hard thing to say. I think it’s because saying that feels like I’m saying I don’t value me. Ultimately, as sad as the idea is now, I know I could be content with life if God led me elsewhere and art was not in that direction, because it would be God’s leading. But I feel that God has woven art deeply into my soul. It takes a lot of me to create things. Art is personal. I guess it has to be if God put some of Himself into us (the breathing into), that we too put some of ourselves into our creations.

That Good Girl-me, though, also whispers lies into my ears about how I fit into the church. I worry about the Christian culture of art. I wonder if my art is has a place there sometimes, a place in the eyes of my Christian family. Who then can I go to for encouragement in art? I need it, I’ve realized. I need so greatly to be pushed to keep creating, to finish things, to explore new possibilities. And I know God cares about art.

Yet, I see a complacent Christian attitude towards art. No, it’s not the most pressing issue out there by a long shot, but the Church did once understand that art was important on some level (and at times they even valued it too much). Today I see Christian films and books and other “creative” media with pat answers and cliché endings. We used to be known for our quality, beautiful crafts. Now, I see a severe lack of raw, honest things and instead a real push to display only one well-groomed side of Christianity. Where are the things that mirror my reality? The things that challenge me to think about God in new ways? The things that tell the brokenness of this world that it is ok to feel broken? Where do I belong in this largely fakey Christian culture? Thankfully, it seems that Christian media is beginning to awake to something better, slowly…

I’m so glad for those few people who have guided me to where I am now on this topic, enabling me to begin to see the value of art. People like pastors who gave me opportunities to use my talents in the church. People like professors: the theology teacher who had us do a project that involved analyzing or creating art; or the art and design teachers who talked openly of struggling creatively and praying over it, or who talked about regarding the time working on their art as sacred time. People like Makoto Fujimura, whose lecture I attended as part of an assignment, where he talked about finding in Jesus the framework, the only worthy justification for the beauty he creates. And when the whole of my university reeled in the aftermath of the shooting, I saw all sorts of people turn to art for help, hope, and healing, to guide them in seeing beauty–with the intention of seeing God–in the midst of horrible tragedy. It is quite possible that it will forever remain the most beautiful and vivid expression of the Body of Christ that I have ever seen. Through these things, I am beginning “to find in Christ Himself an integrating premise behind beauty.”

Till now, in my limited view of God I have not had a wide enough field of vision to see that sometimes those things which appear to be “extra” and “extravagant” and “not truly needed” are desperately needed. Jon Forman from Switchfoot puts it perfectly by saying, “What is more Christ-like: feeding the poor, making furniture, cleaning bathrooms, or painting a sunset? There is a schism between the sacred and the secular in all of our modern minds.” Maybe, in spite of that desperate need though, I won’t do something “great.” But I think I’m learning to see the greatness in what God might do in me with it. I can see the ways He will force me out of my comfort zone and at the same time the ways that He will require me to learn to make my faith and my art my own. I can see the ways He might grow my trust in Him.

Sometimes I think about not trying to pursue a career in art. I think about how I’ve dreamed big but could fall short. I fear I won’t be good enough, and I don’t even mean just how well I can draw. I mean in God’s eyes. I think it’s impossible that I’ll ever so anything with it, even small, but I realize it’s just the fear talking. I realize that as much as I hate job hunting and would possibly loath having to work random jobs, it’s possible that being an artist could be scarier. For a long time, I thought–though I did not realize it–that my art was an excuse to hide from my fears. Won’t it be easier to pursue a job you want than it was to accept that position as a cashier you hated? Or apply for that job as a receptionist you think you won’t be any good at? It’s not any easier. Rarely is my art an excuse for me. No, I have to fight to create. Some days, it terrifies me.

As I type these things, I feel such a strong need. It’s an ache that sits in the deepest part of soul, asking for beautiful things to be needed. Maybe part of it is because I have long struggled with feeling needed myself. Maybe part of me fears that I am not needed by His church because my talents are “extra” and “extravagant” and “not truly needed.” Under all these thoughts, there’s little light left to see the paper. Under the weight of all these things, there’s little strength left to lift my pencil.

Then I guess that says something about me. About my unwillingness to trust Him with it. My “need” to worry. My unwillingness to be seen stumbling, to embrace that things about me that aren’t “good enough” yet. My unwillingness to see that not all mistakes are sins and that God made me as I am, mistake-making abilities and all. Not because He made a mistake in how He made me but because I made a mistake in my understanding: that mistakes are always bad things and that they must be hidden. That does no one any good. Instead it is the reverse: mistakes are not always bad and they must not be hidden. The depth of my emotions about all these things does not give me license to not trust Him with my mistakes and weaknesses.

Fujimura’s words resonate with me on such a deep level. What could justify such creation? What can justify the beauty and the extravagance? Long have I been /among the ranks of those who scoffed when a “bouquet” was brought in. Like the disciples said of the woman who anointed Jesus, I’ve murmured such comments as, “Why waste this perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s pay. The money could have been given to poor people."

But if God is beautiful and good and the creator, then I guess beauty and good things and creation must be needed here. ”

“The artisan puts flesh on the work of the Spirit, and makes that reality visible for others to experience.”

T. M. tells a wonderful story about Johann Sebastian Bach, the great eighteenth-century composer. Now Bach loved his coffee. And in honor of his passion, he wrote the “Coffee Cantata,” which involved a funny drama about a father and daughter arguing over the daughter’s love for the bean. The music itself, T. M. says, is as rich and beautiful as any of Bach’s famous sacred pieces.

And that was on purpose. “For Bach,” T. M. writes, “even the most ordinary things of life could convey a message of divine glory and pleasure, even your morning cup of coffee. Great art functions like this, taking as its focus common … subjects and using them, in the setting of a big, sweeping vision, to communicate a simple message.

“In Christian art,” T. M. continues “whether the images are saints and martyrs or a parental dispute with a daughter over the supposed evils of coffee, the message remains the same: Life has meaning and beauty when it is lived within the framework of the overarching majesty, goodness, and love of God.”

From https://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/22905

Author’s Note: This is a post I wrote about a year and a half ago for some friends. It has been edited to share with the general public.

#god and art #an open letter #christianity #artists and fear #artist encouragement #Christian artists #faith and art #how the church taught me to see art

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