Lauren also commissioned me for a mural on Acts 17, which you can read about here. The theme is at least similar!

Plans for the piece ranged from humongous to small, from lofted over her bed to hanging simply. I actually am out of touch now with the plans, though I could probably post them later.

Special thanks are due to Lauren, who constantly buys stuff from me, the P-clan (whom I love), who actually DID a lot of the work (not just helped. Carrie is a magnificent sewing-machine wielder, and her husband Daniel has never met a tool he didn’t like… except me). Also, good friend Ashley let me use her sweet camera to take pictures (like she does her own stuff). And Rachael, my photography assistant for the day; Brady (who can push screws all the way into wood with his bare hands), who helped me install the piece and also surprise Lauren; Julie, his fiancee, who kept it secret; Kanon, who helped me pick stuff out even though when I’m in project mode I’m a total freak; Brian for his support, drill and screw anchors; and probably a lot of other people for putting up with me too. God has definitely provided me the proverbial village that it’s supposed “to take.”

Also, no one joke on me for having on clothes that match the project. Total accident.

Thanks everyone! And happy New Year!

When I was 18, I decided to get serious about the faith I professed as a child. Since then, there have been some ups and downs in how serious I have been, but one thing remained constant — I have tried, and to a large degree succeeded, to read the Bible daily.

I heard a story when I was very young about a secluded ethnic group in some small, shut-off region of Asia:

A Christian missionary from Europe came to this people, Bible in hand, and the people there told him that they had known of a day when a pale man with a book would come to them from over the water — and that they were to listen to every word he said. They were waiting on divine instruction.

Even though all people experience life differently, the Bible is divine instruction for every life. We’ve all gone through our own varied trials, and we’ve all had our own specific joys. But the Bible is constant.

A friend reminded me of that this weekend. Over lunch, she and her husband talked about how, no matter how we felt about our situations and circumstances, there was a great constant in the Bible. Its truth is applicable to all of life.

The Bible is a sturdy foundation of fact — not just a list of laws, catalogue of moral stories or poetry journal. The most important fact in it, of course, is Christ’s death for the sins of the world.

In college it was not so easy to believe that. I was going through a lot at the time, and had serious doubts that the whole Jesus thing was true.

What did I do? Did I muster more “blind” faith in order to believe in the nostalgic views spoon-fed to me in my childhood? Of course not! I read books and articles and had hard conversations, looking for answers in history, psychology and the sciences.

But all my time and research landed me at the foot of the cross, the entrance to the empty tomb, a vision of the resurrected Christ and a sureness about the Bible far from “blind” faith.

That 18-year-old me was not into the idea of waking up in the wee hours of the morning to study an ancient, thick and wordy compilation. But I told the Lord if he wanted me to spend time reading it every day and praying, he’d better wake me up — and please do it at 7 a.m. Ha! Me, telling the Lord of the universe to wake me up! I set my alarm anyway.

The next morning when I woke up before my alarm, I rolled over and chuckled that the clock read 6:59. Maybe that was a coincidence.

That day started an every-day habit for me, reading a book I so often saw as meaningless or too hard to read. And it has changed me forever.

Those people in the village I heard about as a child were waiting for instruction from God and knew to listen to it. But how many of us have multiple copies of God’s Word in our houses covered in dust?

Singles are everywhere. They work with you, they sit next to you in church, they come to your house for small group meetings, you hang out with them for lunch… are their lives meaningless because they just haven’t found that special someone yet? Are they incomplete people until the Lord provides them a spouse? What if he never does?

Singles are not incomplete people.

Singles are neither incomplete nor halves of an eventual whole. In the beginning, God created man and woman, in part to provide Adam (and Eve) with an intimate marital relationship that glorified himself. Marriage is a wonderful way to express the community God experiences within the trinity, and marriage can act like God’s telescope for Christ’s relationship to the church, his people (see Genesis 1-2 and Ephesians 5). But reading Adam and Eve’s story that way misses an even grander picture.

God’s provision of Eve to Adam never had anything to do with Adam being incomplete or being lonely. Just as God was fully satisfied in his own triune presence before the world was made, without Adam or any other person, so Adam was fully satisfied in God’s presence, walking in the garden with him before God ever supplied him with Eve for a wife.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” — Genesis 2:18

Notice in the above quote that God never said man was lonely. He never said man was incomplete. God said man was alone, which doesn’t only imply that he lacked a wife, but a whole people! Adam lacked a community in which to live.

…God says that it is not good for man to be “alone.” This has more to do with God’s design for humanity than Adam’s neediness. God created us to be relational beings because he is a social God… While Genesis 2 does address how male and female complement each other, the imlications are broader to include all human relationships… the word “helper,” used here for Eve, speaks throughout Scripture of the complementary nature of all relationships. — Lane and Tripp, Relationships, p. 9

To say that a single person is half of a whole or to imply that something is missing from their life is to completely dismiss the notion that God is a person’s ultimate fulfillment. All through the Bible, God is constantly affirming his ability to satisfy people’s hearts. Additionally, if God created everyone with the intention of giving them mates, don’t you think he would grant mates to them? If God intended for everyone to marry, there would be no such thing as a single person in the first place.

Singleness and marriage are both part of God’s design for mankind.

The name of Christ stands as the most recognized name in history, and his teachings the most prevalent. Paul ranks among the most dedicated and influential messengers about Christ’s life and teaching. They were both single. But to mention that Jesus Christ himself and the Apostle Paul were both unmarried would be too brief of a point. Paul’s exhortations in 1 Corinthians 7 cast a lot of light on how he actually viewed singleness:

• He wishes that all were (single) as he is (v. 7)
• He tells widows and unmarried people to remain single (v. 8 )
• He tells unmarried people to not seek marriage, but that they would not be in sin if they were to do so (v. 27)
• The unmarried person wants to please God, but the married person’s interests are divided between God and spouse (v. 32-34)
• He who marries his betrothed does good, but he who remains single does better (v. 38)
• A widow would be happier if she remained single (v. 40)

Regardless of what happens or how much we accumulate, there is no joy or sorrow capable of dethroning or overthrowing Jesus in his ability to satisfy us. He is the unchanging relationship all of us long for, the purpose we all seek, the meaning behind the universe that comforts us in dark times, the reason for life and all of creation. He is the maker and sustainer of all that was, is and will be. And knowing him is the joy beyond all joys.

In the beginning, he made all things for himself to reflect his glory throughout the ages to come (Romans 1:20). The people he made for his glory brought him grief when they disobeyed the only commandment given them (Genesis 1-3). The punishment for this was death, but God promised and brought about something in Christ that would cause death itself to die. When God sent his only Son into the world to die in our place, it showed just how amazing his love is—in fact, the very definition of love (John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 4:9-10). When Christ rose from the grave, the last of the prophecies fell into place and Christ was proven to be the one chosen from before the world to conquer death. And all who trust in him he calls his children. This is what we call the gospel.

And it can change any person’s heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is what causes a single mother with little money to praise God when she is able to feed her family. It is what causes a man who loses his wife to mourn but not lose hope in a bright future. It is what causes people with countless difficulties to confess that, no matter what, Christ is Lord and he is good. Even if ‘that special someone’ never comes along, God has.

***For further thought, listen to Tim Keller’s sermon on Jacob and his marriages to Rachel and Leah. I just listened to it last weekend and was very encouraged by it. http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/struggle-love

Those who know me know that I can’t get through a conversation without quoting the Bible, author C.S. Lewis or songwriter Andrew Peterson.

Peterson has quickly become my favorite musician. I have actually often likened him to C.S. Lewis in that his writing style provides imagery and concepts that enrich my understanding of the Bible.

One song of his, Faith to be Strong, has been on my mind recently as I’ve been reading Ephesians.

Give us faith to be strong,

Give us strength to be faithful,

This life is not long, but it’s hard, 

Give us grace to go on, 

Make us willing and able,

Lord, give us faith to be strong.

Ephesians 3:17-19 tells of having “… strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge … .”

For the last few weeks, my church has been learning together about having strength of faith. Is there anything too big for your God to do? Then he may not be the real God at all.

Beginning to grasp the love of God through Christ’s death in our place is a first step to gaining strength of faith. If we truly believe that God sent his Son to the cross on our behalf, why would we not believe that he will “also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

That does not mean the fancy car you’ve dreamt of, the lowering of your mortgage rate or a promotion at work. Nor does it mean a perfect marriage, respectful children or easiness in all areas of life.

It does include strength to be holy, to love as God loves, to do God’s work on earth and share the news of Christ’s work on the cross — even with people you’re sure won’t listen or respond.

If we really comprehended the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ, would we not act it out in our community? Would we not, like the hymn says, ‘love to tell the old, old story’ to every man, woman and child?

I have never so pointed a finger at myself in my life. I need this strength — strength to comprehend the love of Christ. And I pray for it.

Reading through Hebrews 11 this morning, I thought about the strong faith of the ones gone before — Abraham, journeying to a promised land he could not see; Moses, choosing to be mistreated with the people of God rather than enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin; Rahab, obedient to harbor spies though the repercussions could have been great; and more stories for which time would fail were the author to recount them.

That Christ’s love would strengthen his people to live lives of faith and obedience!

This time of year, people’s eyes are a little less open, the days are shorter and coffee usage escalates. Going to work or school becomes a chore, and many travel to and from obligations in the dark. And grumble.

In times like these, when the unemployment rate is pushing toward depression percentages, it can be understandable. Not to mention, every person and family has to wade through personal woes every day.

Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

How can I sing and be thankful in times of uncertainty and trial? How can I be thankful when so much is wrong?

Your wife is mad at you, your parents don’t understand you, your coworker has been irritable for weeks, your 401k plan just dissolved — and to top it off, your car needs another oil change.

Philippians 2:14-16 says, “Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent… holding fast to the word of life… .”

In both the Colossians and the Philippians passages, the word is mentioned. The Bible gives us all the information and power necessary to live lives of thankfulness.

What, exactly, does it say that could possibly counteract all the negative things in our lives? A quick trip through the book of Romans will do a heart good.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23); For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23); “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) and “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Far from a “well, we are safer and more comfortable than a lot of people in the world” mentality, there is a much greater peace and satisfaction available. That peace is Christ. “May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:2).

In this life, there will be lots of trouble and heartache, but God’s word reminds us that there is more to life than just what we experience here. There is always more to God, too — he is always more glorious, loving and wise than we could ever hope or dream.

Thankfulness is more than just a once-a-year event. For those who believe, it can be a lifestyle. When our security is in eternity, we can say with the Psalmist, “In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Psalm 56:11). Or what can circumstances do to me? Nothing! Our hope is sure. And the response is to not complain, but to abound in thankfulness.

I heard that a lot when I was little. My mom and her friends (and even my dad) would sometimes jokingly exclaim, “It’s all about me!” They knew, however, that it wasn’t true. They all had jobs, spouses, and children to boot.

My pastor has been teaching out of 1 Corinthians, and his sermon last week was spiced with humor. There was a video showing people telling what they wanted their church to be like — down to a man saying he wanted superbowl tickets if he joined the church. MeChurch, they called it. The people in the video acted like it was all about them.

I know a man, however, whose life was all about others. I know a man who, though perfect and wise and good and happy in every way, came to a people who were broken and dirty in order to gather them to himself. He is a man, the God, whose love compelled him to leave his throne and walk among his people — this is Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:8 says that, “being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Imagine being on a vacation at your favorite spot with your two favorite people. They are so close to you that even though you are three separate people you are essentially the same, and you’re always together (like the trinity). In fact, the reason why your favorite place is your favorite is only because they are there with you. It could be the laundromat just as well as it could be the beach — it doesn’t matter as long as they are there.

Now let’s say that you get a call from a distant cousin (the mess-up of the family, at that). He says he’s in trouble with the law and there’s no hope for bail. He’s facing the death sentence.

You drive seven hours away from the beach (or wherever), from your favorite people, walk into the jail, give your cousin your car keys, tell him to drive to your friends — and that you’ll die in his place.

That’s what Jesus did. Jesus’ life was about the ones he came to save from death and disaster. And more than just taking our place on the cross, Christ has given us eternal fellowship with himself. And the Bible says he died “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2).

Shouldn’t we be imitators of him in his humility, then? For the joy set before us in unbroken fellowship with him forever? Shouldn’t we be like him in service and love — leaving our comforts and forsaking our pleasures for the good of others?

Some of Jesus’ last words to the Father before his death and subsequent resurrection were “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

How different that sounds from “It’s all about me”!

I love friends. In fact, today I was just discussing with someone at work about how I talk on the phone instead of taking cigarette breaks — because I prefer people to nicotine. OK, maybe that’s a little weird.

One of the stories I found in an online Bible search about friendship was about David, the future king of Israel, and Jonathan, the son of King Saul (see 1 and 2 Samuel). In the story, “Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself” (1 Samuel 18:3).

What does it mean that Jonathan loved David as himself? Do I love anyone like that? What does that word love even mean?

I think we could all say that we wished for someone else to love us like that — to have others love us the same amount that they love themselves.

I noticed this especially when I moved to this town. I’d ask myself, “Why is no one having me over for dinner, asking me to lunch or reaching out to me?” But I wasn’t doing it for them. My concern was to get love rather than to give it.

Several opportunities have arisen recently for me to talk about relational conflicts with my friends. She did this… he just doesn’t understand… how could she treat me that way… We are often inclined to look first at the actions of others rather than our own.

And we are also inclined to assess things at surface-value — we’re just too different… I don’t get him… she doesn’t make sense.

We naturally back away from people who are different. But that’s not what Jesus did. He is holy and majestic, but he became a baby. He is sovereign and powerful, but submitted himself to a horrible death. He became like us, came to serve us, walked and ate with us and gave up his life for us so we could be with him.

This flies in the face of any excuse we could ever give for not loving — not befriending — another person.

If it’s that, she annoys you — our sins probably annoy Christ every day. Yet, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

If it’s that, he’s just too different, the answer is to adapt — just as God sent “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin …” (Romans 8:3).

Love moves towards. Love changes itself. Love serves. Love gives and goes.

‘What good is it if you love only those who love you?’ (Luke 6:32). Like Christ, who has loved you with his whole life — loved you as himself — so too, you can love the least, the weakest, the weirdest and the most different.

Make a friend today.

My mother was in the hospital recently for what some people wanted to tell me was a routine surgery, or not a big deal. I feel like any surgery performed on my mom is a big deal. She’s my mom.

Fortunately, though the surgery has left her in pain that will last for weeks, she is still alive, still well and still kickin’, as some might say.

I got pretty bent out of shape when I was talking to my small group about it. I know that no matter what, there is always a chance that a diagnosis or surgery could mean a loss. And loss is one of the hardest things for people to handle.

But I realize it is imminent. I could have lost my mom on her car ride to the hospital that morning just as easily as I could have when she went under the knife.

Though death is tragic, I know that if my mom were to die that God would take care of me, my dad and the rest of our family. He is the God who provides.

We have a God that promises his people that he is a provider. “Look at the birds of the air,” he says, “they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26).

This is easily taken out of context. We know that God provides, so we expect food, clothing and shelter. But not only that — we expect good food, nice clothing and big shelter. Is that what he meant?

Jesus continues, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

It’s easy to forget these words when we focus on what we want or think we need. Jesus points to his own kingdom when talking about provision.

I wonder if the type of provision he spoke about was kingdom-related. I wonder if he was really pointing past jobs, cars, houses, food, relationships, vacations and stuff to himself.

In 1 John 4 we read that “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (9-10).

I sent my mom flowers with a card attached that read, “You’re one of my favorite flowers.” Few people are precious to me the way Mom is. Though I want her to stay around forever, I know that like a beautiful bouquet that lights up a room, she will one day be gone.

But I know that, through Christ’s death and resurrection, I will not only see her again, but that I have been provided more than I could ever ask or imagine in him. That he is my daily bread, he is my home, he is my life.

Though I wish and hope for things on this earth — job security, time with family —there is nothing and no one who satisfies quite like Christ.

Close to my heart, and definitely ingrained in my memory, the principles of art are an often forgotten and seldom practiced rule for creativity. My mom, one of my few creative heros, practices it regularly in the way she cooks and gardens. There’s always something new happening in her kitchen and in her yard. One month, she’ll be crazy for crabmeat and be putting tulips all over her yard in different colors. The next, all of a sudden there is beef this after beef that with some new and interesting color palette out in the yard dictating what plants are in and which are out.

Faces.

I remember a movie that probably not too many of you reading this have seen, Aeon Flux, a movie where humanity has become sterile. The cure, in the movie, is to clone a person time after time, each time putting them in a new family. After a while, the people started going crazy because they kept seeing their dead grandparents and aunts and cousins as little children. We don’t really have that problem. The truth is, no face is ever exactly the same as another. Variety is what helps us distinguish person from person. Without it, we’d all be boringly the same. Even identical twins are not, in fact, identical.

Nature.

Good thing we have a God who made it like that. There is nothing boring about faces, or nature for that matter. Even down to the animals we keep as pets and on our farms, the bugs that die on our windshields and the butterflies that flutter in our fields—no two of them are the same. Dog can be distinguished from dog, tree from tree, mountain from mountain. There is no streamlining, no sameness, and the weather constantly awes and frightens and enlivens. Just last night on the way home from work I saw a yellow-blue heat lightning storm and almost wrecked several times from watching it instead of the road. Amazing. Beautiful. No two strikes the same, no moment explicable by a picture because brevity cannot adequately be captured… The following links may help.

cf. http://birdbook.org/
cf. http://www.creaturebook.com/

Books.

My friend Don and I were talking about e-readers (nook, kindle). He posed the longevity of codex-style books over electronic readers; I agreed with a talk of the sheer humanness of books. An e-reader cannot visually represent anything about the authorship that a wall of books can. The reds and blues and canvases, the many topics and styles, the cracked spines and peeling shiny paper of a used book, the names engraved, the stains from coffee up the sides and fingerprints of G0d-knows-what on the pages… they all speak of the world teeming with people, a comfort a streamlined gadget will never provide.

The body.

And I mean strictly the body of Christ, his church. Just see the passages in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians about the gifts God has given the church in each member. ‘If everyone were an eye, where would the hands be?’ There is sweet unity in the variety of our people. We, as a total, as a unit, reflect God. In our variety, we reflect his wisdom, his tenderheartedness, his peace, his fury, his love, his grace, his truth, his knowledge, power, and creativity. Together, we are one.

Architecture.

I wondered at housing developments when I was a child—why there were no buildings of different styles! I come from an older town, where on any given street, no two buildings even mildly reflect the same style. There were literally green, purple, brick, blue, enormous, and teeny houses all lining the same street in every part of town. I believe this accurately pictures the rest of creation and falls in line with it. A streamlined community of barely-different houses and townhouses scares me because it feels like a time warp. Variety in architecture and communities gives a person the ability to locate themselves and create mind-maps. Variety in these situations also caters to the plenteous personalities searching for places to dwell! A banker and a poet and a farmer more than likely are not going to look for the same type of house.

Probably what happens most frequently now in housing developments is that the building companies are looking to make communities that are serene and not loud. I pose this would better be accomplished by a harmonious variety rather than a melodious monotony. In a song, it is the differences and the movements; the notes, chords, crashing symbols and guitar riffs that combine to make an enjoyable whole. Maybe conceived, but certainly not as enjoyable, would be the song of one lonely instrument playing solely one note at the same rhythmic interval over and over — 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4 — and then an abrupt ending. Yet, is that not how we treat housing developments and commercial properties? There is a certain manicured and clean-cut nature about these developments, perhaps grasping at 1950s nostalgia (thanks Nick), but the droning sameness, however clean it may be, does not communicate effectively the days of yore.

AN INTRODUCTION TO ART AS WORSHIP,

CONSIDERING AYN RAND AND HR ROOKMAAKER

 W. Trenton Anthony

 MA Ethics Project

Presented to Dr. Mark Liederbach

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

11 August 2010

Foreword

Maybe it was the flippancy with which it seemed like the Easter service had been executed that caused me to fume about it for a whole week after I attended it.  Maybe it was the lack of explanation given for the program. Or maybe it was, after all was said and done, actually irreverent.

I asked a friend from church to accompany me to another church’s arts celebration of Easter.  He must have been surprised (in the bad way) when he asked me what I thought.  “It was horrible,” I can remember saying.  Everything about the service was man-centered.

There were paintings being painted live—the only problem was that the paintings didn’t actually represent anything except raw emotionalism.  When it appeared as though one of them was about to have some symbol or realistic subject included, the shape faded into a sea of brown and red.  I watched from behind as impassioned artists flung and smeared and wiped paint across their canvases, a couple of them actually looking as if they were just dancing along to the beat and happened to have their hands full of paint at the same time. Every painting there looked like a paper lunch bag full of ketchup and chocolate had exploded on it.

The Easter story certainly is emotional.  That the blood of Christ and his death bought eternal life for those who believe is a fact with overwhelming implications.  That he rose again and will reign forever as God and King is just as powerful.  I couldn’t help thinking, however, “The painters are not expressing my emotions, or anyone else’s in this room for that matter, other than their own.”  And honestly, I really wondered whether or not they were even expressing their own emotions—they had, of course, been practicing for this afternoon.  Nothing on the canvases caused me to honor God.  Nothing in them caused me to even meditate on God.  At best, I meditated on how nice it was to know there are such people in the world so deeply affected by the Easter events.

Other than the live paintings, I listened to a quite talented choir sing a few selections of what for them must have meant laborious hours of practice and fine-tuning.  They were well tuned, well blended, and even sounded great, but the choirmaster had chosen pieces for them to perform which were so modern and even secular that only the occasional college-aged attendee would recognize them.

That, along with a poorly-written drama (and I mean that objectively—the plot was indiscernible and the meaning even moreso), amounted to something so far from transcendent, so far from awe-inspiring, and so far from accessible to those on the outside that it might as well never have been made.

Maybe you think me too harsh.  I believe God saw that show and loved it for the people involved.  I believe he accepted the performers’ and artists’ earnestness and hard work and months of preparation as a loving gesture of thanksgiving and worship.  But I’m not glad I went.  It was not a worship service, at least not in the public or communal sense.  It was a private event for the writers and participants and was not, let me be clear, any kind of service for leading others in worship.

My friend, after hearing me say much of this for about half an hour on the ride home, encouraged me to write about my ideas in a blog online.  The posts I wrote for that blog merged with other brainstorming I had already done, and much of it ended up going straight into this master’s project.

What you are reading now is the second version, which my advisor, Dr. Mark Liederbach, asked me to write.  ‘Now that you have reached my standard, I want you to go and reach your own,’ I remember him saying.  Though that is foreboding, here is my attempt.

Introduction

The Pattern of Creation

What is art?  What is beauty?  Is there such a thing as truth?  All these questions were driving forces for the writing of this paper.  As Christians, we can stand firm on the foundation of real, objective, identifiable truth. It is this truth that is the basis for thought in an array of disciplines, from theology, ethics, and hermeneutics to mathematics, biology, medicine, and economics. Truth starts with an unchanging God who made the universe—all that is seen and unseen—a God who himself is the Great Constant.[1]

As far as the arts are concerned, objective truth has direct bearing on all of them, whether visual or performing. Truth has a way of revealing paths for prescription—for action.  Because there is a God who made everything, the very pattern of existence, there is an order to maintain.  It is when people stray from alignment with this order that mankind frays and unravels the pattern of God’s Creation, just as they began to long ago when Adam and Eve first tasted the fruit from the forbidden tree.

Setting the Stage for Worship

Art as worship is based on the premise that worship is right action born out of love for God and a desire to see him glorified. In the words of Harold M. Best, author of Unceasing Worship, God “cannot but give of himself, reveal himself, pour himself out. Even before he chooses to create, and before he chooses to reveal himself beyond himself, he eternally pours himself out to his triune Self in unending fellowship, ceaseless conversation and immeasurable love unto an infinity of the same.”[2]  That is, God has been involved in something very like worship, paying homage, devotion, and adoration from himself to himself from eternity.

The largest premise of Best’s book is that mankind, man and woman alike, were created in the image of God.  They mirror him.  It is a concept flowing from the first few chapters of the book of Genesis—“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”[3]  Here, Best puts these ideas together to pose that mankind wasn’t created to worship, but was in fact created worshipping.  Some people chase power or sex or fame, and some people chase stability, comfort, and happiness.  But everyone is pursuing something.

What is left, therefore, is the identification of the focus for worship, just as a runner cannot race without clear knowledge of the location of the finish line.  People are already “running,” but which way?  If we were made in God’s image, and he is continually pouring himself out in goodness and love one member of the trinity to another, and then out upon all of Creation,[4] so should mankind likewise pour goodness and love out upon God and man and Creation. Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology has this to add: “…it is rightly said that everything in our life should be an act of worship, and everything the church does should be considered worship, for everything we do should glorify God.”[5]  In other words, God’s pleasure is the target for all human strivings.  He is the target worth aiming at.  He is the reward at the finish line.[6]

How, though, does the Christian in the arts find him or herself worshipping rightly in their work?  How does the Christian painter steer her motives and her works towards worship?  How does the Christian actor ensure his performances are worshipful to Christ?

Other terms

The word holy refers to God’s infinite highness, his exaltation above exaltation.[7]  It also refers to things which are set apart toward him, for him, away from things which are displeasing to him.

The word good is both a measure of quality and of intention, neither of which can stand apart from God’s desire for the world, as his reflection at the beginning of time over Creation was no doubt one of quality as well as intention.[8]  And we should certainly find out what God wants—

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.[9]

That is, because of God’s mercy toward us in saving us from death and wrath and freeing us from bondage to the law, we should all the more press on toward worshipful living!  We need not be legalists in the sense that we feel we are winning God’s favor, but we must strive to please him in how we act.  Doing good and making good things is worshipping God.

Finally, the word love will be used as the greatest standard for judging the arts:

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.[10]

In another place, God is called love,[11] and still yet another place, love is said to be the fulfillment of the law.[12]  “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”[13]  ‘Love is patient, kind, not boastful, not envious, not self-seeking or rude; it does not get angry easily, it is not proud.  It is not bitter.  It rejoices with the truth and does not delight in evil.  It hopes, trusts, and perseveres’; “Love never fails.”[14] God even literally loved this world to death.[15]

C.S. Lewis relates love to worship in an interesting way in his book The Four Loves, saying that worship is an ‘element to love.’

This judgment that the object is very good, this attention (almost homage) offered to it as a kind of debt, this wish that it should be and should continue being what it is even if we were never to enjoy it, can go out not only to things but to persons.  When it is offered to a woman we call it admiration; when to a man, hero-worship; when to God, worship simply.

Love, as the primary concern for the Christian in life, is the primary concern for the Christian in the arts as well.  To be worshipful to God, artists’ lives and work must be submitted to the first and second greatest commandments for life—love of God and love of fellow man.  Does the Christian’s performance or artwork reflect reality in such a way as to love God the most?[16]  Does their artwork similarly not offend others, does it not boast, does it rejoice with the truth, does it not delight in evil?

Aside from love (or rather, in accordance with it), where rules or prescription for right action are alluded to, it will be within the context of mankind’s freedom to act rightly.  It is in Christ that life’s strivings are redirected to the right ends and in acting out faith in love that one can continue to walk alongside him, not to win his favor, but to live up to it.

Part I

A critique of the aesthetic theory of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Romantic Manifesto, will lend a hand in identifying a need for a goal in the arts.  Her theory has a tint of truth in its premises, but there is a fatal stain, which will hopefully surface to the reader as the critique gains momentum.  The flaw is that, though she presents a view of hope in the arts for man to succeed, she appeals to a missing moral hero. That is, though she refers to the hero type, she neither identifies him for her readers nor tells them how to identify him when they meet him.  More to the point, she describes the person of Christ but refuses to name him.

In the next section, a summary of Hans Rookmaaker’s views on creativity and the arts as found in The Creative Gift, Art Needs No Justification, and, in part, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, provide answers to questions Rand does not address.  His ideas refer and point directly to Christ.  Though he uses different terms and methods of evaluation than Rand, the juxtaposition of their viewpoints merge to show that the “moral hero” is Christ and that living up to him is synonymous with submitting to him.  In other words, Christ is Rand’s unidentified moral hero, and Rookmaaker shows how Christ must be reflected in the lives and works of creative people.

Part II

Additionally, elaboration on what Rand and Rookmaaker supply to aesthetic theory will come in a discussion about the gift of creativity, what it is for, and how to use it.  Special attention will be given to creativity’s relationship to the image of God and how the arts reflect the pattern of Creation.  Directly after this, decency and communication will be discussed at length.

Though prohibition will be a major theme, it is important the reader keep in mind the aim: that the heart, mind, and soul of the Christian artist submit to and worship God. Leaving a Christian artist with a list of prohibitions leaves her devoid of a goal at which to aim. The Bible says, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but blessed is he who keeps the law.”[17]  The King James English for the same verse says that without a vision, the people will perish.  Additionally, Jesus said that when a demon leaves a person it leaves her for a time until it comes back to find her in order and brings seven others more wicked than itself to dwell with it inside of her again.[18] The Church should not leave its artists in a place where, visionless and without boundaries, they will run wild and perish or where they kick out their demons and bad habits only to have sevenfold more come and kick down their doors.

Creativity is a vital way in which mankind is like God, and expressing obedience to God in this area is necessary in order to show him love.[19] Therefore, the following will show that God’s standard for right worship in all of life is specifically applicable to the creative arts, and provide a foundation upon which the Christian artists can order their artistry to the glory of God.

I: Rand and Rookmaaker

The Missing Goal: The Aesthetic Theory of Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand is the originator of a philosophical system that emerged in the 20^th Century entitled Objectivism.  Her philosophy incorporates stances on metaphysics, ethics, politics, and other fields, including that of art. Particularly through the lens of The Romantic Manifesto, a compilation of her essays on the nuances and ramifications of art, one should be sure to note not only her devotion to hope in the excellence of mankind, but also the circular logic upon which that premise is built.  Her directives to hopefulness and excellence boil down to a mere desire for hopefulness and excellence.

The reason for a discussion of Ayn Rand as an introduction to art as worship is to show the futility of man as the measure for all things.  To review Rand, a top thinker and arts theorist, and find her lacking when it comes to identifying an unwavering goal for the arts, is to open the floor to new ideas.  This critique of Ayn Rand’s aesthetic theory should prove useful in creating a foundation for art as worship, as it paves an inroad for the gospel in a largely gospel-hostile world. In the end, Rand’s theory of art will not so much presuppose a God, but beg for a God, or God-principle—the standard to which she continuously (and ultimately) appeals.

Rand understands art to be “a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.”[20]  In reading and rereading The Romantic Manifesto, this definition is not only repeated verbally, but it becomes more and more implicitly prominent—keeping this definition in mind does Rand’s audience a world of good.

It is in her protracted discussion of music in the essay “Art and Cognition” that her idea of standards begins to crystallize.  An affirmation of standard is found in her statement “Until a conceptual vocabulary is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of aesthetic judgment is possible in the field of music…”[21] i.e., there is one or more criterion for aesthetic judgment in other fields.  Considering modern music, Rand says that “…no further research or scientific discoveries are required to know with full, objective certainty that it is not music.”[22]  On what basis did she make this judgment?  Later she says that “a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art.”[23]  At what standard is she grasping?  Is it one she has generated or discovered?  The next essay, entitled “Basic Principles of Literature” further grounds Rand’s promulgation of the standard in its format, as numbers and bold headings delineate the characteristics a written work must possess before it can become literature proper.

The proverbial meat of The Romantic Manifesto is found in the three essays “What is Romanticism?”, “The Aesthetic Vacuum of Our Age”, and “Bootleg Romanticism.”  In them Rand pits “Romanticism” and “Naturalism” (as she defines them) against one another, showing in some cases the benefits and downfalls of each and tracing their historic roots and respective metamorphoses.  Her definitions of each concept, as they are vital to any argument for or against her, can be summed up this way:  Romanticism is the view that man possesses volition, that is, that he has the freedom to choose and do whatever it is he sees fit, whereas Naturalism binds man by some outward and unchangeable force against which he has no power.[24]  A more concise statement is found a few pages later: “Romanticism is a product of the nineteenth century—a (largely subconscious) result of two great influences: Aristotelianism… and capitalism…”[25] Rand precedes this statement with the qualifier that “The definition of Romanticism given here is mine… There is no generally accepted definition of Romanticism (nor of any key element in art, nor of art itself).”[26] Thus “Romanticism” becomes Rand’s commandeered buzzword for appeals in her philosophy. This makes her use of term Naturalism to mean the artistic school of thought that there are forces to determine man’s fate, rather that the philosophical school that man and nature are all that exist (without the supernatural).

Her passion for an “objective” approach to the philosophy of art leads her to say of Naturalism that it is “Man’s new enemy, in art…” because it rejects his volition and makes him subject to a fate he cannot control.[27]  She shows how the ‘last refuge’ for Romanticism in the present day is in “thrillers” (perhaps action films, as James Bond is repeatedly mentioned in the chapter).  Her tone is somewhat colored with disgust when she says: “This phenomenon—the fascinating villain or colorful rogue, who steals the story and the drama from the anemic hero—is prevalent in the history of Romantic literature, serious or popular, from top to bottom.”[28] When coupled with “The Goal of [Rand’s] Writing,” which is “…the projection of an ideal man…”,[29] it is easy to understand.  She cannot simultaneously project or conceive of projecting an ideal man and have him be villainous.  Why?

Further, Romantic art becomes the ideal to which all other art must attain.  Rand writes of “classicalism” that it “was a school that had devised a set of arbitrary, concretely detailed rules purporting to represent the final and absolute criteria of aesthetic value.”[30]  Far from having a powerful point here, however, one can clearly see her logical fallacy—how are Rand’s concretely defined rules for literature (theme, plot, style, etc.) any less arbitrary than those of classicalism, relatively speaking?

“Art and Moral Treason” opens and is interspersed with a story about a man without focus.  Art, per Rand, is more specifically to be understood as Romantic Art; as in, “[What] Romantic art offers [a child] is not moral rules, not an explicit didactic message, but the image of a moral person—i.e., the concretized abstraction of a moral ideal.”[31]  This is significant because Rand shifted her focus away from art general to art local—revealing that the focus of the book is “art,” but, in fact, Romanticism—and through that morality.  She shows this moral ideal to be important because “morality is a normative science…and it cannot be practiced without a clear vision of the goal.”[32]  To Rand, it is of utmost importance that a child/person be able to develop an abstract idea via a concrete, personal goal, so that he or she can morally attain in some way to that goal.

This view presupposes, however, either that reason universally informs every person of the same truths or that objective truth exists.  In this chapter Rand continues to elaborate on the moral capacity Romantic art creates in a person, and treason comes into play when she begins to speak of the stifling of artistic tendencies in children.  As her Manifesto was written and compiled in the 1960s, it is fair to say, at least in part, that the principles she is speaking of in the next quote are directed toward a decidedly modernist audience of parents: “…a child needs intellectual assistance or, at least, a chance to find his own way.  In today’s culture, he is given neither.  The battering which his precarious, unformed, barely glimpsed moral sense of life receives from parents, teachers, adult “authorities”… is so intense and so evil that only the toughest hero can withstand it—so evil that of the many sins of adults toward children, this is the one for which they would deserve to burn in hell, if such a place existed.”[33]  To respond, one might ask about the definitions of ‘evil’ and ‘his own way,’ and further, is the child himself the ‘hero’?  “Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a man’s soul… [but providing] direction belongs to philosophy.”[34]  In any case, it is clear that Rand sees artistic expression (particularly in the Romantic sense of the word) inextricably linked to moral formation.  One asks of Rand, however, ‘moral formation to what end?’  What is the target one should set before one’s children?

The two chapters that follow accomplish for Rand an overt optimism about mankind.  She writes in “Introduction to Ninety-Three” about the importance, again, of this concrete moral standard—the ideal man.  She shows how Victor Hugo was able to do this triumphantly, and lauds him for doing so.  A certain amount of relativity comes into view when Rand praises Hugo: he was able to achieve what Rand sees as the most important end.  In “The Goal of My Writing,” this end is made explicit.  In her words, her aim is “the projection of an ideal man”[35]… “to the glory of Man.”[36]  It is in Rand’s declaration of the ability of mankind to exercise his will unto greatness that one can most clearly see both her optimism, and, as has been shown, the arbitrariness with which she creates standards.  All of this is followed by a short story that shows the inner workings of the mind in the process of creativity: “The Simplest Thing in the World.”

Further, as many times as “standard” has been discussed, it appears in her own philosophy in regard to good and evil—that life is a standard[37] and that ‘The standard by which one judges good and evil is man’s life… that which is required for man’s survival qua man.’[38]  Here is her idea of the standard.

Rand says of modern art: “The composite picture of man that emerges… is the gigantic figure of an aborted embryo whose limbs suggest a vaguely anthropoid shape… who pauses periodically and… screams in abysmal terror at the universe at large.”[39]  Parts of this last quote have been deleted for the sake of gentleness. Though she is somewhat scathing, still it is very clear that Rand believes there are boundaries, limits… standards regarding the world of art.

This standard, to a Christian (which will be explored further later), is obvious.  God is the Maker, the standard, and the hero.  Further, Jesus fits the type of the hero she sets up as the “ideal man,” the person that mankind needs set before him as an example, the very man who overcomes.  If her definition of art carries any weight within a Christian epistemology, it is this: the things artists make and the ways they choose to make them reflect their worldview, and when their worldview is properly aligned to the Standard, it will produce the best work possible.  This is nice to suppose, but one might wonder why there is so much horrendously pitiful Christian “art” being made, particularly in America.  That, however, is not the topic at hand.  Keeping the concept of Christ-as-Standard in mind while reviewing the following criticisms of Rand’s theory may prove beneficial.

The Romantic Manifesto is a concise response to the questions asked by ethicists— “…what is art? what is its role in man’s life? by what standards should an art work be judged?”[40]  Others have affirmed Rand’s honest and thorough attempt to handle these questions, as in one of William F. O’Neill’s few positive remarks about her work, “…while Miss Rand’s answers may be wrong, her questions are frequently right…”[41] What exactly is she grasping at in her answers, though?

Any given person could be expected logically to approach a discussion about art with an a priori view that beauty is its primary characteristic, or that beautifying is its primary function. This is not Rand’s angle.  Kamhi and Torres write in What is Art… that “the term aesthetics, as Rand uses it, is synonymous with “the philosophy of art”; it does not mean “the study of beauty and related concepts,” the much broader sense in which it has been generally understood.”[42] Further, near the end of their book on Ayn Rand’s Aesthetic Theory, they cite Joseph Kosuth as saying that emphasizing the aspect of beauty in the study of aesthetics effectually deemphasizes the importance of art’s function.[43]  Having a presupposition like this, then, may hamper the ability to read Rand objectively.  She is not talking about beauty in The Romantic Manifesto, except in a passing manner, “…since they saw more ugliness than beauty, they took beauty to be unreal and presented only ugliness.”[44]  This communicates (whether intentionally or not) that beauty is merely an aspect of life, rather than a subject to contemplate.

Much of Rand’s aesthetic theory is caught up in a world of definitions, which can be a stumbling block for those unfamiliar with Objectivism.  For instance, in her definition of art, the words “selective re-creation,”  “meta[physics],” “artist,” and “value-judgment” all appear.[45]  Rand could be employing one of a great number of definitions for each of these words—the question is, which ones? In William F. O’Neill’s words, “…Miss Rand’s theory is precisely the way she defines her basic terms and… any attempt to alter or invalidate these meanings is necessarily an implicit rejection of her own fundamental assumptions about truth and value.”[46]  In other words, one has to grasp—and possibly concede to—Ayn Rand’s specific understanding of reality in order to agree with her, or even simply understand her.  Again, O’Neill critiques on the basis of semantics: “…Miss Rand’s concept of rational “identity” deviates quite markedly from the Aristotelian principle it purportedly represents… it is not irregular, or non-Aristotelian, but, rather… it is ambiguous… [she] is guilty of being both inconsistent and contradictory in is use…”[47] Specifically regarding words such as “metaphysics,” it becomes difficult for Rand’s readers to come with different metaphysical presuppositions.  She uses the word “metaphysical” in phrases like “…metaphysical value-judgments…”[48] as a word that connotes objectivist reality, but does not clarify verbally that this is her intention; that is, metaphysics is a category, a genus, and objectivist metaphysics a species—they are not interchangeable based on meaning or even value.

Ayn Rand never claims to hold or peddle any metaphysical beliefs, as she really only addresses reality as it is (or as she sees it).  The problem here is that she frequently turns descriptions of reality into norms for practice.  Where she sees Romantic art as having been crucial to child development, she asserts that this is a universal truth, which should then be implemented in some way (see “Art and Moral Treason”).  She may have a quarrel with the critical focus on her standard as an atheist, as atheism is not an explicitly integral facet of her theory.  This is true—it may not exactly be fair (whatever that means) to import ideas about reality from another worldview into hers, or to critique it through a lens colored with beliefs she does not hold.  On the other hand, if the fundamental nature of reality does include God, and Rand’s view of the nature of reality excludes Him from any discussion of all or any part of it, to import God into the conversation (or un-excuse Him from it) is possibly more than fair—it may simply be right.

For a Christian, it is easy to suppose that, because of God’s role as Creator, his image-bearing people would likewise be creative, finding a full range of uses for this capacity in building shelters, fashioning clothes, farming, decorating, etc.  What does not necessarily follow from this idea is the function of art, per se, as art has many definitions, and just as many scholars theorizing about it.  One might say that art is merely meant to be representational… a record, so to speak.  Another voice speaking out may say that art is about beauty, beautification, or the glorification of that which is already beautiful.

Where the functionality of art is concerned, Ayn Rand’s idea, ironically enough, has something in common with Christianity, being that she is a purported atheist.  In the words of one of Rand’s critics, “It would… be relatively fruitless to undertake a traditional Christian critique of Rand’s philosophy, for, ironically, both Rand and the Christians are fundamentally variations of the same Weltanschauung which starts with a priori concept of absolute truth and which remains totally inviolable in the face of any new evidence whatsoever”[49] Rand says that “Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.”[50]  This definition is loose on the formative side of artwork and tight on the functional end. That is, while she describes no standards for artistic production per se in the definition, she is implying that the ultimate goal of art is to “show” a man’s/Man’s soul—to glorify that which is in him, her, or all of them.

Near the end of her book, in the essay entitled “The Goal of My Writing,” she states, “The motive of purpose of my writing can best be summed up by saying that if a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: to the glory of Man”[51](emphasis mine). In other words, the only thing Rand finds worthy, ultimately, of any contemplation, is man perfected. A Christian, working in a barber shop or behind an easel, finds his purpose in glorifying God in all he does—“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31 NIV).  A Christian’s purpose in “glorifying God,” is to make Him known; or, roughly, to contemplate Him (rightly) and help others do the same.  When Rand says, “The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man,”[52] she is (again roughly) concerning herself with the spread of the contemplation of man—the same action unto a different end.

As Ayn Rand’s idea of glorifying man is similar to the Christian idea of glorifying God, it could also be found that Rand’s hero concept is extremely compatible with the person of Christ Jesus.  (1) Her conceptual hero is ‘perfect’ or ‘ideal’ just as Christ—he “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin”(Hebrews 4:15b NIV).  (2) Rand’s hero concept is that man has the “ability to fight for his values and to achieve them… overcoming one obstacle after another—facing terrible dangers and risks—persisting through an excruciating struggle—and winning.”[53]  Jesus experienced a beating and form of death that were both brutal and humiliating—“[Pilate] had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified”(Mark 15:15b NIV)—yet was raised back to life—“He is not here; he has risen!”(Luke 24:6a NIV).  (3) Rand’s hero is a proponent of life, a fighter for it, and against the greatest evil, which is death (as noted above).  Jesus, in rising from the grave, conquered death and not only retained the eternal life he had pre-earth, but secured everlasting life for those who would believe. (4) Further, Rand’s concept of “hero” becomes a proverbial North Star for humanity, giving people a sense both of where they are and where they want to go: “…the image of a hero guides and inspires them…”[54] Christ functions in a similar way for Christians, as when Paul says to the church in Ephesus, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).  These similarities are beyond uncanny.

From a Christian perspective, it can be said that Rand, as a created being, knows intrinsically this hero-type, and, when alive, may have even been persuaded that Christ could fill the hero category in even more ways than the category demanded.  At one time she stated that “…most champions of the non-rational end up: in religion.”[55]  Rand very clearly denounced Christianity as a mystical package for altruism, which was one of her biggest nightmares (at she saw it universally imposed as a child in Russia).  As one author said about her fiction Atlas Shrugged, “John Galt [is] Rand’s surrogate for the Messiah, Jesus Christ.”[56]  The messiah-surrogate here may be more closely associated with Rand’s hero than with Christ, but any Christian (as inductive as it may sound) can read Christ into a character that is meant to be ideal; that is, a Christian obviously will see her Maker/Standard/Hero Jesus in whatever ideal she is presented.  She will believe likewise that it is because of a latent desire in all people that even atheists will come up with an equation that finds its answer more or less in Christ.  In defending Ayn Rand, one may reason that her intention in presenting a moral ideal/ hero-type was not to find a concrete individual.  Her goal may have simply been to encourage mankind to become it—to strive to achieve the greatness or latent greatness that was already within them.

Coming full circle, it is the depiction of this ideal (moral hero) in art (Romantic art) that Rand sees crucial to “man’s survival qua man.”[57]  If good and evil are respectively the perpetuation and degeneration of life, when Rand calls artwork, an artist, or some other principle or object “evil,” what she means is that ‘man’s survival’ is impeded by it.  The greatest evil in Rand’s mind is the perpetuation of neglect for the hidden potential in man to achieve the chief in his capacity.  However, her neglect to define her terms in a universally accessible way has left her theory of aesthetics somewhat marginalized.  If her standards were based in a broader metaphysic than just “what is,” they would make more sense.  As it is, atheism, arbitrary definitions, and circular logic all leave Rand’s audience hanging by a string dangling from an indefinite finite.    As Bertrand Russell has said in his The Atheist’s Creed, Man is the outcome of the accidental collision of atoms and that ultimately “Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruin.”[58]  One might ask Rand why it is so important that Man attain to some greatness or perfection, when her view ultimately presents that life will amount to nothing.

Rand’s desire to bring hope and excellence back to the arts is comforting, but completely unfounded as her sense of reality (and oddly enough objectivity) is completely relative at its root. The presence of an idea like worship means that there is a goal, a chief end for all of life that applies specifically to the arts.  Without Christ, Ayn Rand’s Romantic Manifesto might be the best man can do. And yet there is the blessed reality of Christ, who gives meaning to everything.

Reaching the Goal: The Writings of HR Rookmaaker

Christian thinker Hans Rookmaaker brings a facet to the study of art as worship by the work he did in art history and theology that Rand cannot supply. Rand by sheer intuition appeals to the good conscience by talking about morals and hope.  She also builds a bridge from her own philosophy to the Christian one by neglecting to tweak her circular logic.  Rookmaaker, on the other hand, makes direct appeals to the Bible, to the Christian conscience, and always to Christ as chief.  There is no ambiguity in his speech, no “moral hero” to name—the hero is Christ.

His work as a whole, though rooted in a conversation about culture and theology, more often speaks to the ontological nature of the arts, what they are, rather than how to use them.  I hope in reviewing his sort of orthodox (correct beliefs or doctrine) view of the arts to lay the foundation for the second half of this paper, which will be much like a beginning to orthopraxy (correct practice).

Creator is the first role God has in the Bible.  Rookmaaker argues for the creativity of God being a primary component of the “image” which man bears, in other words, if man is like God, one of the more obvious ways is that he creates.  In fact, Adam and Eve may have originally been created as co-creators to God, as they bear his image—but if this is true, it is in a lesser and definitely subservient way.  The already good creation would have been built upon by good builders.

Rookmaaker’s arguments about art and creativity, particularly in The Creative Gift, have significant implications for growth in both art and worship.  It is easy in Christian academia to approach any topic from the ethical standpoint of right-and-wrong (black and white, do and don’t).  In the arts, this would mean a person could deduce whether or not a work of art or an action of art making was right or wrong empirically… that there was a universal set of terms or laws to follow to make art “good.”  Rookmaaker’s influence, however, shows that goodness in the arts is correlative to one’s position as co-creator—whether or not one’s aim is, in total, good, or Godward.

Though his writing has been extensive, The Creative Gift serves best when considering art as worship, as it addresses not only the nature of the arts, but also why they have been given to man.  His work Modern Art and the Death of a Culture illuminates his stance on nudity in the arts—a major issue of concern in the arts world particularly when it comes to worship. Art Needs No Justification also plays an important role, if only to underscore other ideas via repetition in most cases and in others by way of new corroborative ideas.

Nature of God and Man

The foundational issue in viewing art as worship may not actually be so much ethical as it is ontological (that is, related to the study of reality itself).  Rookmaaker says of the Christian that what should make him “different from other people is that he is more fully human, more what God intended man to be when he created him.”[59]  The reality of mankind is that God created it in his own image and that it is subservient to him while being in authority over the rest of his Creation.[60]

Dorothy Sayers postulated about exactly what it meant to be made in the “image” of God: “Is it his immortal soul, his rationality, his self-consciousness, his free will… we find only the single assertion, ‘God created.’  The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.”[61]  Though Rookmaaker’s explanation of the image of God is not nearly so compact as Sayers’, it is indeed similar.

After God created everything, man was presented with a choice to obey one commandment or to not.  Instead of living within the bounds of God’s original intention for an overwhelmingly blessed reality, mankind chose himself and his own desire.  Thus, we have the Fall,[62] where Adam and Eve were kicked out of paradise to live a cursed life that would only end in death.  The below quote from Rookmaaker reveals the impact the Fall had on creativity.

Fallen man refuses to see that reality is founded in Christ.  Isolated from their true Source, things and actions become merely accidental, part of an attractive and entertaining game, but having no positive end or purpose.  Instead of a wonderful totality, displaying unity in diversity, reality loses its touch with truth and becomes a mass of unrelated facts.[63]

People without faith in Christ (and people who follow Christ) are all now involved in the continual co-creation process.  How they use the gift of creativity varies widely, and can differ tremendously depending on the histories and ideologies of the people in question.  Additionally, Rookmaaker poses that even the non-Christian has the ability to ‘do truth’[64] insofar as he portrays reality in truth:

The non-Christian is still man, in the full sense of the word.  Even if sinful, he can work in this world and create things of value and intrinsic quality.  (And, just as with a Christian, sin will mar all he does.)  If he is a philosopher, and wants people to hear him, he must say something sensible… If he is an artist, his art must be beautiful, or… [it] will be come a strange phenomenon remote from reality… [etc.].[65]

Opposite this striving for truth and beauty is the segment of the population who refuse to operate creatively inside the created order—real reality, if you will; that which is rational.  These choose instead to indulge in twisting the created order by making everything subjective, debatable, esoteric, or worse, incomprehensible.

Without the influence of God’s Spirit, man has to rely on his own subjectivity to provide the creative force.  Often he tries to achieve this by transgressing all intellectual and moral boundaries, giving free rein to his passions, perhaps using drink or drugs to stimulate his subjectivity. [66]

To the contemporary thinker, meaning stems from experience rather than empirically deduced truth—from self rather than from God.  Thus, meaning and even the human concept of truth become incoherent and as plenteous as the people on the earth.

Nature of Reality and Meaning

“‘What is the meaning of meaning?’ asks modern philosophy, paradoxically forced to think about meaning upon realizing its absence.”[67]  Views about reality flow from metaphysical ideas. Whether or not there is a God (or gods), whether or not he is involved, and whether or not he is good are all questions that, when answered, form presuppositions that underlie (in most cases) every thought, word, and deed of mankind.

If there is a good, personally involved God, can there be anything but a good, God-filled creation?  Also, can it be anything but rational?

To say that the universe is rational is to say that there exists an objective reality.  If there is anything that remotely resembles a universal principle—something which is true everywhere, for everyone, at all times – then objectivity is possible.  Rookmaaker says of subjectivity and objectivity that they

…only have meaning in a framework of thinking which begins with a more or less autonomous and rationalistic human race seeing itself as relating to, and confronted by, an objective nature, ruled by “eternal laws” like 2 ´ 2 = 4, which has its own kind of autonomy.[68]

That is, if there is any universal “eternal law,” other things can be measured in a sense by its existence.  If there is a God, then there is a universal; if a universal, then objectivity; if objectivity, then right and wrong, good and bad, yes and no.  It is plausible to some to supplant God with “human nature” or some other idea, but in the end, this will fail.  Cultural, racial, gender, religious, and other differences demolish any chance man has at becoming or conceiving of a universal.  He is no standard.  God, however, is unchanging.[69]

Morality in the Arts

God’s unchangeable existence has tremendous implications for the development of morality in the arts.  If he is the Maker, he is also entitled to full control.  The Old Testament of the Bible is littered with laws and decrees and covenants all trying to get the people recalibrated Godward.  Rookmaaker has this to say about the lack of objectivity in the arts:

Placed too high in the total culture, art has lost its ties with reality, and therefore its meaning.  Abstract art is one result of this change… art has for most people become an esoteric activity, extremely intellectualistic on the one hand, and fostering irrationality on the other.  It has become confined to the museum.[70]

Irrationality is unable to communicate anything of substance, be it law, or in this case especially, love. Rookmaaker is saying that the arts have lost any rational or human element.  Without God, there then can be no real morality; but as it is, God exists, and so morality does as well.

Love

Were one to speak exclusively of the law, disregarding the arts, one could not escape the law of love found over and over in the New Testament:

‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.[71]

Putting this into practice is more than difficult for normal people, as “love” often turns into an excuse to back down from correcting people or an excuse to let our children run wild without proper discipline.

In Christianity, however, love causes right or moral living, and is a product of the grace given through Christ.  The law is essentially encompassed by faith showing itself through love.[72]  Considering the absence of rationality and the incommunicability of truth in the present culture, no standard for the arts has triumphed at all—neither law nor love.

Rookmaaker also addresses the idea of Christian “calling.”  If creativity really stems to all areas of life, beyond the realm of artistry in its various forms, one can expect principles governing it, a talent like all other talents, to appear in a larger context:

To be a Christian artist means that one’s particular calling is to use one’s talents to the glory of God, as an act of love toward God and as a loving service to our fellows.[73]

The same could easily be said of stay-at-home mothers, politicians, custodians, and literally every other profession.  The biblical version of this comes to us in I Corinthians: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”[74]  Doing everything for the glory of God is loving to him and ultimately to everyone else as well.

Co-Creation

Creativity is not relegated to the productive or performing sectors alone.  That is, one does not have to be a maker or performer of arts to be creative.  Rather, it is in imaging the Creator properly that one is creative.  It is by imaging the Creator that one begins to be a loving person.  “At every point we are involved with others, working in and for the world to renew and maintain it, to set things right, to restore peace.  We are to do this not primarily on a large scale, but in a small way among the people around us, which is the most difficult thing of all!”[75]

Creativity of this sort is a rejection of laziness, an industriousness that betters the world, mankind, relationships, etc. “Creativity means growing bulbs, designing a new car, building a computer, discovering certain relationships within molecules, or writing a sermon… town planning, architecture, road construction… office work and cooking.”[76]  Parents have the special creative privilege of instructing their children so that they may grow.[77]  In the face of impolite customers, waiters and clerks are daily presented with opportunities to creatively build up and not tear down.[78]

Rookmaaker’s creativity is similar to restoration or even redemption. Are Christians not in fact building and restoring the kingdom of God?  Is their work not ultimately about restoring creation to its original state by redeeming the earth to its Maker, one convert, one well, and one landfill at a time?  His creative person might be said to be imaginative, inventive, or especially, prolific.  Given our original, un-fallen state, in which we were perfect and in harmony with God, nature, and one another, these words communicate the generation of good things rather than their rediscovery.  God created man to be in cooperation with himself, extending and expanding the original goodness of the universe he already made.

Cooperative creation and the law of love combine to form Rookmaaker’s ethic of art:

To analyze, understand, and criticize lovingly, loving man but hating sin, in order to avoid their mistakes but gain from their achievements—that is the Christian artist’s task… What should he aim at?  Let’s be careful not to lay down new rules. There are no biblical laws that art must be realistic or symbolic or sentimental, or must seek only idealized beauty… [The artist as Christian] is free in order to praise God and love his neighbors.[79]

“Free in order to” carries tremendous weight for the one who pays attention.  Addressing this further, Rookmaaker’s application of these principles can be found in his statement about the creative person’s affect on reality:

…[all the norms for art are basically] aspects of the great command to love… Beauty, as it were, is a by-product of love, of life in its full sense, of life in love and freedom.  The artist, with his special gifts, has a specific task, a very special and wonderful calling.  It is not to play the prophet, nor to be a teacher, nor to be a preacher, nor to evangelize.  It is to make life better, more worthwhile, to create the sound, the shape, the tale, the decoration, the environment that is meaningful and lovely and a joy to mankind.[80]

So, it is an excellence in all things,[81] a love in all things,[82] and a seeking of the best of all things,[83] that ultimately comprise Rookmaaker’s stance.  And one would do well to ascribe to it.

II: The Gift and its Use

Design

Believers in God through Christ Jesus hold to the truths of Scripture regarding all things, including but not limited to the created order—God’s original design of nature and intention for it.  They ascribe to it in their apologetics, marriage counseling, business interactions, and in all other areas of life where it may apply. Art, which includes some level of design, be it even in the smallest intention, necessarily mirrors the created order in this way. Design serves as the foundational aspect of art: design always precedes art.

If the Lord of the universe who created everything set it together in a pattern, with a certain “created order,” should not mankind find as the pinnacle of its achievement in creativity a perfect alignment with that created order?  God created something out of nothing, and man re-creates something out of God’s something. If all things are created by God and for God, to likewise be called “good” mankind’s creativity must attain to God’s standards, the foremost of which is love.  This is where worship and art collide.

If Dorothy Sayers was right, that “The characteristic common to God and man is apparently… the desire and the ability to make things…”[84] then in music, theater, visual art, poetry, architecture, industrial design, and the works—all these—man is able to objectively create good or bad things, insofar as how well they meet the standard of the holy God.  He is, after all, the one who created and saw that what he made was “good.”[85]

Steve Turner says in his book Imagine that the arts can be divided into essentially five categories—concentric circles with their center being the gospel.[86]  From that outward, there is art with a biblical theme or story, then art with a biblical texture (though not uniquely Christian), followed by art that inspires or causes one to awe at life or creation, then one which is merely design for design’s sake.

Design for design’s sake, the outermost of Turner’s categories, is highly relevant to the others, though itself is quite distinct at the same time.  Without design, there would be no foundational reality upon which to build other ideas in any communicable manner. Turner’s assertion of God’s delight in the design of nature—smells of wood, shapes of leaves, colors of fish, sounds of birds, etc., has tremendous implications for the Christian in the arts.

‘How can someone dare to walk into a seedy pizza shop and say that the portrait of the zombie on the wall is not art?’ the Western thinker asks—they say, “Of course it’s art!”  Driven by relativism at its root, western individualism allows anyone to call oneself whatever one so desires, including artist.  But because there is ultimate truth, it is possible now to critique work and to know whether or not the wielder of the brush is an artist or something else.  Though HR Rookmaaker thinks “…art has lost its ties with reality, and therefore its meaning… [and that] Abstract art is one result of this change…”,[87] Turner’s design for design’s sake argument is getting at something else.  Rookmaaker is quite possibly referring to abstracts made by randomness and non-plans—things that understandably are in striking disregard of naturality.  Steve Turner, on the other hand, is speaking of design for design’s sake in a way that revels in the created order, in patterns, in form, in unity and harmony—not necessarily categorically “realistic,” but realistic in its regard of nature.

This can be achieved via the vehicles of the orthodox art principles, which, often taught, are regrettably seldom practiced.  The principles to which I am referring will immediately ring in the memories of almost any secondary school art student: balance, proportion, dominance, movement, and economy, [88] among others.  What ends up happening, though, given the dominance of the relativistic worldview of the present time, is that these principles become antiquated theory and the idea of design loses its grip.

Yet graphic designers can come to conclusions about what works best in their designs for business cards, posters, t-shirts, and websites.  They know and research the results from eye movement studies for web design.  They place and replace logos, re-plan the flow of whole layouts, and obsess over moving their design elements left or right by millimeters. In this way, art looks and acts much more like math that it does theory or philosophy.  The same is true of great paintings, sculptures, ballets and operas.

When a person speaks about the design of art in its practical expression, he is referring to what happens in process from the artist’s mind to her plan to her final product.  This is incredibly important in architecture, as designers spend months or years of time mixing aesthetics and functionality in their designs.  Several drafts are produced before the plan is in its last iteration, and even then the building will sometimes go up with last minute modifications.

Without design in the arts, artists like Marcel Duchamp are able to do things like sign urinals with a random name and display it in a gallery.  Similarly, artists like Chris Ofili was able to produce a picture of the Virgin Mary created in part by Elephant feces. In yet another way, Marc Quinn found it acceptable to sculpt a self-portrait entirely out of his own frozen blood.  Where is the decorum, the sacredness… the couth?

There is another sense in which design can refer to Creation as it is found in the book of Genesis.  “Male and female he created them, in the image of God he created them,”[89] are words which hearken people everywhere back to the fact that man did not make himself—that regardless of origin theories, every person finds him or herself to have just happened.  God called mankind forth from the earth and they have progressively become more aware of all that is in it.  God designed all that is in mankind before they chose to sin, and they have peaked in artistic development in what are called the classical arts, and, much to the chagrin of some, devolved into paint splattering and ambient noise making.

That people are made in God’s image is, of course, a hard thing to grasp, especially considering the fact that “God is spirit.”[90]  His image includes His creativity.  Mankind has an uncanny knack to create, to produce, to think abstractly, and to communicate in and about ideas rather than merely about the physical goings-on of life.  Dorothy Sayers and Hans Rookmaaker have already commented about this.  In his Addiction to Mediocrity, Franky Schaeffer adds that “If there is one area that surely sets man clearly apart from the rest of the animal kingdom and gives meaning to [the] words “made in the image of God,” it is the area of creativity, the capacity to enjoy beauty, to communicate artistically and through abstract ideas.”[91]

If an artist truly designs his or her artwork, the mark of godliness is close.  God did not create a universe without order, but in everything he has shown forth himself;[92] and at the dawn of it all, he sat back and saw that all he had made was good.[93]

Beauty

  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a phrase that is often heard, particularly in relational situations.  Though preference is strong, it is important to note that God is the origin of all things, therefore all things beautiful, and therefore, he is the origin of beauty itself.  If God is the source of the concept and also its epitome, it is not a far leap to say that the concept is itself universal. If beauty is universal, then there is only a short jump to proving the existence of God; that is, that there is perceivable, gratuitous beauty indicates there must be a designer.[94] This might be why Paul says that God’s attributes have been clear in his Creation for all men to see, even so much so that all men are without excuse.[95]

Far be it from anyone, especially in this day and age, to attempt defining beauty.  What can be said, however, is best said in a quote from Mark Liederbach’s paper “What is Sexy?”: “…perception of beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”[96] He continues in another section to say, “…because the Scriptures do not lay out for us the particular dimensions, shapes and forms of physical beauty, we are then given freedom within the larger constructs already given to enjoy particular elements of beauty related to personal taste.”[97] It is a concept long debated and heavily dependent upon culture, worldview, semantics, and more than likely religion to a certain degree. But Liederbach’s whole premise in “What is Sexy?” is that the measuring up to the standard of God is what qualifies anything as sexy, beautiful, worthy, or good.  His primary criterion here is “…whether or not one loves Jesus.”[98]

The universality of beauty relates to an overall concept of art as worship because it deals with ordinances: those things which are rightly ordered parts of God’s creation are going to be the most naturally and discernibly beautiful.  The degree to which something attains to the order of God is the degree to which it can be said to be beautiful.  This language wanes in power when its aptitude to speak to the human experience of pain and sorrow fails, but this too is a matter for exploration.  HR Rookmaaker calls this principle “doing truth;”[99] that a Christian in the arts (and the communicating Christian) is responsible to reflect the truth of the world rather than to refract it or demolish it—to uphold God’s order and this idea of universal beauty.  He is simultaneously free and responsible to create, direct, perform, or construct in a manner that is consistent with the rational flow, the order, of creation.

The artist has within his grasp the very instruments and materials supplied by God to create and communicate.  Thus, the power placed in his hands is very great indeed.  To uphold that beauty is real and knowable, to portray it or promote it, is ultimately to lend to the world more beauty, more opportunity for the believing and unbelieving eye to contemplate the eternal or metaphysical.  Consider God’s creation of sunsets, birdsongs, trumpet-shaped fishes, and his attention to detail in the multitude of flowers.  When an image-bearer creates a beautiful sculpture, or performs beautifully upon cello or pointe shoes, when the last beam of a sky scraper goes into place, these are chances for beauty to point to Christ, who is the very way, the truth, and the life himself.[100]

Decency

The current of conversations about art today affirms the nude and its relationship to the glory of creation—as the pinnacle of all that is good and pleasing.  Yet one cannot deny the hedonism in what is even supposed to be the purest figure.  Skin is in in more ways than one. It could be our fleshy culture that has tainted a history rich with magnificent nudes so that what was once pure can now be obscene.  The more likely answer, however, is that the fall of mankind has produced a people who are bent towards that which is unholy and indecent.

There are people who would abandon natural relationships with grown members of the opposite gender for improper ones with children, and there are even those who would go outside the species for pleasure.  Perversion in modern times is automatically assumed to be sexual in nature, however, perversion can come in many forms of alteration from the natural, the right, or the true.  A perversion of the arts, therefore, is the making or viewing of something which should not be made or viewed, particularly where the body is concerned.

Advertising

This can be seen in the advertising campaigns of companies like Victoria’s Secret.  Rarely is the merchandise the focus of their commercials and ads—rather, it is the young women wearing (or more commonly not wearing) the lingerie that are their real intrigue.  It is no “secret” that the company’s advertisements have gotten progressively more explicit and edgy as well.

Popular stores such as Abercrombie and Fitch are also using sex to sell their merchandise.  They go so far as to have the virtual whole of their catalogue be devoid of fully clothed men.  The age of the female and male models in both of the cases above is shockingly low, raising other important questions about our culture as well.

Entertainment

Children and teen comic book readers are also getting exposed to more and more questionable material.  It is not uncommon to see women and men in skin-tight costumes in comic books or even sometimes nearly nude with just the essentials covered. Some Japanese Anime movies and graphic novels even include nude characters and sometimes openly pornographic material.  Movies for children are not without reference to the nude and to sex in general, both verbally and visually, and one has to wonder how this will affect them long term.

Even people who want to enjoy a clean horror flick (if there can be such a thing) can’t get away from damsels in distress wearing next to nothing and sometimes naked or over-sexualized victims.  What is the oddest part of this is that our culture has found a way to take what was originally intended to be beautiful (nudity, sex, intimacy) and mix it with the dangerous, the defiled, the grotesque, and the evil.  It would not be surprising in the slightest to find a direct correlation between sexual misconduct and the sex/horror movie industry. The last ten horror movies you watched were more than likely rife with tightly clad young women.  Just think about it—vampires are scary and “sexy!”  They want to kiss you so hard you bleed.  And after seeing how “beautiful” they are, you may even want them to.

The “Fine Arts”

Beyond the pervasiveness of sexuality in advertising and entertainment, how many times have you, man or woman, walked into an art gallery or museum and found yourself sexually attracted to a statue or painting there? Perhaps the figure was clothed, even; perhaps it was not even in a provocative position, doing something most mundane.  If this is not true of you, then ask a good friend if it has ever happened to him or her.  Do not be surprised if they say “yes.”

That the nude is a necessity in the creation of the arts or in gaining an understanding of them is a frequently propagated falsehood.  The arts are viable on their own, because of themselves, creativity, and other criteria.  Additionally, that “nudes should be portrayed in the arts,” lends itself to a slippery slope argument.  For instance,

A) If God wants people to celebrate the beauty of Creation

AND

B) Women and men are part (or the pinnacle) of God’s Creation

THEN

C) People should celebrate the beauty of women and men.

This argument is innocuous enough, but watch how naturally the next two progress:

D) If God wants Creation celebrated in its original state

AND

E) Women and men were nude in their original state

THEN

F) Women and men should be viewed as nudes.

FURTHER

G) If the most beautiful aspects of Creation should be viewed and celebrated

AND

H) The physical union between woman and man is the most beautiful aspect of mankind (and mankind is part of Creation)

THEN

I) The physical union of woman and man should be viewed and celebrated.

Thus, the lack of specificity when people speak of ‘celebrating the nude’ makes a very lenient area for postulation. Therefore, it is important to ask, “should the nude be viewed publicly, outside of the bedroom of a married man and woman?”  I pose not.

Classic Nudes

There is a historical difference between the classic nude, which is completely bare, and the non-classic one, which is considered risqué.  The difference is that the classic nude is more broadly and historically accepted as being purely about the form of the nude figure, whereas the non-classic one is sometimes partially clothed or hiding part of their body.  (Footnote and build) This partial covering or hiding indicates a former state of being clothed—that is, the figure in the painting, sculpture, or photograph used to be clothed and is now or has been undressing—which implies salacity rather than celebration.  This distinction in presentation creates no real precedent in the current culture to say that a photograph of a nude woman is any different than a photograph of a woman wearing only boots.  They are still both essentially nude.

The parts that were covered for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—because of their shame—are now flaunted by their grandchildren to the public eye.  Further, painting or photograph, sculpture or detailed description in literature, both the classic and non-classic nude can incite lust.  It sounds preposterous enough, but for the thinking person it does present a question about how to move ahead.  Who is to judge what is right regarding the nude or decency in general?

No hint of immorality

Looking to the Bible, there are some very pointed passages dealing with interrelational love—one brother or sister to another.  There are also mandates for right living, in action, word, and thought. The following Bible verse will start the discussion off:

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.[101]

The Bible gives its readers admonition after admonition against every kind of malpractice and inordinate desire imaginable.  Here, more than in other verses, the tone is clear—there is not to be simply no sexual immorality, but not even a hint… this is improper for God’s holy people.  Complete, dedicated abstinence from sexual immorality is the prescription.

Do not [intentionally] make a brother stumble

Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.[102]

If mankind is supposed to do everything to the glory of God, whether it is eating or drinking or anything else,[103] this passage adds human relationships to the mix of “anything else.” Christians are supposed to make and invest in human relationships to the glory of God.  And one of the most practical ways they can do this is to keep other Christians from stumbling over their actions.  In this way, the first and second greatest commandments (to love the Lord with all of the self and to love the neighbor as the self)[104] are on their way to fulfillment.  To keep the nude out of view from those whom it may make stumble is to love them.

A great way to press on with this is to review decency in light of HR Rookmaaker’s discussion of the nude in Modern Art and the Death of a Culture.

Rookmaaker’s Stance on Nudity in the Arts

One area of Hans Rookmaaker’s art theory is the incredibly specific view he has on the use of nudity in the arts.  Discussion of the ethics of sexuality, a principle guided by ideas and mandates in the Bible, is highly applicable in viewing art as worship.  Though Rookmaaker’s stance on nudity in the arts is more lenient than my own, his treatment of the topic is insightful and beneficial.

Nudity is found in the art of every period.  In some periods, and among some artists, for instance Rembrandt and (sometimes) Durer, the nude means man in his nakedness, his weakness—quite the opposite of the heroic nude often found in Renaissance art, for instance, where it was a symbol of man’s greatness.  In both cases, however, there was nothing pornographic about it—neither by intention nor in the way it influences the onlooker.  In fact lightly clothed figures are often much more erotic.[105]

Rookmaaker is right when he says “…we cannot simply say that the nude in the art is impure.”[106]  That is, it is never the nude itself that is impure, it is the onlooker.  To prove his point he cites works by Jan van Eyck and Francisco Goya, trying to show how in both, the nude women were not erotic or pornographic. “Purity is a norm, but not an easy rule that can be applied indiscriminately.  We have to exercise our human judgment, with all our wisdom, understanding and prudence.  For to the artist purity is an intention.”[107]  Or is it?  From the biblical standpoint is that there is not even one person who is righteous (in himself).[108]  There is a communal aspect of checks and balances, then, Christians must learn to follow, such that Allen Artist and Peggy Painter can tell each other, ‘You might want to reconsider your images in this piece, as you could cause someone to stumble.’

There is no way to hold differing opinions about conforming to a standard of purity if it is really a standard—that purity is a norm dictates that it must be attained indiscriminately.  If there are different implementations of the norm, then either of two things is true—either it is being ill-applied, or there is, in fact, no norm at all.  That is not to say that there are no differing opinions; but, for example, if a car is purple but the guy driving it says ‘it’s red,’ he’s wrong. The car is purple. So, if there is a purity-in-the-arts standard, regardless of what people are doing, they need to attain to it or stop not attaining to it.  And if their excuse is that they didn’t know, they need to be informed—not given license to do whatsoever they please.

Rookmaaker himself believes modesty to be a ‘moral quality expressed differently in different cultures and societies,’[109] that is, culturally relative.  His premise is that there is a universal standard as far as the arts are concerned, but he almost retracts it by saying that it essentially won’t hold up in application and varies from culture to culture.  It is illogical to say that something that is universally true is also culturally relative.

It is logical, though, to say that there are different cultural standards for public decency.  There are.  In certain countries in the world, women and men are expected to cover all of their legs—sometimes women their whole bodies so that only their eyes show.  In still other countries (or even just cities), tank tops, skirts, and other smaller articles of clothing are considered appropriate.  The incongruence here is that what the community considers appropriate is based not on a universal standard, but on human opinion.  Lust is a universally experienced sin, so a man or woman can lust after someone fully clothed just as well as someone nude.  So, intentionally or not, visual stimuli can tempt people to lust.

There are instances in which one might look on van Eyck’s Eve and see an innocent, beautiful, powerful representation of spiritual heritage and world history.  In other instances, however, certain people[110] will inevitably look upon her with a lust the painter (hopefully) never intended.  To add to this, in his brief aside to speak of literature, Rookmaaker says an artist or author thinks “It might be appropriate to use the nude in his art, whether it is in literature or in the visual arts, and even to speak of intercourse, with completely pure motives; while avoiding them does not mean that the intention or the work itself is automatically pure and clean.”[111]  The interesting motion he makes in referring to literature rather than visual art is that he even goes so far as to mention intercourse.  How explicit does he mean?  In what context is he speaking?  “…For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”[112]

Two more points in his stance on nudity in the arts lend themselves to relativism.  The first is that he argues from the artist’s intention, which is not always known, and this makes it hard to judge the moral nature of a piece.[113]  This is an overdependence on the supplication of text by an author.[114] The second point he makes is that a person cannot judge the goodness or any value of a work of art apart from knowledge of the author’s intention.  If one were to continue in inspecting works of art without communicated knowledge of the author’s intention, judgment could still take place.

The assumption here, following from the idea that we are like God in that we create, is that because God’s character and intentions can be clearly seen in creation, [115]  so can an author’s intentions and character be clearly seen in the works she produces. Whether or not it is their intention, therefore, a pornographer will cause many to stumble into sin.

Let it be made plain that, though Rookmaaker’s argument for nudity or for liberality when assessing appropriateness in works of art is optimistic, it stems from the biblical ideal for the human body, nudity, and sex.

The erotic and the sexual have a place in art, as they have in life.  As such they are not dirty nor impure.  They are a gift from God, and belong to humanity itself.  But man has often focused his attention on sex and carnal love in a sinful way.  Yet the physical relationship between the sexes can be beautiful when it is an expression of true love. The female body can be beautiful , and this beauty is not a thing to be ashamed of…[116]

The problem here is not in his affirmation of the beauty of the body or of sex—he is right!  They are beautiful, wonderful gifts from God, made for celebration.  What he misses, however, is the crucial and stark distinction between the private and public worlds.  It is not God’s fault that man has twisted the gifts to be carnal.  It is mankind’s responsibility to abstain from all lasciviousness, lust, greed, and other types of sin.[117]  We can praise God that through grace he has given us a way to know him and be counted righteous through Jesus Christ, who made our sin “his problem,” yet that counting does not somehow free us of the responsibility to do right and abstain from evil.  Often Christians think about Ephesians 2:8-9 without then reading verse ten, that “…we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”[118]

In other words, now that we have been acquitted of sin, shall we return again to the very things for which we were first condemned?  Let it never be so.[119]  So, if nudity itself has become a thing mankind has twisted, should he not enjoy it rightly in marital privacy, lest he make others stumble?[120]  If our actions cause only one person to stumble, is he not enough reason to stop?  The publicly and anonymously communicative nature of the arts puts it in a special category outside of drinking or cussing, which we can very well do in private.  You are not sure who is “reading” your nude painting, sculpture, or novel section.

…it is often difficult to know exactly what the intention is in a particular instance of nudity.  But it is not always impossible, and we should judge with care rather than hastily.  This is even more so when dealing with art from the past or from other cultures… As Christians we may often (even must) leave the judgment in God’s hands.  What is more important is that we can each exercise our own personal responsibility (which may be different for each of us).[121]

And God is judge, but he has also laid down guides for holy living.  Rookmaaker suggests the law of love, and this seems good and right.  As such, it could be said that love does not make a brother or sister for whom Christ died stumble.[122] “To be a Christian artist means that one’s particular calling is to use one’s talents to the glory of God, as an act of love toward God and as a loving service to our fellows.”[123]  Love does not provoke someone to sin.  Love does affirm, however, the beauty, wonder, grace, and comfort of the gift God has given to mankind in the marital bedroom.  There, to look upon one another in love, alone together, nude man and wife, is wholly pure and God honoring.

Communication

In a similar vein, what an artist communicates has to hold fast to truth and goodness and beauty.  As we have just explored, the nude has little to no place in the arts if the Christian approaches performing and making from the standpoint of worshipping God by loving him and our neighbors.

So too can it be said of the arts that they cannot turn into a vehicle for a message which would bring down or even, in some cases, which might lift up.  Something gets lost in the arts when they are commandeered for a different purpose than to inspire through beauty or awe.

This is to argue against the use of hate language in the arts, against sexually explicit language (which regrettably comprises much of our current pop music), against profanity, and visual messages, which suggest these things.  Blessings and curses can come in many forms.  “Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.”[124]  In the same way that mankind has learned to use his words for eloquent speeches and common slang, also the paintbrush and dancer’s body have become communicative tools. Wielding them to the glory of God should be the focus, rather than the propagation of any message contrary to God’s kingdom and wisdom.

Love can yet again bring illumination:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.[125]

Does love tire of saying the same thing over and over until its audience hears it clearly? No, it is patient, not needing instant gratification, not producing shock art.  Does love prove a point by using speech that is degrading, immoral, or destructive?  No, it is always kind, making sure to take its audience or focus into account, not wanting to harm it.  Love does not puff itself up in self-importance.  Love does not cast a shadow on hope.  Love is the guide.

And though all of this may sound suspiciously like a suggestion for censorship, it is not.  God granted the law to his people as a manager until they were full grown and ready to be adopted.[126]  This means that censorship might be a wise first step until people develop a loving nature in their art of their own accord.  But censorship cannot be forever.  It will only frustrate those who are under its rule until they learn what it means to self-censor or self-control out of a true desire to love God and people.  And self-control, though it may limit what a person can do, will also limit what a person will want to do.

Evangelism

As in so many other arenas, the arts become a place for Christians to present their claims and worldview as unabashedly as a child.  Certainly we are called to this—to make the gospel the foremost of our concerns in this life.  Jesus himself said, “…Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”[127] That is, a person should not despair when choosing Christ and his gospel over comfort or ease.

Acts 17 contains the account of the Apostle Paul in Athens for his often quoted speech delivered at the Areopagus.  The importance of the argument is Paul’s relevance when addressing the large and diverse crowd that had come to him from the city.  His appeal to them for belief in Christ as the Messiah and Son of God was padded with a reference to their own culture by way of quoting their poets.  He also portrayed a sense of fraternity by way of acknowledging their mutuality in seeking to be spiritual.  Additionally, he pushed on consistently: “So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.”[128]  Paul made himself present in the culture and affirmed the people’s intellects by engaging their ideas.

What he did not do was walk into the Areopagus blind to the Athenians and their way of life and tell them to believe in Christ without giving them good reason.  He did not, analogizing the categories, set a religiously themed painting before them, disregard their own works, and expect them at once to see the glory of God and turn to that God in repentance and belief.

One Christian artist makes a case for his work by citing the divine giftedness of Bezalel in Exodus, “Perhaps like the art of Bezalel, my art could be a way of expressing God’s love, a visual gospel,” but then goes on to say, “Image making helps me to see the uniqueness, mystery, and ultimately, God’s sacredness revealed through these subjects of my art.”^[129] McCullough speaks of a ‘visual gospel,’ but then elaborates on the devotional benefits of making art as opposed to displaying it.  Further, McCullough’s artwork does not even partially deliver, let alone fully deliver, the gospel of Christ—how then can it be a ‘visual gospel’?  Here an inflated sense of giftedness and/or a desire to serve have clearly clouded McCullough’s view of his own art.  However beautiful his work may be, it cannot hope to display the exhaustive gospel of Christ.  No artist has been able to do that yet.

Conclusion

The exhaustive gospel needs not be contained in our every word or work, however.  Any artist can make art that glorifies God, just as a farmer’s hard work in a field glorifies God.  As far as the arts are concerned, it is not the Christian’s job in his every piece to exhaustively present the gospel, as if that could even be done.  It is, however, in Rookmaaker’s words, how we are “doing truth” that most glorifies God.  As he says in Modern Art and the Death of a Culture,

if we are creative in this full sense, being new men and women, sharing the new resurrection life of Christ, then the fruits of His work will be seen in our lives, which will in turn have results in this world… if we are ‘salting salt’ at all, then this will do its work in society, making sane and healthy what was crippled and broken.  Simply doing the truth and acting according to the will of God will bring life and freedom and love and righteousness… We are called to be creative in this sense and we are called to bear the cross that often goes with it, for mankind often prefers darkness to light, enslavement to real freedom.[130]

It is upon a foundation of ideas like this that I have tried to build a signpost of sorts for the creative Christian.

Rather than be a legalist or conjure arbitrary prescription for making art, I approached the problem from two directions.  The first was to set up Ayn Rand and Hans Rookmaaker as primary thinkers in the field in order to gain insight by hearing them out and critiquing their arguments.  Ayn Rand’s aesthetic theory is instrumental to the Christian artist in getting him to think of his world in terms of reaching for the goal of perfection—both in morality and in quality of work.  Her attention to hope in the excellence of man was evident in her desire to create and proclaim a moral hero, however, her lack of religious affections made her reluctant to call him Christ.  And yet Christ is a one-to-one match for the person she describes in her writing.

Hans Rookmaaker’s work builds upon what Rand poses by supplying universal truth to human intuition.  He shows why there is such a thing as creativity and then shows what it is for.  Though he doesn’t necessarily concern himself with the narrower world of the performing and visual arts, his work in identifying Christ and giving mankind stock in God’s Creation is invaluable.

The second direction was to speak of making art worshipfully by looking at aspects of art making and art functionality and assessing them in light of Christian ideals.  The virtue of love was the most prevalent throughout, as worship of God and love are related, just as I showed how love and the keeping of the law were related.  With this in mind, I critiqued 1) nudity in the arts and 2) communication, both explicit and evangelistic.  What formed as a result are the beginnings of a road to holiness in the arts—holiness for the sake of worshipping God.

A follower of Christ in the arts can do the same things as people in every other vocation: everything, whatever it is, to the glory of God.[131]  1 Corinthians 10:31 can haunt every Christian mind or it can set them free.  To display skill in labor or in play is to delight the King of Creation.  He formed the leviathan, out of the sights of men, to frolic in the ocean.[132]  He formed man and woman to live in the Garden and work it and take care of it,[133] or, as some have said, to “worship and obey.”[134] And this work and care, per 1 Corinthians 10:31, are to be done excellently.  Therefore, brick mason or architect, farmer or grocery store clerk, artist or art critic, all are to work excellently, out of profound love for God and neighbor.

Afterword

In my own experience making art, I have often struggled with the idea of making a pattern or a non-objective piece because of the inherent lack of meaning those pieces convey.  Recently it has become more evident to me that, like a well-ordered room or an intricate and well-followed recipe, there is beauty and meaning even in the simple humanity of making.  Knowing another human being has made a thing and that the work of their hands means time and intention brings some at least minimal amount of comfort (with some caveats I labored over in this paper).  Even wallpaper, clothing and fabric can induce peace or amusement by way of mere pattern and form, just like flowers, which, being purely form themselves, refer to nothing (other than maybe God).  It is in bending form, bending rules, disregarding biblical mandates and universal art principals that art making becomes an affair of the flesh rather than the Spirit.

As a gallery-goer, I have found viewing art to be much like making it. Did that woman really need to be nude?  Did that man need to be mutilated?  Assessing other people’s work becomes itself a creative act—as in creating lasting opinions, creating a framework for oneself on how to critique, perhaps loosening or tightening up ideas about rightness and wrongness or even about God himself.  The particularly outstanding quality of poorly done or God-dishonoring artwork beyond sensuality, vulgarity and the grotesque, is under-articulation.  I keep seeing work which looks, simply put, unfinished.  I would hope to never ever put up any artwork in one of my own shows that looked like I had neglected to finish it.  Oddly enough, I am even talking here about abstract work.  That classical art training has to a large degree left our world (and particularly western culture) is a tragedy.  Brush strokes are too heavy, colors don’t match, shapes are ill-formed or out of proportion, images of people are nearly always caricatures of them rather than actual representations of their real appearances.  They are simply less excellent than they could be, if they are excellent at all.

Maybe it’s the culture’s fault—that America in particular has told people they can be whatever they want because the power is inside of them.  Maybe they have falsely been made to believe that talented artists can bypass hard work or study.  Or, perhaps, it is the capital-A Artists who are to blame, shifting the paradigm of the arts to include heads of blood, feces smeared on paintings, or just urinals.  There is still time, no matter where the blame is placed, to realign the creative community to the heart of the Creator.