What is a Christian artist? Or to put the question another way, what does a Christian artist do? I want to give a couple of meditative sketches that might help us answer that. These answers are only provisional, though, and want a great deal of revision. But I hope God will use these attempts to encourage us all in our artistic endeavors.
First I will sketch a brief ontology of humanity as creative. Then I will sketch out a few ideas on what it might mean to take up our cross as artists. Finally, I will consider how both of these point toward God, and mold us into icons, rather than idols.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…”
“Let Us make man in Our image”
“Be fruitful and multiply…”
“the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it”
I have chosen these passages to outline what it means to be human. Nevertheless, the human does not emerge from scripture first, God does. As a creator, from the beginning, God was creating. The first thing we learn about God is that he created. And so we find God creative. Moments later, however, we hear something astonishing, God created us in his own image. Many have sought to define this image. While the nature of this image is often difficult to describe, I think we can say that we were created creative. We were created to create. Furthermore, to be made in the image of God indicates that our creativity is not some invention of ourselves; we didn’t make ourselves creative over eons of cultural development. We were created creative. Finally our first parents were given two things to do, first to be fruitful and multiply, second to cultivate the garden.
So what is the human experience? Or what was the human experience that the scriptures capture about life before sin? Humans create, they are fruitful. They have offspring. They work the resources they have been given, tilling the ground to bring about even more fruit, while protecting God’s creation. So if we find that humans make art, we are perhaps led to attribute this phenomenon to that creative aspect of ourselves which was there because God created us in his image, created us to create like he created, to be the image of God, the image of the God that creates. If we create, we create because God gave us creativity in such a way that we might resemble him creating.
But it is not enough merely to have been created creative to explain our creative impulse, to even grasp that burning desire inside us that compels us to create, to create when we cannot create, when we have been exhausted of all our resources, when we are poor, and dead in our sins. For this I turn to the two commands given in the garden. The first calls us to bear fruit, and grow numerous, to fill creation with creation. The second calls us to encourage growth in the things that are in our care, but which must always be regarded as more or less outside our control or given to us. These two commands, if they may apply to this creativity we have been given motivate us to be conformed to that image of God. So we become fruitful, we bear children, we make things, we build, we create, and we create more and more, we make new things and more new things. But our creativity is not only seen in making new things, in producing children, and heirs, it also comes out in the act of cultivation. We cultivate that sense of creativity that we were born with. We learn new techniques of painting, of acting, of dancing, of writing, of sculpture. But in so doing we strengthen that creativity we were given. We find new ways to express that God-given gift.
But all this has several implications. First, if our creativity comes from God, comes from above and was imprinted on us, then our creativity is somehow not our own. It belongs to God. Our creativity is not something we add to ourselves, but we are born with it, born with a function that creates, because God creates and wanted us to resemble himself. If our creativity is God’s it is also in some sense a gift to us, but one which doesn’t quite belong to us. It is an aspect of ourselves which brings out something very good, which is geared to the production of the very good, in so far as we resemble God who brought about the very good creation we live in. And yet, it seems to belong to God since as we create our whole lives point toward God, point to the creator, reveal the creator. And in so doing we are also care takers of the creation, even of the creation of creativity inherent in the image of God which we are. And if that is so, our bringing about fruit is every bit as much tied to the command to make and multiply as it is to cultivate. Finally, if this creativity is God’s, if it is radically from outside us, and then implanted in us, to grow and bear fruit, then we don’t so much cast off the so called outside of the “world” or of material being, in order to look within ourselves for our creative endeavors, we are not inspired by some categorically complete thing deep within, but by that creativity that comes from without although it is stamped within us. We are inspired by that creativity that God planted in us. So if that creativity is within, it is within but owing to its without-ness, owing to its coming to us from God. Our creativity runs through and through with giftedness. As a gift it has a dual aspect to it. It is both in our grasp and from another’s hand. This means that if we create, it is a due to a creativity of God, and so we don’t quite create like God does. We are always creating with things, but never creating that which is originally created.
And yet we are, as Christians, invited into the new man, we have become a new creation, so there must be more, revealed in Christ, about what we are. It is here that I turn to a handful of other passages. In Colossians, for instance, we learn that Christ “is the image of the invisible God.” We see God’s image Christ. And that is really saying something. For the God whose image we see in Christ is invisible. We can look to Christ to see God’s image. And this good news, since the image of God in us has been terribly corrupted. So if we are aiming at really being in the image of God, really living our lives in a way that follows this image, we must look to Christ now to see what that image should be. But in case we were wondering whether or not this conformity to Christ, as Paul puts it in Romans, has anything to do with creativity, Paul clarifies, “by Him all things were created.” So in being conformed with Christ we are still explicitly being shaped like the creator.
But in focusing now on Christ, and in seeing God as Christians, we are aware of the reality of Christ’s sufferings, of the story that unfolds in the Gospel. We are aware of the Christ shape that our lives should take on. Paul continues in words that inspire me again and again. (Read Colossians if you want some encouragement.) In Chapter two Paul says, “For in Him all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.” Christ, we learn, not only died and rose again, but also made a way for us to experience that life in him. Finally, I want to point out that Paul tells us that we are complete in him. I am not certain of how this works, but I think the scriptures reveal that our creativity, in so far as it is a part of who we are, of who we were from the beginning, and as a part of the image of Christ to which we are conformed, is made complete in Christ, and my thinking here is that as we are conformed to the image of Christ, our creativity finds its fullest expression, it is most ready to grow and to fulfill the commands God has given us in Christ, and in our conformity to Christ. And yet I feel entirely inadequate to the task at hand, actually describing in what way this works, in any sort of practical way, in any sort of way which I can definitely describe as encouraging to you and others.
I think in the cross there lies something of an answer, something by way of a hint that might show us how our creativity is bound up in this gospel which we have been called to preach. In Matthew Chapter 16, Christ attempts to explain that he must go to Jerusalem and die, but to his disciples this is unfathomable. And yet, after rebuking Peter, Christ says any who wish to come after him must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. My task in this meditation is to begin to sketch out what that looks like in the life of the artist. However, I cannot simply describe that process without also telling a bit of my own story.
In the spring of my first year at Divinity School, my roommate and I were out taking a walk late one night, probably not advisable along those particular streets of New Haven, but we were walking together. Nevertheless, we were robbed at gun point. The assailants became enraged that I didn’t carry much cash and turned against me, striking me several times and even pistol whipping me; I collapsed until they ran away and my roommate could reach down to give me a hand. My face bloody, neither of us knowing what to do, we made our way around the corner and called for help. Now, I’m not asking for your sympathy here, but I’m telling you about how this affected my artistic side. As you can imagine, and as I’m sure at least a few of us here can attest to, these kinds of things can be very difficult to get through. For my part, I took to pen and paper and began to write about it, taking as my guide the suggestion of a friend to try to locate where God was throughout the experience. I wrote as much as I could, played my violin until I broke my bow and wrote some more. But this really isn’t the story yet. Some months later at a church retreat I was given an opportunity to share the poetry I had written. I read it dramatically, even accompanied by one of the songs that was running through my mind at the time I had written it.
I read it, in part, because I was discovering something about suffering, I was discovering the power that exists in our weakness, I was discovering what it meant that Christ would suffer and die for us. I found that when we as Christians share these moments of our own suffering they can be miraculously transformed into the most encouraging, life-transforming freedom. After reading it, I saw my peers find the freedom to share their own experiences, and the freedom to live with those experiences. It was for me one of the most precious times that I can remember. Somehow through what I had written, God had moved in and through others. I struggle to find the words to express what God did there, as I struggle to bear in mind the extreme preciousness of what my friends shared that night. As I try to describe it, I think I can only say that I saw a glimpse of the beauty of the treasure of God’s kingdom.
Now I’m not sure exactly if this is what Christ was talking about when he said that his disciples needed to take up their cross and follow him, but I think it bears a strong resemblence. You see, in order to go through all this, I had to bear out that suffering, I had to go through with all the consequences such trauma entails, or as much as God gave me grace to go through. In order to write about them, in order to hold on to the hope of the glory of God’s coming kingdom, I had to hold on through the rough places. And I thank God that he gave me such strength -and that in the end, when I couldn’t hang on anymore, He was holding on to me.
God was working in my life in a particular way to minister to those who needed to hear what I had written. Yet, there is something related to what Christ told his disciples to do, when talked about denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Him.
So let’s take a moment to slowly ruminate over this command. Christ’s instruction to his disciples explicitly says to deny yourself and take up your cross daily. But what does that mean in the midst of our creative practices as artists? Furthermore, the call to self denial is enforced by the stark call to death, the taking up of our cross, daily. We are called not merely to lay aside our wants and desires, but to actively follow Christ on his way to Jerusalem, to the final moments all the way to the cross. We are called to make this not a momentary obeisance to a general call to give up something every now and then, but to a full-fledged denial that takes us all the way to the grave. We are called to follow Christ, his obedience and his cross. We take up our cross by denying our very life, by denying ourselves all the way down as it were, through all the layers of ourselves, to the point of our own end.
It is not at first easy to see how creativity comes from such suffering, but I think if we look first to God and to his son, we will see His acts of creation and new creation. Christ died for us. Christ suffered death, suffered in obedience all the way to the grave, to the depths of hell. And yet precisely here, in the great mystery of the universe, God’s life is clearly made available. For we do not merely say “Christ has died,” but also “Christ is risen” and “Christ will come again.” In the moment when it seemed like God’s plan was totally destroyed, and broken, Christ rises. And in that moment we see, I think, something of God’s amazing creativity. We see it again in the life of the Christian, and maybe it is clearer here. We were dead in our transgressions, but Christ invited us to follow. We were buried with him in baptism, but then rose again in new life. Again, we are “new creatures” in the language of the New Testament. Where we once were dead, where we followed Christ to death, where we still follow Christ, we cling to the promise of this new life. In this suffering which Christ provided we see God’s plan to re-create us. From the seat of death, life rises, created and re-created by God.
So my hunch goes that if we are to be creative as Christians, in a way that is specifically Christian, it is here that Christ has taught us a new direction. In taking up the cross our lives begin to look Christ-like. Perhaps, if in conforming to the image of Christ in one area, who knows but that we may see the same creativity born in us in others?
But this is a creativity that demands denying ourselves. This is important, for otherwise this whole meditation would seem quite masochistic. I’m not advocating some sordid kind of art, nor am I saying that we should each aim for suffering in order to produce better art. Certainly not. Denying ourselves means we cannot be suffering for our own gain. What I am saying is that suffering is a gift, through which God gives us the grace to be conformed more closely to Christ’s image. And as we become conformed to that image, I think we begin to be united together as a body of believers, because by suffering we begin to see suffering, both in Christ and others, and because in suffering we see more clearly God’s power to sustain us, to give us life. And in that life, we see the gospel enacted, we see Christ risen. We see the power of God to create in us new life. I think these are the materials with which we have been blessed to create. A truly Christian art, I think, would consist precisely in materials that demonstrate the death, resurrection, and return of Christ.
I think most simply put, God has given our greatest materials, our greatest tools, precisely in the gifts of suffering that he has allotted to us. For me, that was precisely those deep struggles that ensued after my attackers left me. But for me it is also in that new sense of urgency which was born out of it, in that sense of seeing the encouragement that the saints around me needed, and for which God created in me something to give to them. And again it is here and now as I give that to you. But it is more than simply trying to portray the sufferings of the world, it is using for God’s kingdom the most precious things he has given me, life and life abundantly. Life that I nearly lost one night, that by all accounts I probably should have, but didn’t. Now, I can see what I couldn’t see before, that had I not taken those moments to write, to use my creativity precisely in the middle of that death, had I not followed the course of my thoughts through all the entangling claws of the death like depression that held me as I recovered, had I not born that cross, I would not have given anything like the same testimony either to my friends on a retreat or here and now. Nor without Christ could I have born that cross. I could not have carried it through; for, in reality, unless Christ had made his burden light, I might have given up far earlier.
Now, I’m not saying that all our works of art should portray our sufferings. What I’m suggesting is that we have to follow Christ. And that the more our lives resemble Christ, the more we will know what it really means to be creative. Or to put it another way, we have before us a new art, an art that is born precisely in the moments of our own death, and in those moments in which it was born, it will always bear a testimony of what Christ has done in our lives, it will always refer to the miraculous moments when Christ died, Christ arose, and when Christ will come again. That much will always be explicit in this new art, whether or not that art is semiotic, or representational. How? I’m not entirely sure. But I suspect it has to do with the very presence of new life which has been put in us. And that new life calls us every day to proclaim the gospel. I wonder if this story which is also our story, is like the medium of our art. In Colossians we read that in Christ “all things subsist.” All that is, all that will be, only exists because of Christ. How much more you and I, who have new life! So if new life is the medium of a new art, then we create with new creation itself.
So where does all this fit in the grand scheme of things? Where does my poem, or your painting and sculpting, or your dance, or your acting, or your music etc. fit in grand scheme of God’s creation and new creation? Where does it fit when we consider this whole grand narrative of God’s, from Genesis, to the Cross, to the Resurrection and finally Christ’s return and the fulfillment of the kingdom of Heaven?
First, what we create as artists always bears a relation to Genesis, to the creation of all that there is, since without that creation we would have nothing with which to create. So whatever we create bears a testimony to the creator himself, since it always uses materials that He has created. But this isn’t enough for our purposes today, since it seems to bear little relation to Christ, and therefore isn’t particularly Christian. Still it is worth noting that all human art bears something of this relation, since it always consists in that which is only possible because God created.
Second, what we create always bears a relation to Christ, since Christ is the second person of the trinity. What is its relation to the cross though? Here I think we must make a turn to art that is specifically Christian. I wonder if such an art might always have the stamp of its past, the marks of a use and a place to which it no longer fits. Or maybe it would have the marks of having been destroyed once, the marks of death. Or perhaps it would have been reclaimed from a life in which it was formerly contrary to God’s kingdom. And yet, it could not simply have these signs, it would have to have these signs in such a way, in such a presentation, in such a conversation, or maybe in such a community that this would point to Christ.
But as it points to Christ, this art would be a new art. I think it would always also have the marks of the resurrection, the marks of new life that had been given to it, the marks of love for which one would sacrifice to give it life. And again, this new life would be involved explicitly in communicating Christ, in demonstrating Christ, in showing Him. It would show the Christ of Easter morning arrayed in glory and splendid.
And if this art were always pointing toward this splendid morning, it would also point to Christ’s return. It would have all the tell tale signs of a hope of peace and harmony, of the hope of a good king, of the hope that all this sickness and death would one day be lifted away and the whole earth would be new. This new art would inspire hope for Christ’s return, would shape our longing and desires for the establishment of God’s amazing work of art, his kingdom.
So this new art would be like creating with new creation, and it would bear testimony to that new creation, to that death and resurrection and hope in which it is intimately involved. And as it presented that, glory of glories, I should think it would be finally the image of God, -since God did not merely create, he created creative creations. So too while we worked with this new medium of new life of new creation, while we cultivated all that richness that has been bestowed upon us, I should think God might use it just there to show others to himself, to grow the kingdom.
But what is this art I am now speaking of? This art which is made in the image of our Savior? I should think it would be you and me. It would be us made into art, God’s art. And in whatever we do, in whatever fruit we bear with this gift, I think we would see God’s kingdom grow. But if the relationship between us as Christians and our art is specifically that of fruit, and the relationship between us and our savior is that of the branch to the vine, should we wonder if the grapes we pick, and the wine we make doesn’t taste of Christ? No indeed, we should be remiss if it didn’t.
Finally, as I conclude, I want to turn more to the topic directly at hand. When we make art, are we making icons or idols? For me, the question laid before us is not limited to whether or not various works of art more closely resemble icons or idols, but specifically whether or not our lives are lived as idols or as icons. In making this move, in moving the locus of the question from the work to the subject, and to that certain subject which creates, I have not merely used an over-used allegory of the concept of icon and idol. In the Old Testament an oft repeated refrain speaks of those “who have eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear.” In psalm 135 it refers to idols, the works of our hands. But the psalm also says that those who make them will be like them. They are like idols whose composition had the forms of things that were altogether intelligent, feeling, sensing beings, but in fact were mere artifice. But in taking up my cross I see the beginning of a bit of help. I see the first things that can help me see. When I turn to Christ’s exhortation to take up my cross daily and deny myself I turn to it with a new found sense of sight. For when I have taken up the cross, when I have taken upon myself the suffering that has been allotted to me, and when I have received at the same time that light burden, that easy yoke, I see that the experiences of my life, my struggles and my suffering have given me new eyes to see the precious suffering of the saints. I see the great riches of God and his kingdom precisely in all those crosses, precisely in all those acts of self-denial, in all those times that I have been denied. I see it there in others, too. I am welcomed into a store house of the richest treasures of the most intimate interactions between God and man, precisely where the power of God has been made perfect in our weakness, precisely where we have died to ourselves, to our world and to sin, but have found life in Christ. And I see especially what I could never have seen before, all God’s afflicted, all who have suffered and were crushed. Finally, I see that only in Christ is any of this here, only in his death and resurrection. I must adore my Savior for taking up his cross, so that by his stripes we are healed. I must cling to my savior who was bruised for our iniquities. I love the one who invited me back to the family of God, and made every instance of our suffering brokenness into the site not only of great grace and healing, but of God’s immense and unfathomable creativity. In short, I now have eyes to see, have eyes to begin seeing, since I am still unable to see as I should, -nevertheless eyes to see the sufferings of myself and others, eyes to see the re-created, but most importantly eyes to see the love and greatness of God and his gospel. I have been given new eyes through God’s act of creation and re-creation. Therefore, I know what creativity is. I know the care and concern behind it. I know if only in part how great God is. So as I create now, I create from the site of this re-creation, and I see the need to re-create from this material, this falling apart, this suffering, this encouragement that starts from the most discouraged and most torn and weary that I can think or see.
I want acknowledge that much creativity is born in the simply enjoyable things of this life. And yet, I cannot help but think that all those are acts of the grace of God. And in that grace I am still forced to acknowledge Christ and the cross. Even the blessings of my overly easy life become the site of re-creativity because they are only possible because of this cross. In making art, I realize that all, truly all, is dependent upon my taking up of the cross, for all the good that we have comes only from God, comes only from this great God who condescended to rescue me, even me when I lay bloody on the side of street one evening broken and confused. All that I can do from that point onward is pick up my cross again and again, and let God transform the suffering and death of that cross into the life that he has promised in Christ.
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