The Dawn Treader

I have always struggled with what to make of art.  First, I am not very artsy.  I like music.  I can draw a decent picture.  I have dabbled in poetry.  But I would hardly call myself an artist in any meaningful way.  Second, art seems so subjective to me.  I am a logical kind of thinker.  Left brained.  Analytical.  Procedural.  I like objective truth.  Art doesn't seem to fill this category.  Third, Art seems so out there -- particularly modern art.  Edgey.  Angry.  Anti-establishment.  Not  my cup of tea.

As it turns out, however, I have very artsy children.  They play the piano.  They paint and sketch with amazing skill.  One composes music.  One writes fiction.  One listens to classical music.  I have decided to make my peace with the arts and embrace them.

I think there are several points to make about art.

One, art is important because God places value on it.  Clearly the eternal values of beauty, goodness and truth are self-evident in this world.  God could have created a monochrome world.  He didn't.  He gave us a world exploding in color.  He could have created very simple life forms.  He gave us complex, interesting and beautiful (for the most part) life forms on this earth (note: I still find the mole an extraordinarily ugly animal, but that is for another post).   In Exodus, we see Bezalel commissioned to make articles for the tabernacle because of his artistic craftsmanship.  The Lord tells Moses to create beautiful garments for the priests for the glory of God.  Clearly God is an artist and we bear that in the imago dei.

Two, art influences thinking.  Our postmodern culture is especially influenced by images.  Art, music and film play a huge part in shaping beliefs and thinking and worldviews.  We cannot ignore the arts.  They are too influential.

Three, art reflects the thinking of the culture.  Francis Schaeffer does an excellent job of tracing thought in Western Civilization as expressed in art in his classic .  He writes,

"The philosophers from Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard onward, having lost their hope of a unity of knowledge and a unity of life, presented a fragmented concept of reality; then the artists painted that way.  It was the artists, however, who first understood that the end of this view was the absurdity of all things."
How Should We Then Live?, p.190

I have always wondered why some modern art appeared so absurd.  It is because of a worldview that leads to absurdity.  Chuck Colson adds this about the prophetic role of artists in modern society.

"Yet both the prophetic functions - the vision of the ideal and the denunciation of the real - were united by a common theme: hostility toward the real world.  And in the end that hostility became the dominant theme as both approaches collapsed into protest, criticism and attacks on established morality and structures."
How Now Shall We Live?, p.447

Modern art has become anti-art.

So how should Christians engage the world of art?

First, we ought to drive out bad art with good art.  As C.S. Lewis said, "if you do not read god books, you will read bad ones."  Since human beings are going to create culture ... for good or bad ... let's unleash good art on the world and drive out the bad.  Let's work toward restoring art that is excellent in an aesthetic sense and a moral sense.

Second, we ought to train our children in how to think about art and judge it.  The Lord Jesus commands us to exercise righteous judgment.  We cannot simply dismiss art or uncritically accept it.  T.M. Moore, in Redeeming Pop Culture, reminds us that we are to evaluate art in terms of beauty, goodness and truth.  Beauty relates to the aesthetic quality of the work.  Of what aesthetic quality or character is this art?  Is it truly beautiful?  Is it ugly?  Goodness relates to the question of ends; for what purpose was this art created?  Does it achieve its end?  In what ways is that end consistent with kingdom purposes of God?  Truth relates to the question of morality and the message or meaning of the art.  Does it express truth?  Does it do violence to truth?  How are we to interpret the meaning or message of this form?  How are we to respond?

Third, we are to judge works of art ... not souls.  We are to cultivate discernment without making eternal pronouncements about the souls of those who create works of art.  Those who create offensive art are not the enemy ... they are captives of the enemy.

Obviously, much, much more can be said (and has been said by others smarter than me).  My initial reaction to the Chocolate Jesus is to judge it as an attempt to make a message out of the medium.  What is the purpose of making a statue of chocolate?  Is this purpose consistent with kingdom purposes or not?  Some commenters thought it was an expression about the commercialization of Easter.  I would have expected a bunny head on the statue if that were the case.  Does the decision to show a naked Jesus portray some important truth?  Most sculptures and paintings portray Jesus with a loin cloth ... probably not out of accuracy, but out of modesty.  This sculptor surely knew that and chose to eschew the loincloth and show genitals on Jesus.  Why?  What is the message?  It is clear that this chocolate sculpture is not real art.  It is a stunt.  Rather than getting all huffy about it, I suggest that we restore sensibility to the art world by encouraging artists who produce fine quality sculptures.  Drive out the bad art with good art.

That is the way I see it.