Art in Christian Life (1)

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1.27

Very good, indeed
Here in our home state, a company called Green Mountain Drone provides overhead shots of the Vermont countryside, from which Vermont PBS culls snippets, to fill part of the gap between the end of one program and the beginning of the next. Those brief but glorious drone shots underscore the distinctly Vermont texture of our public television stations.

One of my favorite of their videos features vistas of two of Vermont’s many state parks, one of which is just a few minutes from our home (click here to watch, but promise you’ll watch the whole video, and on full screen). The rag-time piano in the background provides a jaunty, fun mood for enjoying some of the everyday beauty of Vermont.

Watch Green Mountain Drone videos, and you’ll understand why so many people flock to Vermont in the fall. They come for the beauty. They want to stand on Mount Mansfield or by Lake Champlain, or wander one of the state’s many trails or preserves, and take in the color, textures, shapes and slopes, ins and outs, flora and fauna of what is some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. If you can’t make it to Vermont in the fall, ShipFoliage.com will sell you a box of fall leaves via the Internet.

Fall tourism is big business in Vermont, because people know beauty when they see it. The beauty of Vermont is so alluring, that folks will pay premium prices to enjoy it, be rejuvenated by it, or just stand there and watch, their eyes filling with tears and their minds with wonder.

You begin to get a sense, gazing on such beauty, of what God must have felt at the end of the creation week, when He pronounced the work of His hands, “Very good!”

Experiencing such beauty reminds us why art is so important to Christian life.

Art, you say?
Art is not a subject that occupies the time of many of us, at least, not for very long. Most of us are not habitués of the local art museum; we probably don’t own a subscription to the symphony; we haven’t studied a painting or sculpture recently, and we’d be hard pressed to name a favorite poet. Art’s OK for those who are into that kind of thing. But most of us are not.

The role of the arts in our society has been usurped by pop culture in all its many and varied forms – most of them noisy, passive, attention-deadening, frivolous, and merely entertaining. A good deal of serious art is still available – paintings, sculptures, symphonic music, poetry, and the like – but it’s just not the sort of thing with which we occupy our minds.

But every human being possesses an aesthetic sense and a creative bent; we like pretty things, and we like to express ourselves in pleasing ways – even if they’re only pleasing to us. We can’t get away from the artistic aspect of human nature.

It makes sense, therefore, that we should try to understand why we are the way we are, and what place the arts might have in our lives.

Creators all
God is the Supreme Creator, the Great Artist, Who brought into being out of nothing a creation of such vastness, wonder, beauty, diversity, order, color, sound, dimension, scope, and harmony that He could confidently pronounce Himself pleased with what He had made. The creation of God was good in His eyes; it pleased God, reflected His own character, refracted His being, and served the purposes for which He created it.

Then God made human beings in His own image and after His own likeness. That being so, we must be in some sense creators as well, as Paul Johnson argued in his book, Creators. Further, and unlike animals, humans can appreciate and celebrate the goodness of creation, and of the creative work of others.

God has endowed us with a spark of divinity. And the potential of that divine spark to ignite in us the warmth of rapture, vision, and mind-boggling delight is tapped, in part, through the experience of beauty.

In the Scriptures, as soon as human beings began to fill the earth and spread out over its surface, they engaged in artistic expression of various kinds. They created musical instruments, wrote poems and songs, drew and painted, and began making everyday items adorned with lines and patterns and colors, which have no useful purpose except to satisfy man’s artistic urge. Made in God’s image, even those who reject Him and His Law cannot help expressing their likeness to Him – and need of Him – through art.

God made human beings to be creators, as He is our great Creator; we are inescapably artists all. Thus the arts in all their forms are an integral aspect of our humanity. To ignore or to deny them is to frustrate our development as people made to reflect the very essence, purpose, and character of God in the world. We gasp and weep with joy to observe a magnificent landscape or the brilliant colors of fall, and this is but a reminder that something in our being hungers for the nourishment only art can provide.

For reflection
1.  How would you define beauty? What makes something beautiful? Do you agree that human beings require experiences of beauty? Explain.

2.  What role have the arts had in your walk with Christ? Do you think that more involvement with various art forms could contribute to your spiritual growth? Why or why not?

3.  What opportunities will you have today to observe something beautiful, something that gives you that sense of the goodness of God that yet remains in His world? How will you make the most of this opportunity for your walk with the Lord?

Next steps – Conversation: Where do your Christian friends turn to experience beauty? Ask a few of them.

T. M. Moore

This week’s series will be available in a free PDF download, suitable for personal or group use, this coming Sunday.

Bring some new experiences of art into your walk with the Lord. Order a copy of the book, Fault Lines, and discover the rhythms, images, and music of contemporary poetry. Order The Ailbe Psalter, and begin singing the psalms using familiar hymn tunes. Sign-up to receive our twice-weekly teaching letter, Crosfigell, and discover some of the beautiful writings of our Celtic Christian forebears (use the pop-up at the website to add Crosfigell to your subscriptions).

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.