on conclusions…
By now you may have seen on Twitter or Facebook that I gave my thesis defense this afternoon. I’m going to hold off posting the Artist as Prophet section until I’ve gotten some more feedback from some people who are reading it, but I’ll go ahead and post my conclusions here for you to hopefully enjoy…
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Since I started writing this thesis, it has taken me places spiritually and artistically I never thought it would. I thought I set out to write a compartmentalized theology of justice for Christian artists. I thought of this as I had every other persuasive essay or blog post I have ever written. I ended up with a personal statement of faith, one rooted in justice and a passion for the expression of that faith through art. This is my personal theology. I have never wrestled so long and hard with questions about my faith and my art as I have during the course of writing this document. The idea of giving form to the loose, post-modern, metaphysical, a-systematic theology I have operated under in the last five years scared me.
Basing faith in flowery language and vague imagery temps us because it is easy. Like a seedpod blowing in the breeze we can just go wherever the wind takes us. If it changes direction, if our faith community changes direction, we just go along with the flow. But this leads to tragically shallow faith. Yes it’s easy to talk about how all we need is Christ’s love or God’s grace or boil things down to the three or five most important bullet points of our faith to remember and quote, but at best it is simple and at worst it leads to bad theology! Christianity is really about a relationship, not a system. Systematic theologies, catechisms, even some tracts do contain Truth in them and often are supported by the Bible, but they also are not the complete picture. When we boil faith down to a pocket sized formula it is easy to remember and protect, but it loses it’s meaning. We can have faith without understanding.
We have a God and a Savior who want desperately to be in relationship with us. Yet here we sit as Christians fighting with people outside of the church and even with each other about who is “right.” Fighting about what kind of art is “Christian” and good. About what rules our artists have to follow to be “safe.” We are so good at setting up walls and hurling stones. We blast each other on TV, we do it on the Internet, we do it in our churches and our small groups. We’ve grown so concerned with being right we have truth but not meaning. Verses become weapons for assailing the reason and logic of our enemies. We march proudly from victory to victory leaving a path of destruction in our wake. And we can do it, we can “win” all of the battles along the way. But one day we will look back and realize they were all Pyrrhic victories that left us alone in a fortress of solitude. We have forgotten the heart of our gospel is a life lived in relationship as an example of the Kingdom. Some people are called to justice work in Africa or SE Asia or in prisons or homeless shelters. But many more are called to do justice in a suburb of Boise, in a neighborhood north of Seattle, in a coffee shop in DC, in a pub in Atlanta, in a hair salon in Milwaukee, and so on. Justice begins where our life and the Kingdom of God intersect.
I am not an art scholar, nor am I a theologian. I am a writer and photographer and these things have rung true for me as I have sought to create the best art I can. To be the artist God created me to be. Whether or not you identify yourself as an artist, I hope you take it as encouragement to begin exploring the intersection of justice and art in your life. Spend time with people who are different from you. Spend time with people who are overlooked and disenfranchised. Maybe this means taking a trip to Africa. Maybe it means spending time at a local food bank or homeless shelter. Maybe it means showing your art at a new venue or to a new audience. Listen and look for what God is teaching you so you can in turn give voice to his tugging on your heart.
As I close this paper I want to leave you with a commission. In his book Crow and Weasel author Barry Lopez writes, “Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.” This is our calling as artists and Christians: To tell stories with our art that reflect a justice-centered vision of the Kingdom of God.
