Sunday, April 13, 2008

Don't Know Much About...

Art.  But that won't stop me from saying something about it anyway.

It seems as though a lot of evangelicals are thinking more about art.  This is probably mostly due to the great work of Francis Schaeffer, and others who took up his mantle in dealing with culture.  It also seems as though a lot of evangelicals, especially the highly-learned, educated, and respectable ones, have come to a conclusion about Christian art that it should all reflect a particular aspect of God's character.  I have heard them advocate that all art should reflect God's creation week, since our human creation is a reflection of God's creative ability.  I have also heard that all art should reflect a Trinitarian inter-relationship, so all good art is relational art, or dealing with issues between people.

What seems to flow from these particular opinions is more of a stifling of creative ability then an outpouring of such.  I can think of many stories that follow the theme of the creation week (rising action, climax, falling action), but aren't very edifying or uplifting stories.  I can think of lots of movies about relationships between people (scads of them, in fact) that lie more than tell the truth about human character.

What seems to be the best dividing line between "good" stories/art and "bad" is the story that it tells.  The best stories present true reality.  How do we know what that is?  It is defined in the pages of the Bible, which would ultimately be a reflection of all of God's character.  How do we know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are?  We should look to the pages of Scripture and let that define it for us.  


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