Art is Faith: Hopeful, and Fragile.

One of the things I love most about the creative world (arts, literature, music, all these categories that overlap and interplay) is the way that, as people give themselves to art, there’s this beautiful interplay of the sacred and the secular. Of course, NT Wright would say that there is no such thing as secular anymore; that after the death and resurrection of Christ all things are reclaimed and made sacred. 

That may be true theologically, but in practice we know the difference. Maybe. Or maybe not. Because I think, particularly in the arts, the draw and the impulse is always to something transcendent. It is to create; it is to take on the task that God names himself with: Creator. Sometimes this takes the form of the offensive. Sometimes it takes the form of the mysterious. Sometimes it takes the form of tear-inducing beauty—or heart-wrenching brokenness. The thing about art, though, is that it is always trying to reach towards some sort of Truth. It is always trying to be more than it is. Art has a soul. Art has a piece of the eternal. Art transforms, even as it offends. 

Those emotional and spiritual places that art explores are actually places we see Jesus explore in the gospels. He tells offensive stories, like when a Samaritan is the hero. This story is so intentionally culturally offensive. It is combative. It is not a surprise that the Pharisees charged Jesus with blasphemy. The parables were deeply mysterious; Christ said he taught that way because people weren’t ready to see. They weren’t ready to hear. And in the same way I think sometimes art hits us in a visceral and subconscious place that maybe heals and maybe transforms, but we can’t handle consciously. We don’t have eyes to see, yet, the truth of our brokenness or bondage or frustration. Jesus weeps along with a grieving family when Lazarus dies—heart-wrenching brokenness—and then in a moment of beauty and power he commands death to heel. Jesus turned water to wine so the party didn’t end (because his mom asked him to, even though she knew it wasn’t “his time”), he aggressively forgave sin and violation, he consorted with the dregs of society, and he indulged in anger and violence towards those that would warp and control truth to their benefit.

Art is never done. There’s always more. There’s another story, picture, interpretation. Art is forever seeking. Faith, I think, is the same. It is never complete. It is never safe. It is always nested in this place of incredible hope and overwhelming fragility. I don’t think that’s an accident, and when faith moves from wonder to certainty, I think we ought to grieve the size of that god and the death of his art.

Art can get too esoteric for me at times. It can get too inaccessible. As I wrestle with what to do with contemporary poetry or conceptual visual arts, though, I'm challenged to find a way to receive it. Because maybe sometimes that’s what we need—just like we need, to really live in a place of faith, a Bible that’s at one time pacifist and at one time genocidal; it is poetry and symbolism and history and mystery. Perhaps, just as we encounter truth through art, we encounter truth through Scripture as we are offended by it, as we are challenged by it, and as we have to try to reconcile it to itself, to our experiences, and to our understanding of God. And perhaps, as weird as it seems, the world needs a Church that’s imperfect. That’s inefficient and broken and rampant with insecurity and misunderstanding. A Church that in the midst of its flaws suggests that there is process, and that is reason enough to have hope.