I have worshipped God in the AGO
I have worshipped God while visiting the Louvre in Paris, the Tate in London, and the AGO in Toronto.
This is how I began my blog, “A Word from Steve”, last week. I mentioned that our Creator God loves His children to create. God stood back each day of creation, paused and mentioned it was “good”.
Art does this for humanity. Art can cause us to pause and spend a moment identifying the “good”. Pausing a moment and possibly catching ourselves in a positive place of worship.
As an artist I have thought about this often. Why do I love to paint? Why do I create? My hope is my art reflects (often poorly) the beauty God has created.
Last week I mentioned that, “art can elicit hope”. Take a peek here to read my brief argument from last week.
Today I want to expand on this by suggesting that
- Art can challenge ideas
- Art conveys personal experiences
- Art can heal
- Art can transform
1. Art can challenge ideas
Challenging ideas that society says is the truth, the norm, or politically correct. Art can poke holes, pose questions, and make light of common misconceptions held dear in our culture. Images can speak volumes.
Art can serve like a drip of water that drips and slowly wears away the edges of an idea or exposes the untruth beneath. The artist who happens to be a follower of Christ desires to articulate the world the way God sees it. Speaking truth into ideas about justice, pain, compassion, and many other topics, art can often say things not easily said out loud, revealing the truth of things without using words. Words often muddle up any chance of inquiring or seeing things in a different light. When people use words we often end up in a debate or even worse, conflict. Art causes you to pause in your own thoughts and possibly question society’s or your own perceptions of a thing.
2. Art conveys personal experiences
Art conveys personal experience into a very powerful language. Art can, in fact, elicit strong reactions or help you recollect forgotten memories.
Words can be quickly lost. Try to remember what the preacher said. Or your spouse, boss, parent, sister, or friend. A work of art can memorialize a moment. You view the piece, pause, and ponder, and the piece memorializes the moment with language that allows you to go back to the piece again and again, and allow it to continue to speak in a familiar way. Occasionally it says something different to you, largely because you’re experiencing different circumstances each time you visit the art piece.
I can see Rembrandt’s “Prodigal Son” painting over and over again, experiencing it differently each time, namely due to my current life experience. Art is powerful.
I believe good art should be understood as a part of God’s “common grace”. We see God’s common grace all around us. Common grace can even be implicitly seen in the works of artists hostile to the Christian faith. I’ve seen it. The artistic unwittingly point to a good God.
3. Art can heal
It elicits memories and gives occasion for pause and re-thinking of pain. Art therapy is extensively used to help heal people.
4. Art can transform
The process of creation often feels like a metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. There are often many false starts. My garbage pail beside my easel gives testament to this truth. But then your brush lifts off the paper and you see it — pure inspiration. I love those moments. It’s like you’ve exploded from the cocoon and the transformation results in something beautiful, something good.
Christian artist Makoto Fujima wrote, “Art is an inherently hopeful act; an act that echoes the creativity of the Creator”.
And so, my hope is our churches will release our artists: visual, musical, dance, multimedia, film, craft, sculptors, and others, to show us how to more fully worship our Creator God.
Join me in celebrating the arts and the many talented artists who are part of our church families. They are teaching, leading missional communities, mowing the church lawn, caring for the book-keeping, serving on leadership boards. Imagine if they were valued and released to use their artistic calling to bless our faith community and the many neighbours in our towns and cities. I believe life would be sweeter, more beautiful, joyful, and we might find the mission would be advanced. Please consider releasing artists in your church.