An Honest Approach to the Arts

RISK LA Graffiti Art by anarchosyn

Being creative is a risky business. It leaves you exposed, vulnerable, open to misunderstanding, scorn, ridicule. You cannot be honest in your art without revealing something of yourself; shy away from that and your creative endeavours are flat, lifeless, insipid. To be a Christian in the arts is to have the courage to be honest.

All too often we ring-fence ‘Christian’ art or writing into what is acceptable, what lies within our comfort zones, what we perceive as Christian standards, but these are often just our cultural viewpoints. And yet our faith should free us to fully express who God has made us to be, to have an understanding of the human nature, to be able to communicate in word and pictures in ways that connects and talks to people. We shouldn’t expect Christian artists to box themselves into art forms that are Christian themed. That would be like telling a businessman to only sell products that reflected the glory of God.  No, being a Christian in the arts is about using the gifts God has given you to produce works of outstanding quality. Something that makes people stop and take notice.  It shows the world something through your eyes, and if you are being true to who God has made you, whatever the subject or theme, something of him.

A Christian in the arts is also at the forefront of shaping and transforming culture. Novels, art, poems all help reflect to us who we are, where we have come from, what we think about ourselves. It is one of the most powerful means of communicating that God has given us. And we must enter into that arena with pure motives. If we know deep within ourselves that we have been shaped to write, to paint, to create, we should seek to use that and enter the world of the creative. If we enter this world with motives of winning people to Christ as our primary agenda then we are being false to who we are. Our place is to know ourselves enough to pull out what God has placed there and to enter a world bringing our values, to serve, to affect the people around us both in our art and how we behave. 

Two years ago I started a literary magazine called The View From Here. I started it because I realised who I was, what God had made me to do both as a writer and as a leader. To date we have nearly 20 people on the team from across the world. It is thriving, growing and releasing people into their gifting.  These people are not all Christians. There is no hidden agenda to win people. It is not a Christian magazine. In applying godly leadership though, it is changing the culture, it is affecting the people working on it and in that it grows the kingdom of God. Time and again I hear stories of people that we have affected, stories of people not used to being released into who they are. How powerful is it to release people into their gifting both Christians and non believers? To provide them with an environment to grow, to flourish, to serve and help them become all that God has made them to be? It transforms lives and allows them to be creative. And in being creative people come out of themselves to find out who they truly are. 

So, if we are to engage with the arts then we must throw off our narrow concepts of why we should do this and what it should look like. Let God deal with the why – our role is to be honest about who he has made us and to have the faith that when things are hard, when we are misunderstood, when obstacles come before us, that we draw on that faith and our art is authentic, relevant and culture changing.

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