Faith-Art Talk

With our Sunday evening youth "group" (I use the term lightly because lately we've primarily been meeting with only one young woman) we've launched a season of discussion about faith and arts. I thought of this not only because it's a topic near and dear to my heart, one I've spent a lot of time thinking about in the past twenty years, but because so many of the youth in our particular church seem gifted in and committed to the arts. We have singers, visual artists, dramatists, and writers, good ones. And yet I sense they don't always know the best way to connect their daily lives of faith with what they're doing as artists, or see how the two interconnect.

We're going to be looking at various excerpts and chapters from some books on how faith informs, inspires, and encourages art (and vice versa). This week we're reading a letter to young artists by Calvin Seerveld, a reformed thinker who works at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. He penned this letter in November 2001 for inclusion in Michael Card's excellent book on faith and art: Scribbling in the Sand.

Seerveld has a creative and not always easy way of writing, but there is much to be gleaned from his work. I thought I would jot a few of the insights that struck me most deeply as I read a few times through his letter. I'm paraphrasing and consolidating a number of his points.

1) The biblical injunction to "love our neighbors as ourselves" is for everyone. But when you hear that word as a Christian and an artist, it becomes "a guideline for blessing" particularly because "it extricates you from the moil of serving yourself..." Seerveld goes on to say that it also frees you from feeling like you have to jump into the midst of whatever art is elite, popular or current.

2) When we make our art, whatever kind of art that is, we should craft it first and foremost before God. He's our primary audience. "...craft it as psalm before the face and ear of the Lord and let your neighbor listen in."

I like that he uses the word "neighbor" here instead of the more common term audience. It's true that someone who is part of an audience is a listener (hence the connection to "aud" or "audio") but it's freeing and humbling to remember than anyone we hope to communicate with, touch, bless, or challenge through our art is a fellow member of the human race, a neighbor whom we are enjoined to love as we love ourselves.

3) Art is for celebration AND for lament. "...make merry before the Lord God, God's people, and even one's antagonists..." (THERE'S an interesting idea!) but "Also be as free as the biblical psalmists to cry out to God from the pits of despair" and on behalf of others and their despair.

He even suggests that churches, which move heavily in the realms of praise, might consider moving more into the realms of lament. We need to learn how to "weep with those who are weeping" and that means really trying to understand the depth of human need and sadness especially as we craft "elegies, memorials and sad songs that are authentic..."

Seeveld seems to classify almost every work of art made authentically from the depths of a believing heart as a "psalm" in a general sense. But he doesn't think these psalms are made or should be made only for the believing community. He encourages young artists to "make these psalms for settings outside the worshiping church door..."

4) Consider that not every person has been equally gifted with the ability to imagine or to articulate the joys and blessings that they see, hear and touch. For some people, the imagination is "underdeveloped." As a "professional imaginator" you can help your neighbor in need of such imaginative help. You've been called "to make such treasures known to those who walk past such creaturely blessings by fashioning a necklace of words...or the jewel of a melody..."

Later he suggests that people in our culture often experience "artistic alienation or displacement..." and that we need to "give the neighbors what they imaginatively need, not just what they want..." I find that perceptive, especially when we consider that sin (and just plain caught up-ness in the frantic pace of information and culture, be it good or bad) often corrupts our "wants" or makes us think we want things we really don't, or makes it hard for us to discern between needs and wants.

5) A Christian artist must not ignore the reality of sin. That would be hypocritical. But our treatment of evil within our art must not ever be "self-righteous" or filled with an "angry coldness." Our awareness of our own struggles with sin and of the "waste that sin brings into God's good world" should invest our works with an authentic sadness, not coldness.

6) If art is what we choose to do, then we should seek training to become skilled. Faithfulness (even when art is only shared with a small number) is more important than seeking after stardom. "The key thing is to be a reliable artist in the imaginative task you perform...so the fruit of our imaginative hands can be wholesome food for those who receive it." He encourages young artists to find talented mentors they can trust, and to "become a craftsmith worthy of hire."

7) Artists do have a redemptive task. It not necessarily to convert people or to do apologetics (though I would argue that artistic gifts and approaches can be brought to bear on the gifts of evangelism and apologetics). "A Christian artist simply needs to give away your imaginative insights to whoever crosses your path, and the Holy Spirit will take it from there."

8) You will know you have been a faithful trustee of your imaginative gift when you see disbelievers experiencing something deeper, perhaps even something unexpected, in your work. That might be a sense of "wrestling with God," a sense that your "trusting in God...(is) winsome" or that the celebration of passionate faithfulness that permeates your song (or characters, etc.) "sounds unusual" given the way our world usually looks at or celebrates love.

We can help people persevere, we can "dispense a simple joy and peace that surpasses understanding" through our art.

9) Artists need to offer hope. We ought "to be earthy with our redemptive cheer..." to bring hope to the dispirited.

10) The Holy Spirit is the artist's "true source (of) wisdom." We need the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit to discern our calling, and our place in society. That may mean (and often has to mean, given our culture) that we need to work with integrity at other work as well as our art, in order to put bread on the table. If I'm reading Seerveld rightly here, he prefers that artists do that than to giving in to art-making that is formulaic or overly commercial.

11) Good art is "a worthy living sacrifice of obedience in response to Christ's command" to follow him.

12) Guard against loneliness and isolation. Artists (like all human beings and all Christians) need community. When you're tempted to feel you're "the only displaced artist left faithful to the Lord" (a la the prophet Elijah) remember your heritage, both the living, local expression of your heritage (your church community) and the huge line of saints who have gone before, including many who exercised artistic gifts. Seerveld reminds us artistic saints have existed since Adam first sang his poem for Eve before the fall!

13) Find a specific example "of Christian artistry in history" and seep yourself in it. Love it, learn from it, and find ways to add to it or extend it through your own "new" work. Then freely give it away.

I call that connection with the art that comes before us a long, ongoing conversation or dance. And it's great joy to join it!

********
Does any of this ring particularly true or potent for you? How do you wrestle (or have you wrestled) with any of these insights in your artistic life?