There is a Reason Why is Christian Art is So Terrible

Christian tends to fail because it's rarely even art.  Instead, we've dressed up our convictions as art forms so that our music is little more than rhyming sermons, and our films are just scripted church services.

(Of course, the problem isn't just a Christian one.  How many popular songs are examples of good art?  The pop/dance numbers I hear people listen to certainly don't impress the artistic side of my brain, and neither do the popular films of the day, which happen to be slasher films or political documentaries.  Maybe art is dead everywhere.  I digress.)

If a Christian song accomplishes little more than a sermon or journal article, then we aren't making use of the medium of music very well.  Consider Handle's 'Halleluja Chorus' that we hear every Easter; the lyrics are pretty simple, but that's not what we remember about the tune.  Instead, it's the way the very music (even when it's just played on instruments) seems to symbolize victory and redemption.  We revel in the excitement of that music and in the knowledge that the feeling of overcoming is one that we have every right to claim.

Consider paintings.  In Michelangelo's amazing work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, we see the Final Judgement displayed in a way that could never be rendered in words.  Bartholomew is in one corner holding up the skin that was (probably) beaten off of him in his trials as a testimony  to his Christian service.  That one tiny section of the painting is powerful, and couldn't be explained easily in words.  But seeing him holding his own skin just for a moment is powerful.  (After staring at the ceiling for nearly an hour, I personally felt like I had only taken in a tiny part of it.)

Today's Christian "artists" often seek to explain everything in great, verbal detail, but that leaves an empty canvas.

Explore a medieval cathedral and you'll see what I mean.  The building is designed to gear our minds toward meditation and that's why so many non-religious people over the years have found themselves unable to raise their voice while visiting an old church; there's just something about the design that makes you want to think about Higher Things and be respectful.  The building, itself, causes you to consider that there's something greater than yourself that deserves respect.  (This is much more effective than just telling people to be quiet, and serves a better purpose, too.)

Try explaining the concept of redemption to a person.  It's not easy.  But I've seen a fresco painted on an old church wall that depicted Redemption without words.  In the first panel Adam and Eve were in the garden as God is finishing creating the universe.  Next, the garden is shown to be withering as Adam and Eve are forced out.  In the third section, people are shown working in fields as Christ's birth and death are shown.  Finally, Christ is shown in Heaven taking people to a new Earth that looks the way Eden did in the first section.  The story of God redeeming His creation couldn't be more clear and it could be taught to a child in this way.

Of course, here I am trying to explain that painting in words and I can tell that it's not having the same effect as seeing it - there I go proving my point.  It's frustrating to try and explain these lofty concepts, but maybe the Lord gave us art so that we could find other ways to express these things.

Extreme Examples Aren't Helpful

You say Westboro, I say bin Laden
You say Crusaders, I say Joe Stalin
Westboro! bin Laden!
Crusaders! Joe Stalin!
Let's call the whole thing off!


Well, that was weird ...

Have you noticed how many arguments between people of different religious groups, or between religious and non-religious people end up reduced to extreme name-calling? And by extreme name-calling, I mean trying to associate the other side with the absolute worst possible examples from human history you can think of.  The thought process seems to be:

You know who else believed like you? [Insert shocking person or group here]! That's who! 

You know who else would have pointed out any grammatical errors in this post in the comment section? That's right ...

The worst part of this sort of argumentation is that the examples usually are extreme ... and we know it! It's one of the most dishonest ways people argue on the internet.

Take excerpts from our awkward little lyric at the beginning of the post, for example.  Does anyone out there really think that Phelps and Westboro Baptist ... *cough* ... "Church" represent normal Christian thought and action? Does anyone really think that they are typical of Christianity's legacy around the globe? What about Joseph Stalin? Does anyone out there really think that all atheists are merely genocidal maniacs who don't yet have the power to expose themselves for what they really are? Does anyone really want to draw a logical chain for us between not believing in God and killing 30 million people?

Reducing belief in a supernatural beings to protesting homosexual funerals, blowing up buildings, or burning the books of other religious groups is silly.  Similarly, saying that people who don't believe in a a supernatural being de facto don't have morals or ethics, or don't care about their fellow human beings is just as silly.

PICTURED:  Christopher Hitchens, best known for beating up little old ladies and stealing their purses because there was no god to stop him.

A mature discussion of competing ideas requires taking the ideas seriously.  That doesn't mean agreeing with them, nor does it even mean conceding that they might be true.  I don't live my life as if God might not exist, and don't expect you to live your life as if He might if you don't believe in Him.

What taking ideas seriously does mean is not reducing them to caricatures, not attacking them ad hominem (e.g. coming up with a list of total jerk-wads who might have believed similar things), AND respecting those who hold competing ideas enough to actually find out what they believe, rather than assuming they believe what that crazy nut job extreme example believes/believed.  

Osama bin Laden believed the world was round, too.  Need I say more?

Oh, and if you don't agree with me about this, well, you know exactly who you're being like ...

The Limits of "God Made Me This Way"

So admittedly this post has a limited audience.  Some of you will say, "Yeah, the limit to 'God made me this way' is that there's no god!" Well, alright, then.  But for those of you who in some way credit (blame?) God for how you ended up, I wanted to share a point of concern.

My daughter absolutely loves Veggie Tales.  (No, that's not the point of concern, but ask me about Blue Clues later ...)  One of the themes running through this series of cartoons in which talking vegetables teach Christian values (no, talking vegetables aren't the point of concern, either) is that God makes each of us special.  Hey, I like that.  I want my daughter not only feeling like she's worth something, but tying that worth to her understanding of herself as God's creation -- ultimately, as His image-bearer.  I like my daughter acknowledging that God made her, that He did a good job during the process, and that she has His love and care as her Creator.

Yes, I know we don't have arms or legs.  It's cool.  God made us this way.

But the truth is that there are also things about my daughter that I don't want her to be particularly proud of, or to accept as part of how God made her.  Children aren't angels (despite the awkward ceramics you've seen in Christian bookstores).  She can be disobedient.  She can be selfish.  She can have a vast array of nasty attitudes.  And God didn't make her that way.

Scripture teaches that none of us are exactly what God intended us to be.  I've written about what it means to be human in another entry on this blog.  The reality is that we are flawed and broken versions of the masterpieces God intended us to be -- not completely flawed and broken, and certainly not irreversibly so, but flawed and broken nonetheless.

Except for Sally, who had the terrible misfortune of being created during God's brief cubist phase.

What all this means is that there will be things about us -- character flaws, areas of sin in which we struggle, natural (for even our very nature is flawed and broken now) urges and desires we wrestle with -- that we cannot accept and simply say, "God made me this way."  In fact, it is horrific slander, even blasphemy, to do so!

We must be willing to distinguish between the image of God we bear and the cracks that mar it.  We must be willing to fight hard against the cracks, knowing that we cannot possibly make the necessary repairs, but that repairs are actively underway in those who have trusted Jesus and received His Spirit.  

And the next time someone says, "Well, God made me this way," ask them (politely!), "How do you know that?" 

A Radical View of Marriage (That I Think Would Help the Church)

I like being married, but there is something about the whole institution that I think needs to change.  And I think the church would benefit from it:

I think it's time we ask the government to get out of the way.  (You knew I was going to say that.  That's my answer to everything.  But hear me out.)

When I got married I was baffled by the application for a marriage license.  Why did the state of Texas (a place I truly love) want to tell me if I was going to be married?  Why did I need the permission of lawmakers?  I wasn't applying for a government job, I was promising myself to a woman.

In my opinion, marriage is about the vows I took with my wife before our community.  The government was not involved.

In the old Roman days, marriage was a state affair.  And, probably, for good reason.  A household was run like a business and a wife was not just a life partner, she was a business partner/employee of the estate.  Romance was not unheard of, but neither were marriages of convenience.  (Which is why brothels were considered acceptable - men who married for money didn't always have passionate marriages.  I pity them.)

But those days are over.  My wife doesn't need a state document to be my wife.  But that's not all.  As I'm sure everyone is aware, state governments are changing how they view marriage.  Suddenly, this sacred institution is becoming a government-regulated status and we are entering into marriages that are defined by the state, not by us.  No matter how you feel about marriage, I don't think it makes sense for a government to decide what a marriage is when marriage is a cultural/religious construct to us.

I'd be happy to see the government ignore marriage, completely.  Churches could abide by their own community standards when marrying couples.  Does this mean that the church next-door might adhere to a definition of marriage that you disagree with?  Yes, it does.  (They probably do a lot of things you don't like, don't they?)  But the alternative is to ask the government to enforce your religious views on others, and I don't want to live in a world where religious zealots control our lives from Washington.  (Even if you think you would agree with those zealots, imagine how difficult life would be if they were replaced with leaders you didn't agree with.  Will you rebel when these leaders insist that you do things their way?  Will you go to war when your faith is incompatible with the one that is being forced on you?)

Certain war-torn countries give us evidence of just how badly government and religion mix; history tells the same thing.  

And I'm pretty sure that cat has some things to say about it.

So, I'd be happy to see the government step aside and allow the cultural construct of marriage to be no longer governed by lawmakers.  To Believers, marriage can be a sacred thing, and no one in Washington is qualified to govern something like that.  To others, marriage might be a simple tradition, but traditions also should not be governed by federal committees.

What do you think?  Is this feasible?

A nerd and a Friday night's existential crisis

Some years ago I was at Dallas Baptist University taking a class with Dr. William E. Bell. He's second from the left here. I learned about the penal substitutionary atonement, and happened to learn that, according to Dr. Bell, C. S. Lewis denied the doctrine.

No, not that William Bell. (Picture by Gage Skidmore, available here.)

I considered Lewis to be the great Christian thinker that he is. I grew up on Lewis: originally the Narnia books and movies (the old BBC ones, with the bad special effects and the awesome portrayals of the White Witch and Puddleglum), then Screwtape Letters in middle school and Mere Christianity in high school. My family has been reading Lewis for several generations.

My reverence for Dr. Bell was no less. I saw him as the bulwark of orthodoxy and serious biblical teaching that he is.

So my college hero was telling me that my childhood hero was a heretic whose salvation was uncertain as a result of his bad doctrine. This was a big deal. We're talking about a genuine existential crisis here (though I admit I've had worse existential crises in my time).

So, of course, I went to the library and wrote a paper. What else is a little nerd with an existential crisis supposed to do on a Friday night?

In it, as I recall, I tried to make three points.

1. In Mere Christianity Lewis doesn't deny the penal substitutionary atonement. He just admits that the modern mind has trouble understanding the idea, and then suggests an understanding of the atonement that makes sense to the modern mind: the theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross. (Looking at the relevant passage recently, I had to admit I may have misread it; I think he really does reject the penal substitutionary atonement here, although it wasn't the main point of the passage.)

2. The theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross is an orthodox theory. Here I cited a passage in the New Testament; it may have been 1 Timothy 2:5-6. I also alluded to the old hymn that says of Jesus, "He paid a debt he did not owe/I owed a debt I could not pay/I needed someone to wash my sins away."

3. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis illustrates the penal substitutionary view of the atonement in Aslan's death in place of Edmond.

I shared my paper with Dr. Bell, who read it more than once. He thought it was a valiant effort to defend Lewis, but he wasn't convinced.

Now up to this point I still thought Lewis did not reject the penal substitutionary atonement, but Bell shared with me a story that finally convinced me: that Lewis had personally told J. I. Packer that he did not accept the penal substitutionary atonement. Packer had personally passed this information on to Bell, who now passed it on to me. I now pass it on to you.

The third point from my paper is puzzling in light of this, but I think it may yet be correct. I suspect that in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Lewis wrote a better book than even he intended, and managed to illustrate an extra view of the atonement. (See here for a brief word on the Christus Victor view he intentionally depicted. )

Still the man.
(Picture from here)

C. S. Lewis is still the man. This may suggest a poor memory on my part, but I can only think of about three sentences in all of the fifteen or so books I've read by Lewis with which I disagree. It is largely because of the occasional problem like this that I suggested that Christians read N. T. Wright and John Stott alongside Lewis. But C. S. Lewis is irreplaceable. A solid grounding in ten or twenty of his little books will do any Christian good, and, I might add, will probably do more good than thirty or forty large books in philosophy and theology.

P. S. Todd Kappelman, another of my favorite undergrad teachers, wrote this on the need to read Lewis. I agree.

P. P. S. This sort of allegation that C. S. Lewis is a heretic and the author of "demonic fantasies" is no doubt well-intentioned; but it is incorrect, impolite, unhelpful, poorly researched, and hardly worth the time I've already spent writing this sentence.

Thinking through Liturgy

It's Holy Week. A good time to talk liturgy.

lit·ur·gy   [lit-er-jee]  

1. a form of public worship; ritual.

2. a collection of formularies [namely, the Book of Common Prayer] for public worship.

3. a particular arrangement of services.

4. a particular form or type of the Eucharistic [Communion] service.

Whenever I say (to fellow Christians) “I go to an Anglican church,” I usually get one of three responses: a blank stare, a look of worry, and/or a look of pity. As I go on to explain why the liturgical services are so meaningful to me, I often get some variation of the following statement: “Well, at least someone isn’t just going through the motions.”

And that seems to pretty much sum up what most non-liturgical church-going folk (except for a handful of intellectuals, artists, and Millennials) believe about liturgy and the people who attend liturgical churches. The sentiment essentially implies that people in liturgical churches are spiritual automatons who have never opened their Bible and whose faith is dead or non-existent. This is simply not true of the people I know, and it seems to derive in part from a romanticized view of reality––it has to be spontaneous to be genuine.

Of course there are people in liturgical churches of whom such a description would be accurate. But is that really different from those who sit in non-liturgical churches every Sunday who have never opened their Bibles? Who tune out the sermon with hard hearts? Who don’t know Jesus? They too are merely going through the motions. The motions are just different.

Let’s pause to look again at the definition of liturgy.

lit·ur·gy  

1. a form of public worship; ritual.

2. a collection of formularies [namely, the BCP] for public worship.

3. a particular arrangement of services.

4. a particular form or type of the Eucharistic [Communion] service.

Consider how all four definitions, especially one and three, are broad enough to denote, or refer to, all churches. All churches have a largely regular order of service and a particular way of practicing the rite (or ritual) of Communion. In a typical Southern Baptist church, for example, congregants participate in Communion once a quarter, and the order of service, or liturgy, might look something like this:

• Introductory Song
• Call to Worship
• 3 additional Worship Songs (2 contemporary, 1 hymn)
• Prayer
• Sermon 
• Offertory
• Alter Call
• Announcements
• Dismissal Song

The church calendar might revolve around Fall Festivals, Christmas choir practices, VBS, and monthly potluck dinners rather than Advent, Epiphany, Lent, and Pentecost. The difference, then, seems to be between an informal liturgy---where church members are generally less intentional about, or even aware of, the patterns of their public worship---and a formal one, where such patterns are highlighted.

I come from a non-liturgical background, so I understand where the fear of words like ritual and liturgy comes from. Most folks who express such fears either grew up in Catholic experiences with an orthopraxis (theological understanding and everyday practice) that tied certain rites to salvation (which is not to say all Catholic experiences are thus), or they grew up in Protestant heritages with little to no exposure to any formal liturgy. The latter fear liturgy because they have heard one narrative of the dangers of liturgy and have no other context for thinking about it.

We all have liturgical rhythms and patterns and habits that form the function of our spiritual lives. And we need them! The world has patterns, or liturgies, that direct our hearts toward worship too, but not worship of the One True God. If we do not actively participate in patterns (liturgies) counter to those of this world, we will fall into worldly patterns. This is partly why being intentional about liturgical forms of the church is helpful to me.

Here’s why I like a formal liturgy.

1. I need institutions that “make me” do stuff that’s good for me that I’d rather be lazy about and not do.
   
   There are some people who are super disciplined and self-motivated. That’s not me. I come across that way because I am highly motivated by achievement, but the truth is I’ve always been a part of programs or groups that provide structure, encouragement, and exhortation.
   
   What sports teams and writing groups and academic coursework do for my exercising, writing, and reading, liturgy does for my spirit and my relationship with God.
   
   The church helps me be more intentional about preparing myself to meet with Jesus. Often on a Sunday morning several people can be found kneeling in prayer before the service as a way of preparing the heart and focusing the mind. I've started doing this, and I've noticed a difference.

2. Liturgy is holistic: heart, mind, body.
   
   The position of our bodies often shapes the condition of our minds and hearts. Each Sunday my knees bend to bear the weight of my body upon the worn, padded kneeler. Kneeling in the pew week to week, my heart is readier to kneel, to submit, and the dull ache in my knees is a gentle reminder that the Christian life is to be a sacrificial life. 
   
   “High” churches also typically have an appreciation for “high” art; which is essential to Christianity and the Gospel. Art speaks not only to the “public part of us that considers interesting thoughts about the Gospel and how to preach it,” as one of my favorite writers puts it; but to “the private, inner part too, to the part of us all where our dreams come from, both our good dreams and our bad dreams, the inner part where thoughts mean less than images, elucidation less than evocation, where our concern is less with how the Gospel is to be preached than with what the Gospel is and what it is to us” (Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth).
   
   

   

   Christ Church Plano
   Christmas Candlelight Service

   Where I worship Sunday mornings (pictured above), the architecture is designed to point us to the cross. The sanctuary is built in the shape of the cross, at the center of which is a beautiful cross with different colored stained glass in its circular center (different colors for different seasons of the Church calendar). I cannot tell you how many times I am compelled to physically look to the cross during the service, to dwell on the cross, to take comfort there. I cannot tell you how many times my eyes blur with tears of joyous relief and gratitude.
   
   The choir is remarkably talented and their voices come, literally, behind ours, lifting and supporting the heart song of the congregation throughout the beautiful sanctuary built with acoustics in mind. On the anniversary of 9.11, the choir sang a requiem in Latin that spoke to my soul about that tragedy more than anything else that day (even though I don't know any Latin).
   
   These are just a few examples of how my whole self is ministered to during a service. Another is...
    
3. Communion every week.
   
   The Eucharist is a physical reminder of who I am. I belong to Christ. I am a member of his Church (I am not alone) and his hands and feet to the world (I am not without purpose). The more I can be reminded of these truths the better.
   
   The weekly recitation of the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer serve as similar reminders of who I am (via what I say I believe) and to Whom I belong. My weeks are often more focused when they begin with "Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done."

There’s more that I find spiritually enriching about liturgy, but that’s my top three. I’m not an expert on liturgy. This is just my story. But I hope it’s a story that can add to what I see as the limited conversation and misconceptions among many about formal liturgy.