I had a short but warm chat with Rob Schläpfer, the editor of Christian Counterculture who had some mild persecution recently. It seems tragic to me because Rob deserves our support for his more constructive (rather than deconstructive) work.
This recent edition on The Arts is a real winner! As a cultural philistine on the way to recovery, I find Francis Schaeffer offering some helpful principles to evaluate art...
"The arts, cultural endeavors, enjoyment of the beauty of both God's creation and of man's creativity — these creative gifts have in our day been relegated to the bottom drawer of Christian consciousness, despised outright as unspiritual or unchristian. This deficiency has been the cause of many unnecessary guilt feelings and much bitter fruit, taking us out of touch with the world God has made, with the culture in which we live, and making us ineffectual in that culture.
The traditional view of the church, supported by biblical teaching, has been (thankfully) that the arts, creativity, enjoyment of our own creativity, the creativity of those around us — in short, all the beauty that God has put into this life — comes as a direct good and gracious gift from our Heavenly Father above. Thus the arts, the enjoyment of them, all these expressions of man's creativity and ability to communicate, need no justification — they need no spiritual justification, and they need no utilitarian justification. They are what they are."
Franky Schaeffer
"Most Christians today have one of two responses to the subject of art. They either know nothing about it — hence, they care not a wit about it — or what they do know about today's art world is repugnant to them. As a result, they are openly hostile to the cultural domain of the arts. This circumstance is both understandable and tragic.
But Christians must not run and hide from art — we must not totally abandon the art-driven cultural domains. We should take up the challenge of involving ourselves in the world of art while striving to build and to hold a biblical foundation for working in its arena of life and influence. Christians need to wisely enter the powerfully influential arts arena and ask God for the grace and wisdom to live as gospel carriers there, too. We can do this. And it would be a great encouragement to our children to see and to hear us do this."
Wes Hurd
This recent edition on The Arts is a real winner! As a cultural philistine on the way to recovery, I find Francis Schaeffer offering some helpful principles to evaluate art...
"The arts, cultural endeavors, enjoyment of the beauty of both God's creation and of man's creativity — these creative gifts have in our day been relegated to the bottom drawer of Christian consciousness, despised outright as unspiritual or unchristian. This deficiency has been the cause of many unnecessary guilt feelings and much bitter fruit, taking us out of touch with the world God has made, with the culture in which we live, and making us ineffectual in that culture.
The traditional view of the church, supported by biblical teaching, has been (thankfully) that the arts, creativity, enjoyment of our own creativity, the creativity of those around us — in short, all the beauty that God has put into this life — comes as a direct good and gracious gift from our Heavenly Father above. Thus the arts, the enjoyment of them, all these expressions of man's creativity and ability to communicate, need no justification — they need no spiritual justification, and they need no utilitarian justification. They are what they are."
Franky Schaeffer
"Most Christians today have one of two responses to the subject of art. They either know nothing about it — hence, they care not a wit about it — or what they do know about today's art world is repugnant to them. As a result, they are openly hostile to the cultural domain of the arts. This circumstance is both understandable and tragic.
But Christians must not run and hide from art — we must not totally abandon the art-driven cultural domains. We should take up the challenge of involving ourselves in the world of art while striving to build and to hold a biblical foundation for working in its arena of life and influence. Christians need to wisely enter the powerfully influential arts arena and ask God for the grace and wisdom to live as gospel carriers there, too. We can do this. And it would be a great encouragement to our children to see and to hear us do this."
Wes Hurd
Comments
http://www.reformed.org/webfiles/antithesis/v2n4/ant_v2n4_curr5.html
Or spray "Jesus luvs you!" plus a smiley face to those abstract arts and turn them into tracts... :D