From the book ADDICTED TO MEDIOCRITY by Franky Shaeffer

Unfortunately, today we are in a very different position than that of Giorgio Vasari as he stood at the end of the High Renaissance. He could look back with admiration and wonder at the achievements of his fellow artists in that day and age, and also cast his eyes northward from Italy to the great explosion of creativity (beginning with people like Albrecht Durer) in the Flemish, Dutch and German parts of the world.

Today, as a Christian with a practical interest in the arts, creativity, and human endeavor in this field, as I look around I see a very different picture. Contrast in your mind the reality of a few centuries ago, the Giotto’s, the Rembrandt’s, the Bach’s, the Handel’s, the Vermeer’s, the van Eyck’s, with the present-day reality.

Today, Christian endeavor in the arts is typified by the contents of your local Christian bookstore-accessories-paraphernalia shop. For the coffee table we have a set of praying hands made out of some sort of pressed muck. Christian posters are ready to adorn your walls with suitable Christian graffiti to sanctify them and make them a justifiable expense. Perhaps a little plastic cube with a mustard seed entombed within to boost your understanding of faith. And as if this were not enough, a toothbrush with a Bible verse stamped on its plastic handle. And a comb with a Christian slogan or two impressed on it. On a flimsy rack are stacked a pile of records. You may choose them at random blindfolded, for most of them will be the same idle rehash of acceptable spiritual slogans, endlessly recycled as pablum for the tone-deaf, television-softened brains of our present-day Christians.

The airwaves as you leave the shop are jammed with a choice avalanche of what can generally be summed up as rubbish, ready to clog your television and radio set with ÒChristianÓ programming. The publishing houses churn out (measured by the ton) a landslide of material which can scarcely be called books, often composed of the same themes which are viewed as spiritual, rehashed endlessly by writers who would be better employed in another trade.

In fact, without making the list endless, one could sum it up by saying that the modern Christian world and what is known as evangelicalism in general is marked, in the area of the arts and cultural endeavor, by one outstanding feature, and that is its addiction to mediocrity.

This has borne bitter bitter fruitÑby the stifling and destroying of God-given creative instincts in individuals, the false guilt feelings of those with creative talents given by God when trying to exercise those talents in a church which looks at them askance as somehow dabbling in an unspiritual sphere of life. This has produced the unhappy lack of enjoyment of the world around us, GodÕs creativity, manÕs creativity, and the fullness of what we are supposedly redeemed to in Christ, and of course the bitter fruit of having contributed heavily through this unhappy view of the arts to the erosion of the Christian consensus.

Any group that willingly or unconsciously sidesteps creativity and human expression gives up their effective role in the society in which they live. In Christian terms, their ability to be the salt of that society is greatly diminished.