Recently a lot of things have been swirling around in my head from things I’ve been reading, things God’s told me to do or stop doing, and sermons I’ve been listening too.
Specifically there has been a lot of talk in my house about creativity and art the last few weeks thanks to a sermon Jeff preached on it (sermon page here), as well as one preached early this year by Dave Schmelzer (sermon page here). More precisely, how art is viewed and created within Christian circles in the US.
And if you hang out with Jeff or Brent much you hear (or read in their blogs) a lot about anti-intellect trends and attitudes in the evangelical church.
In my head on hearing Jeff talk about these two topics I’ve sorta lashed out against the sentiments carried behind them. Specifically when speaking of art or intellectualism I find myself railing against the exclusivity of the major proponents of these topics. The constant judgment of what is or is not quality within those circles.
On the other hand, I also find myself railing against the “all-fluff” / “no brain” type of art and teaching that can be easily found on the end-caps of Christian bookstores. I can’t stand the idea that few evangelical pastors seem to be encouraging people in the pews to more deeply discover the more intricate parts of life, art, and thought in general. Almost as if the lowest common denominator sets the bar for the entire movement of Christianity in the US, and there is little drive to move that bar.
I don’t like either of those ideas. As if only the most excellent, most educated, and most talented are the only people qualified to define quality. And, I don’t like the idea of a simple set of criteria (i.e. little swearing, has a gospel message, no sex or profanity ever used in any way that could be possibly not negative) for defining what is consumed by the people that elected our president.
Oddly, I think my dislike of these two extremes stems from my feelings on my background, technology.
My main area of interest, like art and intellectualism, the evangelical church (and just Church in general) sucks at.
Similarly, I feel that in technology if something is not accessible (explained well, or intuitive when I use the phrase ‘accessible’, not just simple or not complex) it will be ignored by most people. This pisses off experts in my field, and they rant on message boards about how dumbing things down isn’t the answer. On the flip-side, building a piece of technology for the dumbest of the dumb, or only allowing a simple set of criteria to govern it’s design is poor stewardship of my gifts and talents.
I’d guess that any area of someone’s interest where they have worked hard enough to make it a creative activity, you will find a feeling of the church limiting or marginalizing them. (yes I think technology and intellectualism is a creative activity, as well as good management and sales skills, and I believe things become more of a creative activity the harder you work to be good at them) There may be a few examples of this such as preaching and music, but I’m willing to bet even there some of the greats feel limited.
My solution to this problem is two fold, one idea of moderation and another of extreme boldness.
1. Be more accepting of what other people like. My Mother likes the classics of literature as well as some of the “Left Behind” novels. She loves classical music and hates most of the stuff I listen to. But she puts up with both for me. And she acknowledges that there are some dumb things she just likes. I love miller light as well as some finer beers, but I don’t like IPA’s which are often considered to be one of the more complex beers. My pallet just won’t adapt to the bitterness of the hops no matter how pretentious I desire to be in discussing beers.
My point is, not everything needs to be binned into “quality” or “crap” like most hard-core artists / intellectuals / tech nerds try to do. Some things just aren’t ever going to be for some people, but they are for someone else.
I think solution here is to evaluate the quality of things you like and don’t like on a basis other than you did or did not like it. Ask ‘why’ you like something or didn’t like it. Go through an evaluation of the positive and negative of things you watch, read, and hear whether you liked it or not.
2. Put more stuff out there. Face the criticism, both from the church internally and the world externally. Boldness counts for a lot in this wold I think. It is hard to expose your ideas to other people. To often people seek the safety of their church friends and not their contemporaries in the fields which they aspire to be great in. This “Christians consume Christian media” idea accounts for some of the gap between Christian and non-Christian art. In other circles, particularly protestantism, we have shunned much art due to our heritage that shunned much of it as idolatry or graven images. And this has added greatly to that gap. Christians should consume non-Christian media to broaden their criteria on which to judge.
I think we are seeing more of this in the last 3 or 4 years, and it makes me happy.
So, was that what you thought it would be hiding behind that LJ-Cut tag? Come on, be honest now.