Christians and the Arts – Part 2: The Root of the Problem

To return, the question is – how did we get into this state of confusion about “Christian” work and “non-Christian” work? About sacred and secular?

As far as I can tell from my reading so far (which isn’t super-extensive, so I would encourage you to do your own on this topic), one of the biggest things Christianity is still wrestling with is Greek thinking. Despite it being a good 2,000 years since Greeks first started coming to Christ, their way of thinking still lingers in a few areas.

Very briefly, one of the key ideas of Greek thought back in Christ’s day was that material stuff (like skin, plants, animals, jobs, all the stuff that we interact with physically in this world) was somehow inferior to non-material things like thoughts and ideas. So, as a result, Greeks prized the ability to think about things more highly than actually interacting with the world. So, for instance, in the field of mathematics, Greeks loved maths from the point of view of thinking about things, but weren’t so interested in the practical application of it.

This is a broad generalisation, and we do owe a lot to the Greeks, but when this thinking and early Christianity mixed, a new form of Christianity emerged that put “spiritual” things (like prayer, contemplating of God’s Word, etc) on a higher plane than “material” things (like farming, looking after animals, eating food, making music, etc.).

Now, a quick read through the Gospels will tell you that this separation wasn’t an idea that came from Jesus. If you look at His ministry, as well as teaching and casting out demons, etc (i.e. “spiritual” things), He was also quite often healing people’s physical infirmities and sharing meals with people. His first public miracle consisted of providing more wine for a wedding. Could you get any more “secular”?

Alongside all his exhortations on serving God, there were instructions on marriage, how to use your money, and the need to help the poor and needy. There’s no indication that Jesus in any way separated himself from the world as we often think about it nowadays. This came in afterwards, and the evidence seems to be that it was from the Greeks.

Throughout the centuries, various forms of this error have been passed down. Taken to its extreme, we have seen Christians that have tried to completely remove themselves from the things of the world. (Think monks, Amish people, and other groups that try to avoid as much of the”world” as possible.)

However, the most common form of this problem that we see nowadays is the resulting vagueness that I talked about in the last post in this series. We kind of feel that some tasks and roles in life are on a higher peg than others. I’ve discovered from personal experience that rather than drawing the distinction based on theological grounds, we draw it based on a quite simple question: Can a non-Christian do this as well? If the answer is “yes”, then we tend to categorise that activity or thing as “secular”.

So can a non-Christian be a lawyer? Well, yes, lots of them are. So therefore, being a lawyer is a “secular” job. Ditto for farmers and accountants. Can a non-Christian be a Christian missionary? (Well, they can, but not really properly. But I won’t get into this here.) Well, no, not really, so therefore it’s a job that only Christians can do. It’s a “sacred” thing.

The other influence that can’t be ignored is Enlightenment thinking. When it came along, it was reacting to the dominance of the church in all areas of life that had existed up until that point. The Enlightenment placed man at the centre, and made thinking the central activity that was the path to all truth. During the last few hundred years, God was hurled out of science, politics, and as many other areas as they could get rid of Him, and a new way of thinking was formed that there were “neutral” things such as science, politics and education that shouldn’t be swayed one way or the other by religion. (Humanism, yes, religio, no.)
Well, you’d think that Christians would have fought tooth and nail over this issue (and many of them did), but Christians nowadays seem to have fallen for this idea hook, line and sinker. Most Christians today still have a vague feeling that if science and Christianity go head to head (as they do on a regular basis) that somehow science is a neutral, objective thing that can trump Christianity.

Most Christians today still think that separation of church and state somehow means that governments can do their own thing, without really having to be too involved with Christianity. Sure, Christians get upset if the government pushes abortion or same-sex marriages, but on the whole, we don’t see any connection between God and government.

To sum up, the Enlightenment told us that it was foolish to believe the Bible on all these things and be ruled by the church. Instead, we should just confine the church to a small group of spiritual things and leave man and his mind to work out the other stuff.

And the modern-day church has, either by default or (in increasingly more cases) by direct statement, said, “I agree completely.”

A third issue today is a rejection of the Old Testament as being in any way relevant to the modern Christian. If you read enough Old Testament, I can tell you – you will have no troubles seeing God as the Lord over all things, from farming to music to architecture to governments. If you ignore the Old Testament and write it off, it’s much easier to miss this aspect of His character.

Then, with all these ideas floating around in our heads, when we turn back to the Bible, we become blind to what’s there. Paul says to obey the Government in Romans? Well, that must mean that we don’t have to worry about whether what the government does is right or wrong – we just need to do what they say. (Except if it’s abortion or same-sex marriage.)

We read the epistles of Paul t and only notice the parts about church and our Christian character, and we only assume that the Bible talks about “spiritual” things and has nothing to say about the realities that we live in.

However, the only way that you can completely live a life devoted to “spiritual” things is to go into some form of full-time ministry, such as being a missionary or a minister. Otherwise, we’re left in the same dilemma as before – those of us who are not in these roles are spending hours of our weeks doing things that have no value (or worse, are things that God doesn’t like).

There has to be another answer.

So, in the next post, I’ll talk about what I think the Bible says about our faith and how it applies to life.

Concert Review: Stephen Hough

I was privileged to be able hear this recital twice, which was quite exciting. Stephen is an English pianist, who has released over 40 CDs and, while he may not be a household name yet like Horowitz, Rubinstein, and the other great pianists of the past, he could well be on his way there. (And there’s also a question of, “With the decline in interest in piano music, is any pianist likely to become a household name?”)

Stephen’s program was very cleverly picked, and I won’t go through all the pieces there because there were lots of them, and even if you were interested, he’s finished touring (at least in Sydney – you could jet down to Melbourne if you were keen this Saturday).

But to mention a couple of my favourites: In the first half, Stephen played Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 32. For those of you who aren’t huge watchers of Beethoven, he wrote 32 sonatas in his lifetime for the piano. So, therefore, there’s something very special about hearing the last one.

It’s almost as if Beethoven knew that this was going to be his last formal sonata for the piano, because in it he says everything he wants to say about the piano. It starts with a very stormy opening movement that gradually resolves itself into peace (almost as if Beethoven is expressing his frustration with his deafness, life in general, etc. and then getting through it and calming down.

And then the second movement . . . wow! It’s a theme and variations, but the theme is a slow, beautiful tune, almost like a hymn. Maybe I’m a hopeless romantic, but I could easily imagine Beethoven playing this tune to himself as a comfort when times were hard. There is such beauty and heartbreak in this theme that it can sometimes be hard to listen to.

And then the variations . . . awesome. Some are very simple, some are rollicking and lively. And, finally, the last one ends with the most delicate of trills up in the upper part of the keyboard. Then a few simple chords to close off, and that’s it. All Beethoven’s sonatas over. I can’t tell you how it moved me.

The second half of Stephen’s program was all waltzes, which made a fun contrast to the first half. My favourite of these was a piece by von Weber called Invitation to the Dance which is, on the one hand, has all the cliches of a Viennese waltz, but on the other hand is so sparkling and joyous that you can’t help but like it. The tune is still floating around in my head a few days later.

By the end of the night, the crowd was cheering louder than any other Musica Viva concert I’d been to this year and I don’t blame them. Stephen actually ended up playing three encores, including a rather amusing rendition of Waltzing Matilda in the style of a French impressionist.

You can read more about Stephen here.

It Is Coming . . . One of These Days

Hi all,

There is a further post on Christians and the Arts in the works, but it’s been a crazy week, what with Stephen Hough the pianist (hopefully I’ll get a post in on him as well), a business trip to Melbourne, and a massive to-do list at work.  And apparently, somewhere in all that, I turned 29.

Amazing . . .

But thank you for your comments, and for coming back to read this blog after the long hiatus.  Be back soon.

Christians and the Arts – Part 1: A State of Vagueness

This particular post was kind of inspired by a good friend of mine who’s currently overseas on a short-term mission trip for a year.  However, before he went overseas, he was always very keen on the arts (especially musical theatre) and had actually written and starred in some productions of his own.

Now, if you ever go overseas for a short-term mission (and I do recommend it, even if it’s only a few weeks), you will find inevitably that you start thinking about what kind of direction your life should take.  In this case, my friend is thinking about whether he should continue overseas (where there is clearly a need) or whether he should go into the arts (where he clearly has a passion).

The overseas one is a pretty easy sell – you’d be a missionary, you could clearly chuck all your tasks you do there under the category of “serving God” and 100% of Christians back home would see your work as a valuable service to Christ.

But what about the arts?  If he were to go into the arts, how do you glorify God in that industry? To give a brief quote from his email (and I apologise, mate, if this was meant to be super-private):

At the moment for me it’s still that tug between creativity and ministry - and even though people say they don’t have to be separated, saying things like “you could write skits and plays for church”, that’s really way way way below the artistic levels to which I aspire.

I can tell you now – this comment completely resonates with me, and it’s something that I’ve spent the last two and a half years throwing around and thinking about.  So, partly to answer my friend’s question of “how are we to think about the arts as Christians?” and partly to get some of my own thoughts down in writing, I thought I would write a series of posts about the issues facing Christians and their work, and particularly how this impacts on work in the arts.

I don’t profess to be an expert in these things, and I’m always open to learning new things, so my thinking may change over time.  But for the present time, this is where I’m at, so hopefully you will bear with me in this thinking.

To start with, I wanted to briefly lay out in this first post, what the current state of Christianity seems to be (or at least Australian Protestant evangelicalism) as regards work and the arts, and then hopefully in subsequent posts, I can talk a bit more about how we got there, and whether there’s any errors in our thinking.

As the title of my post suggests, the state of Christianity and how it relates to culture seems rather vague and ill-defined.  On the whole, Christians aren’t going to the extreme of separating ourselves from culture (though there are groups like the Amish and Mennonites and the stricter Baptist churches that do consider it important to cut themselves off from anything worldly), but on the other hand, we haven’t really worked out what to do with culture.

Are Christians meant to embrace it and enjoy it?  Or are they meant to be suspicious of it?  What are we supposed to do?

The guidance that we hope to receive from our ministers and churches often only seems to relate to church life, how we relate to one another, and evangelism.  There may be the occasional sermon on money, but that’s usually about how we should be giving more of it away.  Certainly, in my 28 years on the planet, I could probably count on the fingers of two hands (and probably it’s only one) the number of sermons that I’ve heard specifically dealing with work.  Apart from one sermon on movies, I can’t count any that dealt with the arts.  (And even then, the sermon was on how to approach films as a movie viewer.  It’s a whole different kettle of fish, if you wanted to work in the film industry.)

And of these sermons, the exhortations about work usually fall into three categories.  1)  We should use work as an opportunity to evangelise.  2)  We should use  work as an opportunity to make money to support real Christian work.  3)  We can work in a Christian manner and so in the way we treat people, etc. we will be working as Christians.

Now, all of this is well and good, but if you think about it, if this is all there is, it ultimately devalues the work itself.   After all, you can evangelise, whether you’re a receptionist or a lawyer.  You can make money to support Christian work whether you’re a garbage man or a computer programmer. You can treat people in a Christlike way, whether you’re a day care worker or a sales person.

However, if the only thing that is important is the way you work, the money you make, and the specific conversations about Jesus you have – there’s not a lot there – and this is immediately obvious to anyone who’s in the working world.  Regardless of how good an evangelist you are, if you get to spend 5% of your work time talking about Jesus, you’re doing well, and it will probably be less.  With regards to the money, your pay cheque will be cut probably once a fortnight, and you can choose how to give the money away then, but that’s five minutes thinking – the rest of the two weeks is spent actually doing the work.

Now, on the final point, certainly, the way you work is important – but think about it: if the work itself is meaningless, what difference does it make how you do it? (As an example, in Russian prisons back in the day, the quickest way of breaking the spirit of male prisoners was to get them to carry rocks back and forth all day from one end of the prison yard to the other.  You know why it broke them?  Not because of the physical arduousness of the task – but because all their work was meaningless.)

However, as opposed to this glaring silence about “secular” work or “ordinary” work, there is an almost constant spotlight thrown on “Christian” work.  We’ve often heard that we need more ministers, more missionaries, more Christian workers.

So, it would be very easy to come to the conclusion – and I think most people have – that a select few people are doing the hard yards working for God full-time, and the rest of us are taking the softer option of working for God part-time.

So as a result of this distinct lack of guidance in the area of things , Christians seem to take one of two approaches.  Either 1) they become consumed by the perceived emptiness of the “secular” stuff they are doing, and sign themselves up to as many rosters, church committees, etc as possible to relieve the guilt or 2) they don’t even think about it, and happily show up to church activities on Sunday and maybe a couple of mid-week events, and then live as pagans the rest of the week.

So, why, you might ask, don’t more Christians speak up about it?

It’s complicated, but I think there’s a number of reasons why:

1. There is such a respect for preaching and ministers in our churches, that we assume that whatever is talked about (or not talked about) is the extent of the Christian life.  So if your minister is not talking about work, or the arts, or politics, or whatever, then the average congregation member is going to think: these things are not important to Christians.  If the only type of Christian work and ministry you hear about from the pulpit is that of full-time Christian work, or evangelism, or how you treat other people, the congregation will assume that this is all that is imporant.

2. At the level of ministers and churches, there is actually still a fair amount of debate going on as to whether there are two categories of work – Christian ministry work and other work.  Depending on where your minister sits on that spectrum will determine what you’re hearing from the pulpit.

3. I’ve never heard this mentioned, but I suspect that because a large majority of people hate their work (at least as far as the statistics show) and are really “working for the weekend,” as the saying goes, it’s very easy for Christians to agree that somehow there’s something fundamentally pointless about “secular” work. I would argue that the hatred of work (or boredom, if hate is too strong a word) comes out of the wrong approach to work, but that’s for another post.

In fact, that last point, I think, is particularly significant, because it was the turning point in making me think about these issues.  When I first got the idea in my head, that I wanted to work in the arts (helped along by the ever-brilliant What Color is Your Parachute?) , the first thing that I realised was that it would be tremendously enjoyable to work in the arts.  As soon as the idea of enjoyment was in my head,  the immediate suspicion was, “Well, hang on, if you’re going to enjoy it, how do you know you’re not just being selfish and working for your own pleasure rather than God’s glory?”

So that’s what began me on this journey.

Anyway, next post, I’ll have a look at why I think the modern church has got their sacred/secular divide from, and how this impacts the way we view things as Christians nowadays.

A Return of Sorts and the Joys of RSS Feeds

Hi all,

After an absence of some months, I have decided to get back into the blogging world (at least for the next week or two), because I’m now off my probation at work, I’ve emptied my email inbox, the Presbyterian Church has no more conferences on, and my siblings have stopped getting married (at least for this year), so I now feel I have the headspace to devote time to writing.

I know some of you out there seem able to crank out content for your blogs regardless of what is going on in life, but I don’t know – I feel that I’ve either got to write down something worth saying (ie requiring time to say it) or it’s not really worth doing.

Anyway, despite the long hiatus, due to that wonder of modern invention, the RSS feed, those who were ever keen to read my musings in the first place can jump write back in with a bemused exclamation of “Look who’s blogging again now!”

For the rest of you, you’ll just have to stumble across this when you get a chance.

Brief catch-up, by the way -  life in my new work in the arts is going quite well.  Selling sponsorship is quite an arduous bit of work, but on the other hand, I do like the challenge, and there really is something nice to be said for working with something that you’re really passionate about.

Which brings me to my next blog post . . .