Sometimes, good answers aren't as valuable as good questions. I've been searching for some of those lately.
What is beauty? (Not in a super melodramatic sense... just as it relates to the evangelical Christian artist stuck in between the massively secular, over sexualized world of fine art and the nearly art-illiterate modern church of the American culture)
Why is North Judson, Indiana (or insert your hometown/neighborhood here) the perfect place to reconstruct a cultural ideology of beauty and how it is directly related to the Creator?
Why do we make good coffee?
How can we practice the pleasure of God through enjoying a cup of coffee?
How can we, as the church, use a learned appreciation of life to draw people in to a heart of thanksgiving and praise for our Father, which in turn leads us to an overarching enjoyment of Him?
If you'd like, you can stop reading, close your computer, find a quiet place, and ask the Father to reveal the answers to these questions yourself rather than reading my thoughts. I can promise you that the questions themselves will be better than my answers, but if you'd like to hear my thoughts, you may continue reading.... maybe some of it will be from Jesus (if all of it was from Jesus, it'd be much better!) And due to the magnanimity of the questions, I'll probably split them up into multiple posts.
On beauty: I recently had a conversation with a friend about the latest Wes Anderson film. Let it be known that I absolutely adore Wes Anderson films and that they have had a very tangible impact on my appreciation of art. In fact, since I was 15 years old, my answer to the occasional favorite movie question has only varied among the films in the Wes Anderson cannon... still to this day Moonrise Kingdom would be my response. However, all but 2 of his movies feature sexually inappropriate scenes that typically involve nudity (enough to earn it an R rating). The aforementioned conversation concerning these films stemmed from a conclusion that my friend had come to which was that nudity and sexual vulgarity will eventually have to be excused in the name of art.
The world of fine art is run by a largely Jesus-less society. Granted, the majority of the world in general is run by a largely Jesus-less society, but I'm not sure if we've yet found a method of coping with this reality in the realm of art apart from the disassociation of the church from it. That is to say, how is the church to rightly appreciate and create fine art without compromise of either beauty, design, creativity, originality, or our relationship with Jesus? I know we're getting better, but I think there's still more to come. If we are indeed created in the image of THE CREATOR, are we not living according to our very design when we create? Creativity is at the very core of human existence in light of the fact that our Creator is at the very core of human existence.
I don't think that means that we should make more Christian art to take it back as we did in the Middle Ages. If you want to paint a picture of Mary holding baby Jesus with a halo over their heads, go for it, but I don't think that in itself will usher in a modern renaissance of Christian thought concerning art and beauty. In the Middle Ages, Byzantine era, and early Renaissance, the majority of art created involved strictly Biblical content. That was not because the artists creating them were strong Christians, but because the highest paying patron was the Roman Catholic Church!
I think we love Jesus and make good art. Don't compromise anything with what you enjoy or what you create. If we have the Holy Spirit inside of us then, unless we are distracted, everything we create reflects His character despite the content! If we have the Holy Spirit inside of us then everything we enjoy is enjoying Him despite the creator! Art is based on truth perceived by the artist, but even if that artist does not have a foundation of truth in scripture all of Creation will sing His Praise (Psalm 148)
All of this is not to say that we shouldn't appreciate fine art, though it be tainted by the immorality of non-believers. After all, of what purpose is morality if we don't have Jesus? Moral and immoral people are no different if Jesus has no place in their life. I say enjoy art. Enjoy all art, as long as your not compromising your relationship with the Father. Sexual immorality conveyed in media or art is notorious for distracting believers in our society from their relationship with Jesus. That doesn't mean some haven't figured it out yet, but it does mean that we should ask Jesus what He thinks. But with that said, please go watch a Wes Anderson film. This one is good to start with:
Art portrays beauty, beauty portrays truth, and truth portrays the character of God.
-Trey
