In a word, ‘No!’
Here are a few more words though – I get 700 these days, so I don’t want to disappoint with just the one. Why would getting to know our creator in all his power, beauty, splendour and grace stifle creativity? Surely getting to know Jesus in the Bible must be the foundation to building a creativity that honours God and serves his creation.
How to get creative
This may sound strange, but I’ve found very few evangelical writers who actually believe that studying the Bible is the best way to learn how to be a creative person. Most books written by Christians on the subject of the arts tell us that creativity is good, because we are made in the image of God who creates (from Genesis 1 and 2). Readers are then encouraged to be creative, in order to reflect God’s image, but they are rarely encouraged to keep reading their Bibles.
How things go wrong
The strange thing is that when we shut our Bibles and ‘get creative’ things start to go wrong. One of the first creative acts was when Eve re-shaped the forbidden fruit with her teeth (if that’s not too irreverent a concept). The point is that Eve took the serpent’s advice not to listen to the words of God and instead decided to order creation in her own way. Adam was only too happy to follow suit.
In the same way, people today will do anything rather than read their Bibles – and sadly much of what is written about the arts encourages people to discover the ‘creator’ in themselves rather than working hard at understanding and knowing their creator.
Our priority audience
I’m privileged to work with professionals and students in the performing arts, and it’s been wonderful to see many released from the captivity of wanting to please man with their own creations, instead putting their confidence in the Jesus of the Bible. It’s good news for them that, whatever they do, God is delighted with them because of Jesus, even if their human audience boos them off the stage. How wonderful to know that the only audience that matters is the audience of one, who is always on our side.
Actually, if one of our Christian brothers and sisters is performing, we often take a bunch of non-arty types to support them, giving them a huge (sometimes over-the-top) response at the final bow. We may (or may not!) enjoy the performance, but we’re not too worried about whether we think their ‘creation’ glorified God or not – that’s mostly subjective. Instead, we’re there to cheer on a fellow saint. We love them unconditionally, whereas their non-Christian audience may either worship them and their gift, or may want to destroy them in their reviews.
Facing challenges
At present we’re facing challenges from some Christians who think we’re a bit hardline telling musicians to open their Bibles rather than to focus on their music. However, we’ve never needed to encourage musicians to appreciate their art more deeply than they do already. We have maybe a couple of hours a week when we see them, so we will keep opening the Bible with them so that their house is built on the rock (while also supporting them physically by cheering at their performances). This is the kindest thing we think we can do for them. Please pray for humility for us as we hold firmly to this principle.
Best material
By far the best material I’ve read on this is found in the recent articles by Dave Bignell on the Music Ministry website*. I’d have asked Dave to write this article, but in order for him to whittle his thinking down to 700 words it would have taken more than two months.
Best to direct you to his 7760-word piece, which is much more thorough, and gives much greater justice to the amount of thinking he’s done on this subject. Gently, and humorously, he challenges those who have tried to write an arts-centred theology, and leads us, as we would hope, to Jesus and the place where our creator is most glorified in his creation – the cross.
