The subject of transforming the world has been on my heart a lot lately. Particularly in the area of art. Being both an artist, and definitely possessing an artistic personality AND being a Christian raised in a very traditional culture can be difficult. Often, I would find books and/or music that just spoke to me in that uniquely spiritual way that can only be achieved by the Holy Spirit, only to have that condemned because I found the book at the library, and it had no visible references to Jesus in it. So I would try and go back to only Christian art for awhile, but let's face it, that can only tide a person over for so long before you get bored. Particularly if you're a stickler for the quality. This is not to say that there isn't good Christian art around. More like, it's thin on the ground sometimes, where in more artistic cultures outside of "Christendom" you can't turn around without running into another brilliant artist. Most artists you run into will tell you the same thing.
I should stop that train of thought now, because this isn't supposed to be a rant about the quality of Christian art - or lack of it. I mostly point it out to lead to my actual point: How to make it better. There is a theme in my life right now, and in the church that I attend. It is that this whole thing where Christians are looked down upon, or outright mocked (as often by other Christians as by the rest of the world) for our substandard creative work is just wrong. So wrong. Like, there are hardly even words to describe how messed up this is. Why, you ask? I'll tell you. As Christians, we have a direct connection, an intimate personal relationship with the Creator of the whole WORLD. Everything that we see, everything that we draw our inspiration from, He created. And we get to have conversations with Him all the time. Every day. We have full access to all that creative brilliance that He embodies. He lets us use it, and with it we have the capability of creating art that is not only spiritually significant, but is critically GOOD. Not just good, but awesome, amazing, brilliant, fantastic, inspired, and any other cool synonym you can think of.
Now the question is HOW? How do we put this awesome capability into action? This is a question I've been asking myself for awhile, once I realized that JUST working to develop my craft in traditional ways wasn't enough. Thankfully, that changed over the weekend when I went to a conference at my church, specifically for artists. The whole day was transcendent, and it was so timely. I finally got answers to a lot of the outstanding questions I'd had about this area of my life. Those revelations are mostly what the rest of the post will be about. Because I think they're crazy awesome, and I'm beyond thankful that I was able to go and absorb all this wisdom from a ton of seriously anointed people.
It's funny, because I had this art teacher in 6th and 7th grade, who taught us to always ask God what He wanted us to create before we started on anything. Funny because at the time I thought she was absolutely insane. I had no way to quantify the idea of God actually speaking into my life, and art at that time. Now though, I realize that this was possibly the best thing anyone ever taught me in school. One of the speakers, Jennifer Eivaz taught on how being in the presence of God is the best way to make your mind Christ-like. This seems like it should be a no-brainer, but it is so difficult to remember sometimes. Romans 12:2 says, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will." The passage goes on to list some gifts of the Spirit, and then onto a discourse on loving your brothers and sisters in Christ (my other favorite topic. This is why I love Romans). But this verse is so overused, and so misused sometimes. It becomes an excuse for Christians to hide away. The problem is, that is not what the verse is saying at all. It is saying that as a part of your spiritual act of worship (which is offering your whole self to Christ as a living sacrifice, per verse 1) you are pretty much incapable of being conformed to the world. If your whole self is determined in and through Christ, there's no way you're going to conform to the world. Just isn't going to happen. Instead, your mind get's transformed which is what Jennifer was talking about. Your mind is the source of everything. It's where all your actions are determined, where all your thoughts about yourself reside. If your mind is out of sync, everything is out of sync. That's why the majority of attacks from people are mental. If you can undermine an enemy's thoughts, that's the best way to destroy everything they could do to resist you. So Paul instructs us to give our whole selves to Christ, and let Him transform our minds. So that we can resist the attacks that would undermine us and trample our enemies instead of the other way around.
What does this have to do with art? Simple. Art, in particular, is based in the mind. One of the other things that I learned from the conference was that the act of creating is primarily about bringing the unseen into the seen. That's what God did when He created the world. That's what he does when He creates every human being. But to bring the unseen into the scene, our mind has to be transformed enough to see the unseen clearly. Also, we have to be utterly confident in our ability to communicate it, and to do that we need to have a clear view of our own identity in Christ. Which goes back to the transforming of the mind.
Furthermore, if we are creating from a place of true identity in Christ, and confidence not in our own abilities by their own, but in His ability to use them to His glory, we can create things that are drenched in so much favor that it's almost impossible for them to not be successful. This is the revolutionary part. It doesn't matter what your medi genre it is, whether it's Christian in topic or not, it will be a vehicle to establish God's glory on this earth. This is the part I'm still working on. The transforming of the mind is a simple process, but difficult. It requires us to actually put the effort in, to work with God on this. But He's loving and infinitely patient, so we can always get there. And when we do, imagine what could happen.
Imagine a world where Christians don't imitate the art of the world (which is, in and of itself an imitation of the purest form of creation which is of God). Imagine a world where we set the trends in the art culture. We bring in the sound that defines a generation. We create paintings that people can't help but buy. We write the books that touch millions of people. Where we use all of these things to redeem that which the Enemy has twisted. That's what my goal is. To write books that aren't "Christian," just God-breathed. To write something that will be the defining experience for a young generation of readers, like the books I read when I was in Jr. High and High School, which still govern much of how I view the world. This is what I plan on working towards while I'm in between schooling. Or while I'm at school. Pretty much all the time. Spending time with Jesus. Letting Him transform my mind. Letting that flow through my fingers onto a page.
I can't think of a better way to end this than a song that's been rocking my world for the past month or so.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul. O my soul. Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, o my soul. I'll worship Your holy name. (v.2) You're rich in love, and You're slow to anger. Your name is great, and Your heart is kind. For all Your goodness, I will keep on singing. Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find!"
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
No Condemnation
Romans 8:1 - "Therefore there is then no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
That is quite possibly my favorite verse in the whole entire Bible. And not just the verse, because the context of the verse is what makes it so completely awesome. But that verse speaks a truth that I had a hard time accepting for a very long time, and that's more or less the theme of what I want to communicate right now.
First I feel like I should probably make something clear. I'm a fan of the Church. I may forget to mention that, but I love having a place that I can go where people are there to exhort and build up. There have been times in my life when I haven't gone to church regularly, and it was pretty much the worst.
Having said that, I have been around a lot of different churches and a lot of different church cultures, and I've started to notice themes. One is that for a people who follow a God who offers no condemnation, there is an overwhelming amount of condemning going on. And it might not even be noticed by those doing it. It's something I've been reading a lot in different places, blogs, some sermons at my church the last couple of weeks. There is this Christian culture that seems to thrive on finding ways to disguise condemnation. We put pretty labels on it, but it's still there, still eating away at the hearts of those who are shamed. And it hurts our witness.
It's not just Christians condemning other people though. I mean, that's a part of it, but there's a deeper root to it. There's this particular way of viewing humility that in my experience basically means that to be "humble before God" you have to decide that you suck and you should also hate yourself. Now think about this. Christians are called to love right? Specifically to love others as you love yourself. So it's kinda hard to love others with the fullness of love if you hate yourself. I'm not under the impression that Christ meant this commandment to be taken that way. It follows that if we're not supposed to hate ourselves, we're probably supposed to love ourselves.
"But wait," you may say, "if I love myself how can I be humble? How can I become less so Christ can be more?"
I think part of God's purpose for all our lives is to find out identity in Christ, and this is where that helps. When you accept Christ, you get this whole clean slate, where you don't have to be that person who was super messed up anymore. You get to take His view of your being and adopt it, make it into who you are. And He loves you, loves me, loves us SO much! The echos of His love carry over the centuries. Whole books are written simply about one aspect of His love. The Bible is pretty much one big "God loves you, and this is what He went through to show you that!"
If God loves us THAT much, who are we to tell Him, "no, you're wrong, I suck and I know it?" He's pretty clear on the fact that He thinks we're the best creations ever, so it doesn't seem wrong to me to be okay with yourself if He thinks that highly of you.
I'm not talking about not acknowledging faults, or turning the gift of love and grace into arrogance. I'm talking about not letting kids in the church grow up believing that their humanity makes them dirty, even after they've been washed clean by Christ's blood.
How do I know that this happens? The most obvious answer is, I was one of those kids. I grew up hating myself because I could never be good enough for love, or so I thought. Yeah, I knew God loved me, but the fact that He loved me didn't translate into the idea that I could love myself, and a huge part of it had to do with being taught false humility through most of my childhood. When it is so deeply ingrained in you that you are a fallen being, perpetually broken and so unworthy of love, the almost afterthought addition of "oh, by the way, God totally still loves you" tends to fall on deaf ears. It wasn't until I got to college and took a lot of classes with a professor who kept telling me that God wasn't mad at me, that He was actually pretty crazy about me, and I got past the conviction that she was speaking heresy that it started to sink it. And I mean started. It took a long time to really get through my head. There are still plenty of days when I revert to the old thoughts of "how could God love you, because of..." The difference is, I now know better, and I can speak against them when they creep in. There are plenty of people that I know who don't know that difference. Young girls that I've had the opportunity to work with, who come to me crying because they're convinced that they're worthless and can't do anything right. Girls who go to church on a regular basis. It breaks my heart, because I see so much of my own struggles with convincing myself that I'm not worthless.
Which brings me to the second part of what I wanted to talk about. The condemnation that the Church tends to project to the world. I believe the technical term is culture wars, in which the Church tries to control every aspect of culture (not necessarily a bad thing), but goes about it in a way that makes the rest of the world think that Jesus is the biggest jerk to ever walk the earth (altogether a very bad thing). I'm going to go out on a limb and say two things: 1) Copying culture, but adding Christian language instead of "secular" is quite possibly my least favorite thing ever. I don't ever want to copy culture, and hide behind my line of Christianity and only let it impact people behind that line. I want to go out into the culture around me and impact those people, the ones who need to hear it the most. I have the utmost respect for artists like Mumford & Sons and Owl City, who are reaching huge audiences with music that has very clear imagery pointing to God. And it doesn't just extend to that. I think there is more Jesus in secular culture than a lot of Christians realize. After all, God is the source of all creativity. Those brilliant singers, songwriters, artists, writers, and musicians who are so popular all got those talents from God, and God shines through if you listen hard enough. More often than not, listening to these artists just makes me want to go out and impact culture more, because think about what could happen if people with crazy artistic talent who are popular now could do with their talent if they have the direct line open with God? And instead the Christian culture shies away, scared to be tainted by their sin.
2) And please don't lynch me for this: I think the the us vs. them attitude of many Christians regarding cultural differences, specifically the LGBT community, is one of the most harmful things ever. Believe me, I know all the things the Bible says on the subject. But they are still people, created in God's image, struggling with their lives, looking for love. I'm not prepared to explore the whole nature vs. nurture debate or what we can do to "cure" them, or if that's even possible. That's not what I want. I want everyday Christians to go out and make friends with them, and make up for so many people from the Church who straight up hate them simply because of that one thing, without ever getting to know the person. The way to wage a "culture war" is not to keep introducing legislation which pits us vs. them. The way to wage the war is to cross the battle lines and sit down and make friends. Yeah, you don't agree. Whatever. No friends ever agree 100% of the time. You can still love them. (Note: This applies for the battle lines drawn within the church too.)
There's more that I could say, other points I want to elaborate on at a later date. But I think this has gotten long enough as it is. I would love this to start a conversation, even if you don't agree with me. I'm okay with that. I've pretty much given up on trying to get everyone to agree with me. I just want people to think about these issues.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make His face to shine upon you
And be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift the light of His countenance upon you
And give you peace.
That is quite possibly my favorite verse in the whole entire Bible. And not just the verse, because the context of the verse is what makes it so completely awesome. But that verse speaks a truth that I had a hard time accepting for a very long time, and that's more or less the theme of what I want to communicate right now.
First I feel like I should probably make something clear. I'm a fan of the Church. I may forget to mention that, but I love having a place that I can go where people are there to exhort and build up. There have been times in my life when I haven't gone to church regularly, and it was pretty much the worst.
Having said that, I have been around a lot of different churches and a lot of different church cultures, and I've started to notice themes. One is that for a people who follow a God who offers no condemnation, there is an overwhelming amount of condemning going on. And it might not even be noticed by those doing it. It's something I've been reading a lot in different places, blogs, some sermons at my church the last couple of weeks. There is this Christian culture that seems to thrive on finding ways to disguise condemnation. We put pretty labels on it, but it's still there, still eating away at the hearts of those who are shamed. And it hurts our witness.
It's not just Christians condemning other people though. I mean, that's a part of it, but there's a deeper root to it. There's this particular way of viewing humility that in my experience basically means that to be "humble before God" you have to decide that you suck and you should also hate yourself. Now think about this. Christians are called to love right? Specifically to love others as you love yourself. So it's kinda hard to love others with the fullness of love if you hate yourself. I'm not under the impression that Christ meant this commandment to be taken that way. It follows that if we're not supposed to hate ourselves, we're probably supposed to love ourselves.
"But wait," you may say, "if I love myself how can I be humble? How can I become less so Christ can be more?"
I think part of God's purpose for all our lives is to find out identity in Christ, and this is where that helps. When you accept Christ, you get this whole clean slate, where you don't have to be that person who was super messed up anymore. You get to take His view of your being and adopt it, make it into who you are. And He loves you, loves me, loves us SO much! The echos of His love carry over the centuries. Whole books are written simply about one aspect of His love. The Bible is pretty much one big "God loves you, and this is what He went through to show you that!"
If God loves us THAT much, who are we to tell Him, "no, you're wrong, I suck and I know it?" He's pretty clear on the fact that He thinks we're the best creations ever, so it doesn't seem wrong to me to be okay with yourself if He thinks that highly of you.
I'm not talking about not acknowledging faults, or turning the gift of love and grace into arrogance. I'm talking about not letting kids in the church grow up believing that their humanity makes them dirty, even after they've been washed clean by Christ's blood.
How do I know that this happens? The most obvious answer is, I was one of those kids. I grew up hating myself because I could never be good enough for love, or so I thought. Yeah, I knew God loved me, but the fact that He loved me didn't translate into the idea that I could love myself, and a huge part of it had to do with being taught false humility through most of my childhood. When it is so deeply ingrained in you that you are a fallen being, perpetually broken and so unworthy of love, the almost afterthought addition of "oh, by the way, God totally still loves you" tends to fall on deaf ears. It wasn't until I got to college and took a lot of classes with a professor who kept telling me that God wasn't mad at me, that He was actually pretty crazy about me, and I got past the conviction that she was speaking heresy that it started to sink it. And I mean started. It took a long time to really get through my head. There are still plenty of days when I revert to the old thoughts of "how could God love you, because of..." The difference is, I now know better, and I can speak against them when they creep in. There are plenty of people that I know who don't know that difference. Young girls that I've had the opportunity to work with, who come to me crying because they're convinced that they're worthless and can't do anything right. Girls who go to church on a regular basis. It breaks my heart, because I see so much of my own struggles with convincing myself that I'm not worthless.
Which brings me to the second part of what I wanted to talk about. The condemnation that the Church tends to project to the world. I believe the technical term is culture wars, in which the Church tries to control every aspect of culture (not necessarily a bad thing), but goes about it in a way that makes the rest of the world think that Jesus is the biggest jerk to ever walk the earth (altogether a very bad thing). I'm going to go out on a limb and say two things: 1) Copying culture, but adding Christian language instead of "secular" is quite possibly my least favorite thing ever. I don't ever want to copy culture, and hide behind my line of Christianity and only let it impact people behind that line. I want to go out into the culture around me and impact those people, the ones who need to hear it the most. I have the utmost respect for artists like Mumford & Sons and Owl City, who are reaching huge audiences with music that has very clear imagery pointing to God. And it doesn't just extend to that. I think there is more Jesus in secular culture than a lot of Christians realize. After all, God is the source of all creativity. Those brilliant singers, songwriters, artists, writers, and musicians who are so popular all got those talents from God, and God shines through if you listen hard enough. More often than not, listening to these artists just makes me want to go out and impact culture more, because think about what could happen if people with crazy artistic talent who are popular now could do with their talent if they have the direct line open with God? And instead the Christian culture shies away, scared to be tainted by their sin.
2) And please don't lynch me for this: I think the the us vs. them attitude of many Christians regarding cultural differences, specifically the LGBT community, is one of the most harmful things ever. Believe me, I know all the things the Bible says on the subject. But they are still people, created in God's image, struggling with their lives, looking for love. I'm not prepared to explore the whole nature vs. nurture debate or what we can do to "cure" them, or if that's even possible. That's not what I want. I want everyday Christians to go out and make friends with them, and make up for so many people from the Church who straight up hate them simply because of that one thing, without ever getting to know the person. The way to wage a "culture war" is not to keep introducing legislation which pits us vs. them. The way to wage the war is to cross the battle lines and sit down and make friends. Yeah, you don't agree. Whatever. No friends ever agree 100% of the time. You can still love them. (Note: This applies for the battle lines drawn within the church too.)
There's more that I could say, other points I want to elaborate on at a later date. But I think this has gotten long enough as it is. I would love this to start a conversation, even if you don't agree with me. I'm okay with that. I've pretty much given up on trying to get everyone to agree with me. I just want people to think about these issues.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make His face to shine upon you
And be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift the light of His countenance upon you
And give you peace.
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