Pure Scum: The Left-Out, the Right-Brained and the Grace of God by Mike Sares

Author:Mike Sares [Sares, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian, Biography
ISBN: 9780830836291
Goodreads: 7790342
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2010-03-17T06:00:00+00:00

9

Art

Dancing in the Pen

We work hard with our own hands.

I’m married to an artist. I remember when Mary and I were dating, I would stop by her parents’ house during the summer when she was home from graduate school. She would be hunched over, working on some project. I’m somewhat of an artist myself, though not the visual kind. I like to write stories and lyrics and sometimes a little bit of music. So we produced children who are artists as well. Our oldest daughter is a visual artist with a master’s degree in the fine arts. Our second daughter is an actress and a good singer. Our two sons have both become better guitar players than their father and are visual artists to boot.

The artistic temperament is a difficult one to deal with, not just at home but in the church. The things that make artists sensitive to beauty and truth are the same things that can make it difficult for them to get along with others. Let’s face it: artists are not accountants. Many of them cannot handle their finances, much less their emotions. There’s an old joke among pastors that when Satan fell from heaven, he fell into the worship team. (I think that joke says more about the inability of senior pastors to get along with artists than it does about theology!) Of course there are exceptions, but the tortured, angst-filled, manic-depressive artist is a typical character that everyone recognizes in books, in film or in their personal lives.

I love artists. I love the passion they bring to life and to the church. I think that artists are at times prophetic in their gifting, telling us truths that even the best preachers can only hint at.

Consider, for example, the truth that can be found in architecture. The Gothic cathedral is itself a metaphor. From the outside, a Gothic church building such as Notre Dame in Paris looks massive, foreboding and even a little bit scary. The windows are dark, the exterior is colorless. There are gargoyles—demonic-looking creatures—adorning the downspouts all over the outside of the cathedral and spewing water when it rains. The person on the outside has no inkling what he or she is missing on the inside, both literally and metaphorically. But once inside the church, the worshiper is bathed in light—and not just any old light. Thousands of pieces of stained glass throw light of every imaginable hue all over the cathedral and the worshiper. There is art in the ornate altars and the carvings in stone and wood. Statues and paintings of great people who have gone before are all around. And of course, inside the cathedral we find Christ—depictions of his life, death and resurrection. Thus, the Gothic cathedral becomes a metaphor for one’s journey from the outer darkness to the light of God’s kingdom. It is a metaphor of our conversion.

A tour of the history of Western art shows its incredible Christian roots. As the church gained legitimacy, money and power, it began spending money on the arts.

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