Two for Housecleaning Chores

I crank up the jams while doing household chores. This morning's selection was Bob Dylan's 1979 release, Slow Train Coming. For some self-appointed high priests of all things Dylan, Slow Train is an embarrassment, the audio equivalent of the crazy uncle in the attic, an aberrant episode in Dylan's career.

I'm a huge Dylan fan and I disagree with this self-appointed intelligentsia. Slow Train Coming is an overt expression of Christian faith, to be sure. But it's also got a lot of great music and some profound lyrics.

Great art and Christian witness aren't mutually exclusive ends for an artist to pursue. People as diverse as Johann Sebastian Bach, Anne Rice, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bruce Cockburn, Annie Dillard, and C.S Lewis, have been, at least at times in their careers, about expressing faith in Christ in great art. There is undeniably a lot of Christian schmaltz that masquerades as art. (I won't name names.) But, at least in the case of Slow Train Coming, Dylan need not hang his head. Nor should anyone who believes that a great Savior deserves great music.

Here are two of my favorites from the LP: I Believe in You and Gotta Serve Somebody, videos and lyrics.

The video quality of neither is great, but I still like them:


I Believe In You
They ask me how I feel
And if my love is real
And how I know I'll make it through.
And they, they look at me and frown,
They'd like to drive me from this town,
They don't want me around
'Cause I believe in you.

They show me to the door,
They say don't come back no more
'Cause I don't be like they'd like me to,
And I walk out on my own
A thousand miles from home
But I don't feel alone
'Cause I believe in you.

I believe in you even through the tears and the laughter,
I believe in you even though we be apart.
I believe in you even on the morning after.
Oh, when the dawn is nearing
Oh, when the night is disappearing
Oh, this feeling is still here in my heart.

Don't let me drift too far,
Keep me where you are
Where I will always be renewed.
And that which you've given me today
Is worth more than I could pay
And no matter what they say
I believe in you.

I believe in you when winter turn to summer,
I believe in you when white turn to black,
I believe in you even though I be outnumbered.
Oh, though the earth may shake me
Oh, though my friends forsake me
Oh, even that couldn't make me go back.

Don't let me change my heart,
Keep me set apart
From all the plans they do pursue.
And I, I don't mind the pain
Don't mind the driving rain
I know I will sustain
'Cause I believe in you.

Copyright ©1979 Special Rider Music




Gotta Serve Somebody
You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage,
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage,
You may be a business man or some high degree thief,
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk,
You may be the head of some big TV network,
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame,
You may be living in another country under another name

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a construction worker working on a home,
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome,
You might own guns and you might even own tanks,
You might be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,
You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,
You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk,
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk,
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread,
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy,
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy,
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray,
You may call me anything but no matter what you say

You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Copyright ©1979 Special Rider Music

What is Christian Art?

What constitutes Christian art?
There's a grand tradition of Christian art that includes people like Bach, Michelangelo, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis, to name a tiny few.

But what made past works of art Christian? And what characterizes Christian art today? (If there is any Christian art today?)

In a post several days ago, Jan of TheViewfromHer, effectively slams contemporary notions of what makes art Christian as, essentially, legalistic, proscriptive, and frankly, not art.

She reviews some of the usual criteria that contemporary Christians seem to associate with art they describe as Christian. Reading them, you can almost feel the walls closing in, Jan effectively portraying what the Pharisaic guardians of contemporary Christian "art" claim to be the rules, presumably given by Christ Himself:

Christian Books. 1. Books written by Christian authors. 2. Can be about any theme, problem or storyline, but provide "Christian" solutions. Usually with Bible verses. 3. Printed by Christian publishers. "Secular" writers do not write Christian books. (Duh.) That's why books on the New York Times Best Seller List are not Christian. (With the exception of The Purpose Driven Life, which meets the criteria of numbers 1-3.) See, how it all starts to fit?

Christian Music. 1. The songs are about God. 2. The music is usually distributed by a Christian label. 3. The singer/artist is a Christian. Songs by a "secular" artist that may seem to have a Christian theme can be categorized as such only when re-recorded by a Christian artist. This is understandable, because they need to be specific about whose money they're targeting. Christian money, of course!

Christian "Art." 1. Contains a Christian symbol: cross, dove, or fish. 2. Contains a Scripture verse. 3. Has John 3:16 hidden somewhere in it. 4. Is only created by a Christian artist, because no one else would even think to include numbers 1-3 in a work of art. 4. Sold in Christian bookstores, because, well...of numbers 1-3.

There really are Christians who think this way and by simply and honestly presenting their thinking, Jan, a committed Christian herself, demonstrates how stiflingly silly it is.

Such strait jacketed notions are great if your goal is to create a hermetically-sealed religious subculture. But we Christians belong to a Savior Who has repeatedly told us to go into the world, to be the good news to our neighbor, to love others, and to care about the world God has given to us.

Those "rules" for Christian art forms are terrific, too, if you buy into the notion that all Christians have their lives together and that having come to faith in Christ, their primary task is to tell others how to live. Christians are the ones though, who have been given the courage by God's Holy Spirit to admit their humanity and their need for the God Who made Himself and His love known in Christ. There can be no self-righteousness in Christian art, because Christians know, as Martin Luther put it, we are all beggars.

The fact is that, like the rest of the human race, Christians have problems and conflicts. We face challenges and our lives aren't perfect. (The only difference between us and the rest of the human race is that we face these with a dependence on Jesus Christ.)

Any artistic expression that acknowledges the realities of life is far more likely to be Christian or to have Christian implications than some of the bland banalities that pass for "Christian art" these days.

That's because we Christians follow an incarnated God, a God Who has entered into our realities. When God took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, the Bible reminds us, He experienced everything we experience except that, because He remained sinless, He conquered sin and death for us. Jesus experienced fear, grief, anger, disagreements, disappointments, hunger, thirst, prejudice, disdain, internal conflicts, betrayal, the temptation to go against the plan for His life, and much more.

Real art, whether it mentions Jesus or quotes Bible passages overtly, may be Christian insofar as it deals honestly with such themes and issues. This past Friday, writing about the stifling definitions of what constitutes Christian art, Jan says:

[Considering the common criteria for] what today's Christian culture regards as the "Christian Arts" - literature, music, art, movies. Not very inspiring. No modern-day Paradise Losts or Mozarts or Sistine Chapels. Tragic. Shameful. We don't even know what we're missing because we don't recognize it anymore. Beauty and creativity all get watered down by rules and legalism and suspicion and modernist literal thinking into a gray morass of mediocrity. By rules and literalism I mean Christian art/literature/music must always be about God, or a "Christian" theme, include Bible verses, and provide closure with Jesus as the solution.

I'll be frank: those expressions are not art. They may be creative, and thought-provoking, and have a place in the Christian life. But true Art is something else entirely.

Amen!

Jan then goes on to discuss what might be good definitions of Christian art:

1. It has to be excellent...

2. It does not have to have a purpose...God came up with the idea of useless beauty. [I love that line. It's so true!]

3. It does have to be true. This one gets a little stickier, and is where some "Christian artists" can get confused. Simply put, "true" is when something matches reality. Christian art must certainly be true. Stories and characters must match reality. Dan Edelen wrote an excellent post about literary characters. Real people struggle, and have conflict. They fail. They even curse. Yes, dammit, they really do. (And I'm not talking about movies that use the F-bomb in place of writing meaningful dialogue.) Real people sin. (gasp!) And truthfully relating the conflict of that sin and failure is truly Christian Art.

4. Non-Christians can create Christian Art...Human beings (saved or not) are all created in the image of God, and all bear the thumbprint of His creativity. Non-believers can certainly create something that is excellent, and true. Lost people expressing their "lostness" in a yearning for love and acceptance and meaning is very Christian. (We were all there at some point.) Don't split hairs about them not intending it for God. I think this is a pretty good example of them understanding God's invisible qualities (Romans 1:19-20).

Read both of Jan's posts (see here and here) on this important topic.

Christian art has the ability to touch all people at the cores of their beings. It avoids the formulaic, self-righteousness, and jargon.

Christian art breaks open truths about life without preaching.

And for it to be Christian art, it must be art.

Maybe there's always been precious little art that expresses Christian truth and sensibilities. But I can't help but feel that future generations will regard ours as a dark age, not because of that evil world from which we Christians seem to want to retreat, but because of the dearth of great art coming from Christians and because of the failure of Christians to recognize Christian themes in the great art being produced by non-Christians.

Jan does a great job with this topic. Make sure you read her blog every day.

[THANKS TO: John Schroeder of Blogotional for linking to this post. He observes that he doesn't see much in the way of Christian art in existence these days.]

The Modern Church and the WWJD Question

Jan of TheViewfromHer has one of the most interesting blogs around. Go read her interesting post called WWJD, in which she challenges the notion of presuming to ask, "What would Jesus do?"

I left some comments at her blog. They're presented, with links, and edited for clarity below:

I take your point about Christian art, or what passes for Christian art. It's often marginally Christian and not really art.

I also take your point about the WWJD slogan. An acquaintance of mine once said that the real question for all of us is, "What has Jesus done?" What, in other words, has He accomplished for us through His life, death, and resurrection? That action calls for the response of faith that will have as seeking to live like true disciples. (I accept Dallas Willard's definition of discipleship as striving to live our lives as though Jesus were us.)

But of course, the minute I say, "I can't live like Jesus because I'm not God," a true statement, I run into some troubling things that Jesus said. Among the most troubling are His words in John 14:12: "Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father..."

The New Testament book of Acts reports that the first-century Church performed many miraculous signs on the order of those performed by Jesus...and more. I don't remember, for example, that when people sat in the shadow of Jesus, they were cured of their diseases; that happened with Peter.

Acts emphasizes repeatedly that a Church in prayerful dependence on Christ, Who was acting as their advocate and intermediary with the Father, did amazing things. In essence, they did what Jesus did, including getting themselves killed for their faith. (That's another thing that Jesus had promised His followers would happen, in John 16:33 and elsewhere.)

Of course, the miracles performed by Jesus and the early Church were never meant to be ends in themselves. They were semeia (signs) pointing to Christ's power to bring about eternal transformations to those who repent and believe in Jesus. As many have observed, Jesus didn't heal every leper, raise every dead person to life, feed all the hungry, or cast out every demon in Judea. Nor did He stay in every town He visited until He worked every wonder He could have possibly done. This fact, in itself points out that we Christians shouldn't get hung up on miracles. God grants them only when they have something to do with telling people about His redemeptive power.

Another thing about miracles, which William Willimon talks about in his wonderful commentary on Acts, is that no two miracles performed by Jesus or the disciples were precisely the same. Each one was meant to be a unique sign of Christ's power and love, pointing to His ultimate triumph for us over sin and death.

I believe that a modern Church that prays "Your will be done" could also do a lot of miraculous signs in Jesus' Name, so long as there is a concomitant willingness to follow Jesus to the cross and beyond. (There's the rub, for me anyway.)

Chronicles of Narnia: Not Meant to Be an Allegory of the Gospel

I love C.S. Lewis' seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia. I'm excited that the first book he wrote for the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, will be coming in movie form this coming December.

I love the books because, first of all, they represent great literature, wonderful stories filled with intriguing characters in interesting situations. Another attraction is Lewis, the stylist: as an Ohio State professor of Literature once told me, Lewis "writes like an angel."

There is also much Christian truth in the Chronicles. Aslan is clearly a Christ figure. But, as Craig Williams shows us in the latest post on his wonderful blog, Lewis never intended The Chronicles of Narnia to be an allegory.

The person who sets herself the goal of identifying what every character or circumstance "represents" in Christian truth or the Biblical witness will soon understand the futility of the undertaking and rob themselves of the joy that goes with simply letting their tales come to them as is. (Although there are oodles of Biblical allusions.)

Lewis was a scholar of the first degree, steeped in a knowledge of the myths of many cultures: Greek, Nordic, Roman, and so on. He drew on that rich tradition to weave these magical tales.

Yes, Lewis has created what must be regarded as a great expression of Christian art comparable to anything created by Michelangelo. But part of the Chronicles' greatness and their capacity to both entertain and enlighten resides in their being, first of all, great works of art that avoid pedagogy.

Read Craig's post with quotes from two Lewis letters addressing this issue.