Tell a Truer Story – Why Excellence in The Arts Should Be Important to the Christian

Everything is art. Yes, everything.

From the chair you’re sitting in, to the device you’re reading on. From the cars, buses, and trains we ride, to the bridges and streets we cross. A craftsman, an architect, some artist somewhere, designed it. Good design makes us happy. It has a telos—a purpose, goal, or intention. 

In the beginning, God created, and art in its purest form is nature itself. He is the inventor of art and the first creator, the unmoved mover. He made the world and human beings in his image and called it good, and we too in varying capacities have the propensity to subdue the earth and create as He did. 

That being said, like all other things that we do for the glory of God, excellence in art is never one that should be overlooked. As a Christian performer living in New York City, this concept has never been more pressing and evident to me. These streets are full of high-level work in every genre of the arts. Whether hanging on the wall of a world-famous museum or happening live under the lights of a Broadway stage, art will be interacting and communicating with you. 

It can be a most wonderful experience for your senses, but this intense and oftentimes abstract medium has great power. Art mimics reality, it expresses meaning, sends messages, reveals worldview, and creates and informs the culture. You are surrounded by craftsmanship, and if you listen closely you will find that everything sings.

Of course, one of our most popular and favorite art forms is that of movies and storytelling. I am reminded of the time I saw the Broadway version of Life of Pi with a fellow apologist and sister in Christ. By the end, we were bursting to share our worldview analysis and dissection of the entire show. Once you are aware of how evident the views, beliefs, morals, and values of an author are thrust upon an observer, you simply cannot unsee it. 

I hope that I have your forgiveness for any spoilers, but the plot of Life of Pi aims to do exactly that. After being lost at sea for 227 days, the lead character Pi recounts his story to some government officials who arrive after his rescue. The first telling includes animal companions and fantastic events that lead to him finally being washed up on a Mexican shore. When the officials don’t believe it, Pi concludes they “want a story they already know.” So he tells it again, only this time there are no animals involved and his companions are instead his family members, all of which meet a horrific death before his eyes. Pi may have favored the story he could cope with, but it is left up to the audience to decide which account they preferred. Pi has a multi-religious background and explains that as it is with faith, no one belief system is the Truth wholesale. We can pick what we’d like to live out from each, while disposing of what doesn’t work for us. “As long as you believe in ‘something’” is what’s presented as virtuous.

While it might sound good and tolerant, this is terribly unsatisfying and logically incoherent. As my favorite apologist Abdu Murray puts it, religions are only superficially the same, but fundamentally different. If an entire audience can be moved toward relativism in one short play, how much more serious should we be as Christian makers about communicating God’s Truth through our craft? Jesus used parables with those in his time and culture, and like them, we too are moved by stories. Even in secular works the longing for God still exists. The longing for enchantment, transcendence, significance, and justice fulfilled—the ‘Good’ story. Ultimately, we can be and we will be drawn by beauty, awe, and wonder. 

We can use our creative gifts, whether small or big, as worship and to invite others in. If God expected beauty in the building of the Tabernacle (Exodus 25-31) would he not also expect and encourage it in us? Even if you don’t consider yourself an artist, you as an individual are a work of art. Omelettes and outfits, as philosopher Paul Gould would say, even things as mundane as these can be put together with excellence. Whatever you do, when you are oriented towards God, it will be evident in what you produce and in who you are. And all who look upon it should have the opportunity to get a glimpse of Christ. 

There are so many competing narratives in this world. Christian art and media should challenge those scripts, and frame up the good, the true, and the beautiful in compelling ways. It should elicit viewers to think and consider the way in which they view the world, what lies they may be believing, and if the foundations on which they stand are really sound. We crave and applaud themes of honor, love, and self-sacrifice, when a main character gives up their own life to save another. This is the central motif of Christianity, the theme of all themes, the greatest story ever told, and even Hollywood can’t help but tell it time and time again. We need to outpace the competition, tell the stories, and tell them better.

Our hearts are wired to long for this, to long for answers to our fundamental problems, stories that explain our lives and the world around us. It’s up to us to offer something different, something ‘truer’. If we can live and move and have our being in a way that is “salty and flavorful” (Matthew 5:13-16), a kind that most have never tasted, we can lead the world to that satisfying answer. It may not be as loud and mass-produced as the competing metanarratives, but it will be refreshing and gratifying to the soul. True, some might hate it, but to those who are being saved it will be the fragrance of life. 

So let us create things and live lives that captivate. Let us point up and back to the source of all creation. To the artistic hands that formed the universe. 

Let beauty be our apologetic. For if you are drawn by beauty, it will lead you to the Truth.