An Addendum to Spencer’s “A Letter To Andrew and Other Young Artists Injured By The Church”
Before I go off the grid for personal reasons, I’m posting some of the unfinished pieces I had laying about the MT database. It’s not something I would normally let out, but, hey, it’s the Olmec new year.
Michael Spencer, the inimitatable Internet Monk, is probably my favorite writer in the Christian blogsphere. He’s often wrong, sometimes pigheaded, and even vainglorious in his worst moments. He’s probably even got a streak of persecution complex, although having read some of what people say about this obscure hillbilly, it’s hard not to feel he’s got a point. All of which still classifies him well ahead of me on any righteousness scale. He seems to be someone who truly cares about his world, his God, his family, his life. He struggles with a variety of doubts or confusions on certain deep topics. He can complain about Focus on The Family’s list of 10 Things That Mean Your Son Is A Fag and still compliment them for their fine work on parenting.
In my own vaingloriousness, I’m adding to his thoughts on Christians with art in “A Letter To Andrew and Other Young Artists Injured By The Church“. He really does carry the day with an excellent piece, well thought out, and characteristically showing his years of thoughtfully considering this issue. Only a fatheaded jerk would feel he has anything to add to it, but I’m a blogger, so that goes without saying.
So my addendum to Andrew:
Dear Andrew,
I wanted to add some thoughts to Rev. Spencer’s wonderful ones. You don’t know me, so you should take what I say with more than a grain of salt. But I wanted to tell you some of the things that I have learned from working with artists who were Christians.
Most Christians really aren’t going to get you or your work, should you follow your muse. It’s just the way it is. Even the churches that claim to be artist-friendly will cause you grief. My wife, just an art historian, used to go nuts at everyone asking her if she was going to study Christian art. She’s a medievalist who came to Christ as an adult, and finds the idea of art being either Christian or not kind of stupid. All art is God-breathed, she has said. I’m not sure I understand it but maybe you do.
Most Christians, even those pesky pro-artist Reformed people in the PCA, still think that you should be doing something that is overtly evangelistic, that your work should be obviously about Jesus. And maybe it is. Or maybe it isn’t. I’m just saying that they’ll try to put you in a box.
You’re not alone, friend. Christians, like everyone else, want to control what is wild, what is untamed. And art truly is. An act of creation, an act of the will, an act of the muse. You drive them nuts. Sorry. But you drive most people nuts, so they’re no different than most folks. It’s just that they’re your folks and it’s very hard.
A friend of mine, now an accomplished painter in Chicago (she has a new show going up this fall!), told me an interesting story from her college years. When she decided to continue in Art rather than become a missionary, her Christian friends more or less started to pray for her soul. I think they had an exorcism, too. But the story I was thinking of was one from her babysitting her pastor’s two-year old. The boy, she was told, could do anything, but that she should try to keep him from drawing.
“He really drawing,” his mother said, “and we don’t want him to turn out an artist.” As if it were synonymous with “Satanist”. (He wasn’t even playing D&D…)
My friend never did let it out that she was a painting fool.
Look, Christians are regularly stupid. We somehow lose our minds from all the Jesus stuff at the Christian bookstore. Reformed people seem to lose it from all their heavy theological reading. Most of them are cerebral but not artistic.
There are some great artists who have faith. Mako Fujimura comes to mind, as does András Visky, the Romanian playwright (one of his bible comments here). I like their work. There are even popular artists with faith, although they try to keep it close.
You’ll have a problem with your faith. If you let it be known, Christians will try to get you to conform to their image of who you should be, and the secular art world thinks you are Thomas Kinkaide. So there’s that.
And then there’s another problem, one that Rev. Spencer didn’t tell you about. It has to do with transition times in your life. Artists are normally bigger thinkers than other people. I’m trying to make a living through evaluating people and it’s one of those weird things that came out of my work. This is going to cause problems for you.
These transitions are from one way of thinking to another. They’re disastrous: a lot of people have breakdowns in them, because you’re moving from a way of seeing the world that has worked to something else. The old way no longer works for you, but the new way hasn’t materialized.
They suck. And I’m not sure that there’s a secret to getting through them. Since you will be going through something that most of the people in your church don’t understand, you may be alone in it. It feels like you are losing your faith, and your mind. But hold on: Jesus was bigger than you were before. He will be bigger than you afterwards.
Have you ever thought that Jesus as a kid probably wasn’t that understood? Just like you? His mother thought he was crazy and tried to lock him up. He came into the temple and his questions about the Bible and the teachings “amazed” the guys who were in charge of it. Do you think that anyone got him? I’d reckon that of any god you could choose, Jesus is the one most likely to appreciate what you’re going through.
You’re different. But you’re not an alien. You’re not better than anyone else, simply gifted. You have been given a way of seeing what others cannot. Eyes to see, ears to hear, so said the Master. From whom much is given, much is expected, which is a hard burden on you.
It’ll be hard to be be both a disciple of Christ and a practicing artist. But when was anything worth doing easy?
So create. Work hard. Revel in the joy that you feel when the art flows from you, when you lose track of time and fall outside your body, your self. Enjoy creating, just as your creator enjoys it. Touch his thoughts, feel them taking over your mind. Feel the eternal in your hands as you create.
And don’t be too hard on us who don’t. We’re petty. We’re hurtful. We don’t understand you. Please have patience.
Whether you see it or not, some of us ham-handed idiots will run interference for you when we can.
