Making Good Christian Art

The story of Christian art is a complicated one, and anyone trying to discover how it came to settle into such a low grade in our present day (although, any time you say this you have to provide a caveat that there are many Christians in every field who are thinking well about their art and producing wonderful work, but they are the exception rather than the rule) has to see it as a combination of many factors. Without a doubt, one key factor that brought us to where we are is Christianity's exile from academia.

To some this might seem like a non-sequitur. What does the world of academia have to do with Christian art? A lot. If you look at general cultural trends in history the pattern emerges that culture is created at the top, and trickles down to the general population. Postmodernism was a subject of philosophy papers 50 years before it was on MTV. In folklore the understanding used to be that the "lore" of the folk arose from the folk themselves, but that isn't the understanding anymore. Now it is believed that the lore, or culture, of a people flows out of a relatively smaller group of social elites and then diffuses into the general population. Wendell Berry, thinking about this from the slightly different angle, said that the country gives the city food and the city gives the country culture. It could be said that academia gives the world its mind.

I make this point to say that academia occupies a powerful post in any culture. There is a sense in which, the thoughts that the academics think, the culture will think. Academics carve out intellectual space which people can live and create in.

One of the reasons why we find little space for Christian art is that there is not space for it in the academy. Religion, as it is commonly portrayed, is seen to rub against the grain of what the academy is about at its most fundamental levels. Science and understanding is about objective fact, testable truth, and knowledge free from the superstition of religion. Religion is seen as undermining knowledge and inquiry, let alone creativity and art. This is an unfortunate mistaken notion.

Christianity has massive resources for careful thinking and careful artistry, but that will not be shown until Christians begin to think and create well. For this reason Christians in academia should be celebrated and supported rather than, as they often are, told to go into the "ministry." Christianity has resources within it to claim Christ's lordship over every inch of life, including the academy.

In this, as in any area of this broken world that we hope to redeem, the fallenness will only be beaten back by God's people entering a place incarnationally and serving it faithfully and creatively. If we hope to reach a culture, we have to go to where the culture is made. Then, perhaps, believers will learn to think well and apply it to their art (and every place God calls them) and the notion of Christian art will begin to change from a marketing scheme to something closer to a fountain of creativity mirroring the infinitely creative one in whose image we are made.

One way this can be achieved is through the development of a Christian aesthetic.

An aesthetic in art, in short, is a way of seeing art, a certain set of questions to ask of a work of art, a set of convictions about what makes good art and what makes bad art. It is a body of ideas that shapes a body of art.

To make an abstract idea more concrete lets take some concrete examples of other aesthetics in the art world. Impressionism, in the history of painting, is an aesthetic. The Impressionists had certain convictions about what made good paintings and what made bad paintings and then took out their canvases and made art in line with those convictions. Paintings made in line with the Impressionistic aesthetic have visible brush strokes, emphasize the changing qualities of light, often choose ordinary things as their subjects. It is a body of work that is all unified by a common body of ideas.

Aesthetics generate art.

An aesthetic is a canopy under which new art can grow. It is a frame which gives a structure for new artists to build on. It is a worldview. And all of our creations are simply products of our worldview. Impressionism was an idea created Impressionistic artists, as people came to share the convictions of the first Impressionists they in turn created Impressionistic art, which in turn fed the cycle all the more. The feminist aesthetic provided the resources for artists to create work in line with the priorities of feminist criticism. And so on. The Black Arts Movement gave rise to Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou. Ansel Adam's convictions about what made a good landscape photograph spawned a generation of Ansel Adams photographers. There is a reason why every fantasy novel has echoes of The Lord of the Rings. People make creations in line with the ideas that have shaped them.

If there is to be robust Christian art there must be a robust Christian aesthetic. Christian artists must have the resources to come to any work of art and say something about it from a Christian perspective. And this something must go beyond the level of "it doesn't have a clear moral" or "this poem is not about Jesus." Those considerations do not make good art. When there is a thoughtful, informed aesthetic to unify Christian artists there will be thoughtful, informed Christian art.

This is why the question of how Christian art came to be as it is is so complicated. It not only a question of changing the art itself, but of changing the ideas behind the art. It is a question of scholarship and criticism. It is changing the way we answer the question "What makes for good Christian art?" to reflect the depth of Creators creativity and all the powers he has given artists to say something true about this world we find ourselves in. Until we can achieve that good Christian art will be only for those artists who have the wit or luck to figure out what it means for them to be a Christian and an artist on their own.

If this is the fate of Christian art then the Church will leave huge fields of the world God has made barren of the seeds of redemption that may arise when Christian artists pour themselves into the world for the sake of the world's flourishing.

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What Kind of God Do You Want?

Thanks to Austin Conner for the following thoughts:

Luke 9:23 - And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

If you're like me, you've heard this a thousand times. It's a great verse. But the other day the phrase "let him deny himself" jumped out at me. What does it really mean to do that? What is involved in the process of 'denying ourselves?' For starters, we have to figure out what "our self" really is. In other words, what is the default mode of our heart. What is it, when I'm alone by myself and comfortable, do I think about? What am I telling myself? For me, the little voice in my head says "You NEED to_________________, and then God will accept you and love you. But if you don't, God will be upset, frustrated, angry and turn his back on you in the final judgment" The _____________ can be anything! Read my bible, pray for my parents, raise support, finish my to-do list. Anything. To sum those thoughts up, I am seeking justification through my works. And these thoughts either lead to pride (I'm proud of myself for completing all these tasks) or despair (I'm such a screw up for not doing the right things) Despair is where I fall on the spectrum. So often when I fail to complete these tasks/works I despair and fall into self-pity.

Now for the last year or so I would have told you that this is my struggle. I would have told you that this is an awful, inaccurate, false view of God. and you're exactly right. And this isn't anything really ground breaking. I think more people than not could point this out in the lives of others. HOWEVER, the light bulb clicked a couple days ago. WHAT I WANT IN MY OWN LITTLE WORLD IS CONTROL. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CONTROL MY ENVIRONMENT AND MAKE LIFE EASY FOR MYSELF. What I have done in order to make that possible is to create a god in my that could give me that control that I so desire! This all just and performance-based god could give me what I truly desire. I would have never thought I would WANT a God who is all just and harsh, and expects me to be perfect (as seen in my example earlier).
I would've told you you're crazy because I can't live up to those standards.

Of course, the problem with this whole thing is I THINK I KNOW WHAT I NEED. I think controlling my own life is the path to life. For those of you who really think that, you have a rude awakening. To make it short and sweet, we are hard-hearted and don't want the right things (Romans 3:10-18). But we have a God who knows what we need better than we do! In Luke 9:24 Jesus goes onto say "for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

So the most important question then is are you denying yourself? Are seeking to lose your life for Christ's sake or are you trying to save it for your own sake? Are you using Jesus as a means to your own end? Make no mistake about it - our hearts were meant to want something. God created us to want. And the only thing that will truly satisfy us is Christ and Christ alone.

Theology and Its Abuses (2)

It is not enough to write about value of theology without speaking about certain dangers that are inherent in the process because we live in a fallen world and are capable of twisting even something like the knowledge of God. So I wanted to take some time on the blog to speak about the limitations and dangers of theology.

1. We are finite and so is our knowledge: What we do not know about God will always be more than what we do know about God because he is infinite and we are finite. God has revealed things truly and we can have a certainty of them, but it must always be a humble certainty. Knowing is like digging a furrow to reach fertile soil for the seed to live on. A humble heart knows that there it is always in need of help to dig deeper and that there are treasures of God's that it does not yet have access to, they are yet to rich for it. This doesn't mean that we must enter the work of knowing with doubt and fear, as if maintaining ignorance was a good in and of itself, but it does mean that we ought to remove our shoes before we enter, for we are walking on holy ground. A humble heart, sure of its finiteness, practices theology with joy and love and never stops learning.

2. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies: St. Paul knew of human's tendency to grasp at whatever bits of glory they can find and wear them around like tin crowns, and he knew enough to know that it is so easy for us to do that with our knowledge. Theology has come to take on a negative connotation because people learn the knowledge but not the gospel, which means that they really have not learned the knowledge at all. If you can pass a theology multiple choice test but do not love others, then you need to go back and learn the lesson again. Love edifies, but knowledge puffs up. If our theology makes us proud, then we can be sure we do not know what Jesus knew.

3. No knowledge comes except by grace: Sometimes it is easy to forget, as we learn and solidify opinions and especially as we teach others, how long a journey it took for us to come to the opinions we now hold. We forget how slow and rebellious we were, how much God has to condescend to lead us by the hand. It is easy to forget, when we hold's God's jewels in our heads and hearts, that it was not our hands that put them there.

4. Learning is a process: Building on the last point, it takes a long time for us to learn things, and the process can often be spoilt and set back by forcing things to early. Currently I am learning a world of new things about God's work in creation. In the sense that I started connecting the dots and having new conversations about creation, the learning process started about 3 months ago. But the more time goes by the more I realize how this is a stage of growth that God has been preparing me to undertake as far back as my earliest memories. All the time I am combing through my past life with what feel like new eyes and seeing things I never saw before. The same lessons that I feel so enriched by now have been parading past my eyes for a decade and I failed to see them, yet, had they not, who knows if I would be seeing them now. Old conversations, journal entries, thoughts are all coming back now and feel as though the are speaking with new life. God guides the process of all of our growth and it is foolish to think that we can make it happen for ourselves or for other exclusively on our time table. We are not the Holy Spirit and should not step into his role in others lives. So much damage can be done when we forget to understand that everyone is riding the wave of the past. It may not be your role to be there when that wave becomes a breaker. Your role is to be where you are and love people faithfully wherever they are at.

5. Theology matters, but it also doesn't matter: There are two opposite things that are simultaneously true. The first is that what a person believes about God is the most important thing about them. It is the baseline from which all other lines in a persons life draw their plumb. The second is there is a basic theology, a mere Christianity, and beyond that core the importance is lessened. If you hold tightly to either one of these without holding both of them you are in danger the pendulum swinging to far in one direction. The first has been spoken of a lot on this blog, so I want to say some things about the second. There will not be a quiz on predestination at the gates of heaven. If our salvation were based on perfect knowledge, then literally none of us but Christ would be saved. But God, through his Son, is enlightening us to understand and love the truths of the gospel. We won't be asked about infralapsarianism, but we will be asked about Christ, if we knew him, and if he knew us. It is easy to make every little bit of doctrine a hill we die on, but in doing so we can win the battle and lose the war.

6. People can become not people, but the ideas they represent: Zeal for God's truth is a wonderful thing, but it goes wrong when it leads us to relate to people not as people created in God's image and precious to Him no matter what, but instead when we relate to them through what we think of their ideas. It is dehumanizing and it is unloving. We ought to want people to know and love the truth, but we can counteract that purpose by the way we think of them and speak to them. If the first thing you think about when you think about someone you disagree with is what you disagree about then you will only be able to act towards them through that wall. Doing so, you will create that wall, which is exactly what one who loves the truth must not do. The first thing that we think about when we think about anyone ought to be the image of God that they bear inside them and the inherent glory that they bear as a result. That creates a love that breaks down every barrier and makes us to treat one another as humans first, not as ideas. That is why Jesus was so irrestistible, he refused to speak or treat anyone with anything less than the honor and dignity which they, as image bearers of God, deserved.

7. Theology is not about canned answers: We will fail if we think that theology is abotu handing people textbook answers. Theology that is all bones and no flesh is of little use to most people. What people need is a theology that they can see. If you want to help someone, if you can, win them without saying a word. Make a bed of integrity first and then your words will possess a weight they never would have before. Sometimes people do not need answers. They need a friend, they need silence, they need a movie, they need compassion. Our theology ought to make us people who know the difference and love well enough to live it out. Dead orthodoxy can be as ugly as bare unbelief.

The God of Fertility

A few weekends ago I was staying at a friends house in the suburbs and it was a slow morning and it felt great outside so I went out on the porch and spent some time just staring. It is a new suburb, one that is built where the developers think the town will eventually be, meaning that it is basically a bunch of houses and streets surrounded by fields and forests. When developers make these suburbs they bring in big machines to create the topography they want, and are not always concerned about distributing the good topsoil evenly in every lot. So some houses end up with a lot and some houses end up with hardscrabble.

My friend's yard got the short end of the topsoil stick and had bald patches where the grass would not grow and weeds sprouting up through the patches where it would. I thought about what it would take for a person to bring that little plot of land back to life and what it would take for the land to come to mean enough to seem worthy to a person to do such a thing. It seemed like Abraham bargaining with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. "If there are 50 righteous people will you spare the city? 40? 20? 10? 5? 1?..." How big does a work of redemption have to be to be worthy of giving out lives to? If it is a large church? A small church? A household? A well? Large fields of land? A balding, suburban yard?

It struck me that God is the God of fertility. The God who makes the world makes it rich. What God does, we ought also to count worthy of doing. What he finds worthy to love we ought not to be ashamed to count as common. Perhaps even the work of saving a suburban yard from degradation is a work of redemption. God cares about every good thing, meaning his business is also making good soil. He built a world that keeps itself fertile. In an unfallen world there would be no barren lots, but we do not live in an unfallen world. The church is called to beat back the fall wherever it is found, including in suburban yards.

What would it take to look at a patch of soil and believe saving it to be good enough for God? We often fall into the trap of wanting a larger work, but to God there are no larger works, there is only the work he puts in front of us.

Psalm 65

"...You care for the land and water it;

you enrich it abundantly.

The streams of God are filled with water

to provide the people with grain,

for so you have ordained it."

10 You drench its furrows

and level its ridges;

you soften it with showers

and bless its crops.

11 You crown the year with your bounty,

and your carts overflow with abundance.

12 The grasslands of the desert overflow;

the hills are clothed with gladness.

13 The meadows are covered with flocks

and the valleys are mantled with grain;

they shout for joy and sing."

Summer Reading Wish List

We know you're busy, but our heart is for you to make this summer a summer of growing and learning. One of the primary ways this happens is by reading. Read fiction, read non-fiction, read books that give you a greater perspective of your life. The following one or two posts are some of the books I am looking forward to reading this summer. My hope is that one or two will be a book you want to pick up and spend some time in!

Through His Eyes: God’s Perspective on
Women in the Bible, by Jerram Barrs
With so much conversation within the Church on women’s roles—both in the church and within a family--Jerram Barrs’ newest book, Through His Eyes, answers the question “What does God think about women, and how does he treat them?” Barrs says, “Right from the beginning in Genesis chapter one, God declares that He has made us, male and female, in His image; so He has given all of us this marvelous dignity of being crowned with the glory and honor of being made as small, physical, finite reflections of who He is in His infinite majesty.” He presents a biblical theology of how God views and treats women in the Bible.

I’m excited to read this for many reasons: 1. I’d like a better foundation on how God relates to women, despite what our culture may say, 2. Jerram Barrs consistently writes books that are biblically based and filled with truth, and 3. I’d like to examine my own heart and my own preconceived views that I’ve developed somewhere along the line concerning the roles of women.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

Simon Wells says that “imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real-life.” I would agree. We have so much to learn from fiction books—they make reality into something tangible, they paint a picture of something abstract more vividly than anything else could. This is one book that I’ve almost finished reading and I will be sad to put down with finality.

Gilead is a meditation on how even the simplest things and simplest people can be touched by an incredible grace and wonder. Regret, forgiveness, grace, resentment, jealousy, love, faith, and fear are all woven so tightly into this novel. The pace requires readers to put themselves in the shoes of John Ames, a preacher in his seventies who is nearing the end of his life. This book is his thoughts, journals, and letters to his seven year old son, and the expression of love is incredible.

A Quest for More, by Paul David Tripp

Authentic “kingdom-living” is emphasized in this book rather than a set of principles and step by step instructions. I’ve started this one, too, and have been really impressed and convicted thus far. Tripp shows us what we are living for: our own life and our own kingdom. And he compares that to the incredible life that were made to live, the one that we were created for. Why do we long for something more? Why do we know that this is not all there is? There is something more, Tripp says, and we need to see it. We need to see the bigger kingdom that Christ teaches about, because this is where we were meant to be.

This book is a heart check for anyone. It is opening my eyes to the focus I place on my own life. If you’ve been to summer Bible study at the Artisan the past few weeks, this is the book that Ryan has been emphasizing during his talks. I recommend it for a bigger view of your own life. Tripp writes, "In a fallen world there is a powerful pressure to constrict your life to the shape and size of your life. There is a compelling tendency to forget who you are and what you were made for. There is a tendency to be short-sighted, myopic, and easily distracted. There is a tendency to settle for less when you have been created for more. There is something expansive, glorious, and eternal that is meant to give direction to everything you do. And when you lose sight of it, you have effectively denied your own humanity."

Does Better Theology Make For Better Art?

It is assumed in our culture that Christianity undercuts real art, that a better Christian and a better artist are mutually exclusive. Art is seen as being about honesty and religion about wishful thinking. Art wrestles with the gritty realities of life, while religion is a crutch used to stave off life’s existential fears. Art is thought of as drawing people to the edge of their experience and understanding, while Christians draws them back to the status quo. However you want to think of it, we live in a culture where Christianity and creativity are not commonly associated.


It is counter-intuitive to say that for an artist to become a better artist he or she must (along with studying the craft itself, being involved in the community of artists, etc.) immerse himself or herself in theology. However, if we understand theology and art aright, we find this is exactly what must happen.

Theology, rather than being the study of the obscure arguments of “theologians” is simply the study of reality. If that is true then theology is the study of life is it is, was, and is meant to be, and artists who hope to tell a true story about this world must truly know the story they find themselves in. Mistake the story and an artist can still tell truth and can certainly make beauty. It would be foolish to say otherwise – there is a world of beauty that doesn’t come with the Christian label. Christians must learn to seek it, see it, and praise it anywhere it is to be found! However, theology teaches the true story that runs along the grain of the fabric of this world. It is the story that is the context of all our smaller stories – the stage they are all acted out upon. In this sense all art, all beauty, all truth merely borrows from God’s stores and has its being only in the world God has made. Theology makes better art because it is the act of climbing inside the story we are living in, and intentionally coming to understand it. When an artist does this she finds that the story climbs inside her as well. It becomes the light by which she sees all of life, including her art. It will then appear in her art – if she loves the truth, she will tell it. If it speaks truly of the world in which we were truly made then it will reach inside the viewer, the reader, the listener and ring dusty bells inside them. The “holy days on the calendar will wake up and chime.” We will all find that “I had been my whole life a bell and not known it until I was lifted and struck.”

To be specific, take two ideas Christian theology teaches and see how they have created truer art: idolatry and depravity. By idolatry I mean the complicated exchange by which we come to want things that can hurt us and the way that desire tends to turn to need, then addiction. The Bible teaches the mechanisms of idolatry, which are also the mechanisms of betrayal, of obsession, of murder, of long-simmering bitterness. It also teaches the means of repentance and the flourishing that it brings. For a lesson in how understanding idolatry makes for true stories watch the 1985 Academy Award winner, Amadeus. It is the story of one composer, Salieri, and how his love for Mozart’s music turned into hatred for the man because his own place had been eclipsed by Mozart’s greater gift. His piety turns to bitterness to God because God had denied him the one thing Salieri was using God to achieve. As an old man, with Mozart long dead, Salieri is still nursing his ancient bitterness and the power of the film is in the way it portrays him as a tired old man clutching at the threads of his own glory whose world is centered on himself and himself only.

Take another truth that Christianity teaches, that this world has gone horribly wrong and that wrong lives in each on of us as well. I have never encountered human depravity portrayed than in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. His characters are so fragile and foolish and full of bluster, yet so unexpectedly wise and tender and human. Dostoyevsky found his faith in the midst of human depravity – in the Soviet gulag – reading the pages of a borrowed New Testament. I imagine the faith he found gave him massive spiritual resources for seeing the beauty and the real ugliness in all the depravity around him. You cannot read The Brothers Karamazov without yearning for the wayward characters to make a true repentance and yet having the uttermost compassion for them whatever they do. This is Christianity coming out of an artist not as propaganda, but simply as a result of Dostoyevsky immersing himself in the theology of reality and then trying to tell a story. I can’t help but think that it is the way his art and his faith were integrated that will make his work endure as long as humanity does. It reminds me of a story in Philip Yancey’s book (UNEXPECTED PLACES>>>) when he went into the former soviet union as one of the first westerners allowed in after the iron curtain fell. He did not expect to find a thriving church in a country where Christianity was persecuted so tenaciously as it was in the soviet union, but that is exactly he found. When he asked how this could be the reply that came to him was that, “they took away our bibles, but they did not take away our Tolstoy and our Dostokevsky.”

The Father has strewn his grace everywhere. Artists have the power to join their work to that Great Work if they will only learn that their faith and their art are not separate things, but that each one draws them deeper into the other.

Taken by Twilight

I haven’t read the book(s), but my wife and I sat down and watched Twilight for the first time on DVD last night. I had been wondering what all the fuss was about and why so many have been so attracted to this series. We both enjoyed the movie in general, and it led to some good discussion afterwards, especially regarding why young women are so especially attracted to it.

My wife made the comment that she didn’t think she would get into the movie as much as she did, these are vampires for crying out loud, right? I mean, who would want a nice, normal high school girl to get in a relationship with a dangerous, blood-sucking vampire? Surprisingly, we did! That’s what was amazing about the movie (and about the book too is my guess). By the middle of the movie, you are wanting a relationship to happen that you wouldn’t have wanted before. Why? Because the vampire character, Edward, draws in both the main girl in the story, Bella, and the audience like a tractor beam. A character that starts off somewhat dark and mysterious, soon is discovered to be indomitably, irresistibly attractive. What is it about this vampire that is so attractive, even obsessively so, for Bella and so many viewers? As Edward admits to Bella in the movie, everything about himself is designed to attract her (his prey) to himself. Although his complexion is eerily ghost-like pale, he wins us over by being very caring and concerned, strong, intelligent, protective, chivalrous, romantic – the list goes on and on. Later in the story, we also find out that Edward has waited for someone like Bella for a long time and has now chosen at great potential cost to himself and his family to set all of his affection on her. We also see that he is a self-sacrificing lover – although there is a part of him that wants nothing more than to go into a feeding frenzy on her blood, instead, he has learned to control himself and care for her with a seemingly unstoppable, eternal love (vampires are immortal). As a pastor, I would say it is very important (as always) to use discernment in watching this movie because it can become something that further feeds a lie which our culture has swallowed hook-line-and-sinker: you will be totally fulfilled when you find Mr. or Mrs. Right. The movie could be dangerously misleading for naïve women and men who think they might possibly be able to find a completely heart-satisfying “soul-mate” in this life. It could create destructively unrealistic expectations for any earthly relationship. But with discernment, I believe Twilight very dramatically exposes what it is that we want most in this life. At the core of us, we want to be loved like Edward loves Bella more than anything else in the universe. We want to know that someone who is incredibly good and trustworthy and desirable and strong loves us with an irresistible, unfailing, always and forever love. Although this universal, deep-seated need will never be met by a mere mortal, Twilight is absolutely correct in pointing us to look for this kind of love in something or someone immortal. One of the great things about Twilight is that it not only gives us ways to think about what we want most but also gives us vivid ways to think about how Jesus is truly the only one who could ever satisfy our desire. Just think with me for a minute … what if it were true, that the kind of love that we see in Twilight were only a shadowy, dark picture of something even greater offered to us only in Christ? It would no doubt be the best news in all the world. What if someone incredibly strong and good and infinitely desirable had decided to set his unending love on you from before you were born, just because he loves you and for no other reason? What if it were true that this person was completely irresistible and drew you to himself in such a way that your love and desire and enjoyment of him would never fade? What if it were true that this person not only cared so intimately about you that He would literally watch over you while you sleep and catch every one of your tears in a bottle but was also so strong that he defended you from all evil and harm? What if it were true that although this person was so infinitely powerful and glorious that you could not even stand to look at him or be in his presence, He also loved you so much that He deliberately chose to control himself and his power in such a way that you could be near him and touch him and know him without being destroyed? Do you see that these are the infinitely great, mind-blowing promises of the gospel? No one disbelieves the gospel because it doesn’t promise enough but because it promises too much … way too much to really take in or fathom. But then again, if the gospel is something the infinite God thought up and did for us, wouldn’t it make sense that it would blow up even our highest finite expectations? And isn’t it heart-stopping good news that He overcomes not only our disbelief but also our futile attempts to find our satisfaction elsewhere by irresistibly drawing us to Himself? If you’ve never thought this way before about God’s offer to you in Christ, think about it. Why would you want to settle for anything less? If you’ve heard it before, but are somewhat stirred up by God’s love for you, take a moment, put your own name in this next verse, and hear from God’s own mouth how He loves you with this incomparable love. “I have loved you, (your name), with an everlasting love; I have drawn you, (your name), with loving kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3). So if you found yourself taken by Twilight like we were, let your God-given desire for infinite love lead you to Christ.

Review Corner: The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling

After I finished the Lord of the Rings series for the first time as a child I remember putting the final book down and being filled with a poignant sadness because it was over. It was a sadness that was sharp and sweet because it was filled with so much hope. Frodo and the fellowship had won the day and it seemed like everything bad might just "come un-true," but the pain they experienced on the journey left them all scarred in some way and in the end the only place they could turn for solace was in the Grey Havens, to the "far green country and to a swift sunrise."

It was a complicated emotion for a child to feel. In some way or another I've been chasing that feeling ever since.

All my favorite pieces of art capture that sad hope. I take it as a sign that I am not at home in this world and as a promise that this journey that seems like lost wandering is truly a homecoming. I take it as my truest religious sense, which art helps me to awaken. Awake, I am able to look out at the world and see the tragedy of its bondage and long for it too to experience it's promised awakening.

Finishing Harry Potter recently I could not stop thinking about that same sadness. J. K. Rowling has created a story as powerful and original as Tolkien's, awakening the same longings in me for justice and truth, and promising their inevitable fulfillment. It may seem "childish" to react so deeply to a children's book, but, if so, it says more about the world of adults than it does of the world of children.

Each book in the Harry Potter series is a story in and of itself, but each of them contributes to the larger story going on in the whole series, which culminates in the seventh book. If you have not read it yet, let me say that the culmination does not disappoint. Rowling satisfactorily answers the questions she raises, and as you turn the last page of the book you find that you were being prepared for the moment from the very first page of the first book. It all holds together in the most wonderful way like few stories I have read.

Rowling has received much criticism for her books, much of it, I am sorry to say, coming from the Christian community. The stories concern magic and wizards and some have accused Rowling of writing the occult into her books. (Jerram Barrs addresses this concern and more in part one and two of his lectures: Harry Potter and the Triumph of Sacrifical Love. I recommend them.)

It is an important question, because it calls into question the moral value of reading these stories. The first answer one might give is to point out is that while these stories involve magic and wizardry the stories are also happening in a moral world. Evil is shown as being really evil, with disgusting consequences. Rowling makes you love the people you are supposed to love in a moral universe. Harry Potter and his friends are children any parent would want their kids to grow up and be like. They love each other dearly, and, while they are not perfect, the series is full of instances of the reconciliation, redemption, and forgiveness that true community draws out of us. The magic in the Harry Potter series is portrayed as being a tool like any other, neutral in itself. Its goodness or badness depends on the person who uses it.

There is so much to be said about the parallels the themes of the books have with the Christian worldview. They show that evil falls back on itself and bears its own judgment within it. Rowling has written a complex understanding of idolatry into her stories. In the seventh book, Harry comes across a verse of the Bible scrawled into a tombstone which puts voice to one of the books themes. The verse says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The verse is like a key to understanding each characters motivations, just as it is in life. The series mirrors the Biblical worldview in that it plays out in a world that has gone terribly wrong, and the drama is the work of putting it to rights again. There is a climax and good wins, however, there are also echoes of a deeper hope beyond death, as another Bible verse on a tombstone suggests, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death."

Finally, you cannot talk about the parallels between Harry Potter and the Biblical worldview without talking about what the books say about the triumph of sacrificial love. In each book Harry sacrifices himself to stop evil from happening to his friends. In this he is a true hero, and, at the end of the series, we find that this is exactly why he is able to overcome. He has as deeper magic than all Voldemort's might, which Voldemort does not know about. It is the magic of love, and the series portrays the truth of Christ's words when he said, "greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I am reminded of what another great english writer, C. S. Lewis, said to a young boy who was worried that he loved Aslan, Lewis's mythical lion in the Narnia series, more than he loved Jesus. Lewis told the boy that his love for Aslan was the same thing as his love for Jesus, that Aslan could help him love Jesus better. The Harry Potter series makes me love Jesus more and draws me to worship God because of his gifts to writers like Rowling and for seeing the Great Drama played out in miniature on the page.

I recommend the books to you and to your children. I will certainly read them to mine.

Theology and Its Abuses (1)

The value of theology is a topic seen before on this blog, but I want to take two posts to speak to the dangers surrounding theology, both in neglecting it on the one hand, and abusing it on the other. The first post will make a case for why theology is something every believer should love dearly. The next will point out some ways that theology can be abused and cause our love to fail.

It can be a difficult topic. Especially right now, when so often you hear the word theology used as if it were a dirty word, as if the Christian life were really about things that theology couldn't help the believer attain. On the other hand, in making the case for a love for theology, it is easy to fall into the opposite distortion, that of believing that the Christian life is solely about bare knowledge and little else. Theology is the knowledge of God, but in a fallen world even it can be twisted in the hearts of sinful people.

But an answer can be given. The point is not to err on either side, but find the theology that Jesus knew, that made him both incredibly loving and incredibly committed to truth. Living where we do it is easy to forget that those two things are not mutually exclusive, but in the gospel they are not. So pursue that theology. Here are a few other reasons to love theology:

1. We are "bent inwards": We are fallen people living in a fallen world. We not only sin, but we tend to sin. Left alone we will not remain static, we will slowly deteriorate. It is because of this that the Christian life is meant to be one of repentance, one of constant correction, one of continuous seeking to know the Lord better and more deeply. To stop is to fail. As Jesus said, he is the vine and we are the branches. The only vines that live are the ones that remain in him. In part, this means remaining in theology. Learning to know the Lord better and come to understand his revelation of himself to a greater degree. In a sense, we are living in a river and to stop swimming is to be swept along. Theology is no different.

2. We don't know what we don't know: Everyone thinks what they know presently is everything there is to know. Sure we "know" we don't know everything, but it is easy to think we have basically enough. Then we learn and realize how much we have been missing. The new knowledge really does change the way we live in ways that we are happy to have. It is like living in a large, dark room with a narrow spotlight above you. The light illuminates a circle of ground around you and you make the mistake of thinking that this is all you need, but there are things out there in the darkness that you really need. Then you leave the room and go and live your life, love, suffer, and grow, and then when you return the circle of light has expanded and there are all sorts of wonderful things that you did not know about that are now illuminated. In a sense, you don't know what you don't know until you know it. The same is true of God, who is infinite and who every new bit of knowledge is our delight. If this is really our human position, why would we not continue pursuing knowledge of the Lord, and trying to make the how much of him we can see expand?

3. Theology is not an abstract concept: The word "theology" is so often synonymous with the word "obsolete" or "elitist." It is used as a catch all for ideas and concepts that are esoteric or unnecessary. But this is an unfortunate glitch in the language, saying more about us than about theology. Theology is not abstract, it is incredibly practical. To take an example, when I learned more about the sovereignty of God in salvation (sometimes the classic example of theology that doesn't connect to real life) it changed the way I forgive, the way I pray, the way I suffer, love, date, conflict, hope, plan, shop, etc. It changed everything. There was a connection for me between things that are true of God and the way I could live my life.

4. You cannot avoid making a theological statement: Sometimes just "loving Jesus" is offered as an alternative to getting immersed in theological debates, but even "just loving Jesus" is a theological statement. The point is to follow Jesus, but Jesus is only the starting point and all the 360 degrees to move from that point are only determined by theology. How can you even begin to answer the question of what it means to following Jesus without entering the realm of theology? If you are going to have to do it anyway, you may as well be as sure as possible where you are following him is where he is actually going. Or to put it another way, how could you possibly hope to know how to follow without knowing the beliefs about God that he was following?

5. Theology is reality: 90% of the problem people have with theology and doctrine comes in the definition. It is easy to simply define theology as impractical things that theologians argue about. How many angels can fit on the head of a pin? Infralapsarian? Supralapsarian? Etc. However, if you define theology as the Bible seems to most of the problems vanish. The Bible puts theology for as simply the knowledge of the way the world actually is. Theology is reality. If that's true then it makes no more sense to stop pursuing it than an ostrich putting its head in the sand and imagining it is safe.

6. You can know truly without knowing fully: No, you cannot know everything there is to know about God. Yes, there are areas of theology that are mystery. What else is there to expect when you are dealing with an infinite being and doing your reasoning with a finite mind? This is not a reason not to love theology. Because the sidewalk ends is no reason not to walk to the end of it, especially if your right worship of God depends on going as far as you can. Sometimes you will even be asked to take a step over the edge and trust that, though the jurisdiction of your reasoning has come to an end, you will still be upheld. Because we cannot know God fully does not mean that we cannot know God truly. I would say that I know my friends, but not that I know everything there is to know about them. God has revealed himself to us in our own language. He speaks to us in ways we can understand and tells us things that we can trust are true.

7. We are commanded to: Simply put, the Bible is full of commands to persevere in our effort to understand God better. It is filled with warnings of the danger to those who do not. It calls those who would teach lies wolves hungry to devour the flock. It calls those who would teach faithfully shepherds willing to lay down their lives for the flock. Paul warns Timothy to persevere in his doctrine because doing so would save himself and his hearers. It is difficult to put it in higher terms than the Bible puts it.

8. Theology is a mosaic: If theology is reality and it is practical, then theology is a mosaic. It is not about "accessories" vs. "the basics." Rather, each piece, like a mosaic, brings us closer to seeing more clearly the face of the father. Because theology is practical the shape of the theology is the shape of your life, because your life flows down out of your picture of God. We spend our lives placing bits of understanding on that mosaic and growing in our understanding of who God is. That is the work of theology and the grace of it. It is the promise that God has revealed himself and when we come to know and worship him rightly our lives will flourish.