The Language of God: Francis Collins

Art Every Wednesday (16)

For this week's Art Wednesday I wanted to look at some pieces of art the advertising world is putting out. Looking at advertising as art is in one sense similar as viewing any other piece of art - it has a message, it is an outpouring of human creativity, it is often aesthetically pleasing (or the opposite for a purpose), they have a world view implicitly stated in them that can be read - but on the other hand it is different. Ads, like these from Visa, would not exist if they were not trying to sell something, which casts the questions "What is art?" and "What is the purpose of art?" in a new light. Is all art trying to sell something? Does an "agenda" stop it from being art?

Those questions aside, there is value in this week's subject because they are cultural texts, which can be read like any other text and held up to the light to see what they are really saying. Spend some time with these images ask what the message of the ad is, what it is saying about life, about happiness, about success, what is held up as the ideal in this worldview, what is held up as taboo? I've put a couple thoughts below each ad as fodder for thinking.

As you go, remember this: Americans are confronted with 7,000 ads a day. 7,000.























Never in sleep mode. The successful, worthwhile life is the busy life. The ideal life is one where you can surround yourself with electronic connection. It is interesting that this city is an island, which seems to be a true picture (intentionally or unintentionally) of what can be an unintended consequence of the kind of connection technology offers. Where are the human on this island? Where is the human contact? The touch? The laughter? The casual times?
























Identity is a paint by number and you are the artist. Physical appearance, especially that of women, is something to be tweaked and colored and perfected. Nature is no longer a problem, it is only a starting place. The only problem now is that there are "so many colors, so little time."
























Be in season always. It is taboo to be the one in the tree who doesn't fit the ever-changing seasons of fashion. It is worth it to stay ahead of the curve. Pay careful attention to the trends the wind blows in this season, because "this years colors might surprise you."























This might be the most exposing one. See the message about the satisfaction material goods can bring. One must ask what a family is to do if Santa doesn't bring gadgets down the chimney? Is there a a reliable way to happiness? Should we expect to attain a lasting happiness if we get better toys and our snowmen wear suits? What if those things don't deliver? Is the prescription more of the same?

Things I Will Read Forever (1)

Over the next few weeks I am going to be posting abridged versions of some of the essays, chapters, and sermons that have most shaped my faith, which I have read many times over the years and continue to be challenged by every time I do.

The first is a sermon preached by Francis Schaeffer called "The Lord's Work in the Lord's Way." You can find this sermon in its entirety in the collection, "No Little People." I have highlighted points for discussion:

The Lord's Work in the Lord's Way
"Because the world is hard, confronting it without God’s power is an overwhelming prospect. But tongues of fire are not to be had simply for the asking. The New Testament teaches that certain conditions must exist. In short, they come down to this: we must do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. There is no source of power for God’s people – for preaching or teaching or anything else – except Christ himself. Apart from Christ, anything which seems to be spiritual power is actually the power of the flesh.
Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not a matter of being saved and then simply working hard. After Jesus ascended his disciples waited quietly in prayer for the coming of His Spirit. Their first motion was not toward activism – Christ has risen, now let us be busy. Though they looked at the world with Christ’s compassion, they obeyed His clear command to wait before they witnessed. If we who are Christians and therefore indwelt by the Spirit are to reach to our generation with tongues of fire, we also must have something more than activism which men can easily duplicate. We must know something of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Recognizing Our Need
How do we receive something of the power of the Holy Spirit? A person cannot be a Christian without first recognizing his need for Christ. And as Christians, we too must comprehend something of our need for spiritual power. If we think we can operate on our own, if we do not comprehend the need for a power beyond our own, we will never get started. If we think the power of our own cleverness is enough, we will be at a standstill.
Teaching about the Holy Spirit and His indwelling must never be a solely theological concept. Having the proper concept – that we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit when we are saved – we must press on, so that the Spirit’s indwelling can bring forth results in our lives. If we want tongues of fire, our first step is not only to stand by, complacently thinking the right theological thoughts. We must have a genuine feeling of need.
Furthermore, this feeling need is not to be once and for all. A Christian can never say, “I knew the power of the Holy Spirit yesterday, so today I can be at rest.” It is one of the existential realities of the Christian life to stand before God consciously recognizing our need.
The Central Problem
The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor ever the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus that surrounds us. All these are dangers but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.
Taking the Lowest Place
Seeking the highest place is in direct contradiction to the teaching of the Lord. Christ instructed his disciples, “But when thou art bidden [to a wedding feast], go and sit down in the lowest room.” (Luke 14:10) If we are going to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way we must take Jesus’ teaching seriously: He does not want us to press on to the greatest place unless He Himself makes it impossible to do otherwise. Taking the lower place in practical way (thus reflecting the mentality of Christ who humbled Himself even to death on a cross) should be a Christian’s choice.
To the extent we want power we are in the flesh and the Holy Spirit has no part in us. Christ put a towel around Himself and washed his disciples feet. Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not some exotic thing; it is having and practicing the mentality which Christ commands.
Trusting God’s Methods
Is it not amazing: though we know the power of the Holy Spirit can be ours, we still ape the world’s wisdom, trust its forms of publicity, its noise, and imitate its ways of manipulating men! If we try to influence the world by using its methods, we are doing the Lord’s work in the flesh. If we put activity, even good activity, at the center rather than trusting God, then there may be the power of the world, but we will lack the power of the Holy Spirit.
The key question is this: as we work for God in this fallen world, what are we trusting in? To trust in particular methods is to copy the world and to remove ourselves from the tremendous methods promise that we have something different – the power of the Holy Spirit rather than the power of human technique
Under the leadership of Moses and Joshua, the Jews marched when the ark marched and they stood still when the ark stoof still. They did not rush ahead if God did not order the ark to be moved. Somethies they stayed in one place for long periods. We Christians, individually and corporately, must learn to wait like this. Tongues of fire are not for us if we are so busy doing the clever thing that we never wait quietly to find out whether the ark of the Lord has gone ahead or stayed.
The Battle In The Heavenlies
The real battle is not fought by Christians just against forces in this world, whether theological, cultural, or moral. The real battle is in the heavenlies. The scripture, therefore, insists that we cannot win our portion of the engagement with earthly weapons. There is nothing in this list [Paul’s writing about the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-18] that the world accepts as a way of working, but there are no other ways to fight the spiritual battle. Imagine the Devil or a demon entering your room right now. You have a sword at your side; so when you see him you rush at him and stab him. But the sword passes straight through and doesn’t faze him! The most awesome modern weapon you could think of could not destroy him. Whenever we do the Lord’s work in the flesh, our strokes “pass right through” because we do not battle earthly forces; the battle is spiritual and requires spiritual weapons.
Besides, if we fight the world with copies of its own weapons we will fail, because the Devil will honor these with his own, but our Lord will not honor these with us, for that does not give Him the glory. They may bring some results – activism does have its results – but they will not be the ones the Lord wants. Our hands will be empty of honor from God because he will not be getting the glory. We must not try to serve the Lord with our own kind of humanism and egoism.
In this war if Christians win a battle by using worldly means, they have really lost. On the other hand, when we seem to lose a battle while waiting on God, in reality we have won. The world may mistakenly say, “They have lost.” But if God’s people seem to be beaten in a specific battle, not because of sin or lack of commitment or lack of prayer or lack of paying a price, but because they have waited on God and refused to resort to the flesh, then they have won.
Getting Things Done
Let us not think that waiting on the Lord will mean getting less done. The truth is that by doing the Lord's work in the Lord’s way we will accomplish more, not less. You need not fear that if you wait for God’s Spirit you will not get as much done as if you charge ahead in the flesh. After all, who can do the most, you or the God of Heaven and Earth?
Nor should we think that our role will be passive. The moving of the Holy Spirit should not be contrasted with either proper self-fulfillment or tiredness. To the contrary, both the Scriptures and the history of the Church teach that if the Holy Spirit is working, the whole man will be involved and there will be much cost to the Christian. The more the Holy Spirit works, the more Christians will be used in battle, and the more they are used, the more there will be personal cost and tiredness. It is quite the opposite of what we might first think. People often cry out for the work of the Holy Spirit and yet forget that when the Holy Spirit works, there is always tremendous cost to the people of God – weariness and tears and battles.
Practicing the Biblical Position
As I see it, the Christian life must be comprised of three concentric circles, each of which must be kept in its proper place. In the outer circle must be the correct theological position, true biblical orthodoxy and the purity of the visible church. This is first, but if that is all there is, it is just one more seedbed for spiritual pride. In the second circle must be good intellectual training and comprehension of our own generation. But having only this leads to intellectualism and again provides a seedbed for pride. In the inner circle must be the humble heart – the love of God, the devotional attitude toward god. There must be the daily practice of the reality of the God whom we know is there. These three circles must be properly established, emphasized and related to each other. At the center must be kept a living relationship to the God we know exists. When each of these circles is established in its proper place, there will be tongues of fire and the power of the Holy Spirit."

Year of Living Biblically

Watch A. J. Jacob's talk about his book, The Year of Living Biblically, about the year he spent trying his best to take every commandment found in the bible and live it out as "literally" as possible.




Also Tim Challies reviews the book on Challies.com

Art Every Wednesday (15)

“Why modern art?”

It’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot.

Like when I have to squint at a canvas made up of squares painted nine different shades of black.

Or when I’m staring at a hacked-up image of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung (see Brit artist Chris Ofili's "The Holy Virgin Mary," right)

And while wandering that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, maybe the most prestigious art museum in the country, and happening upon a gigantic tank with a dead shark floating in it.

Met curator Gary Tinterow defended the museum’s purchase of Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde-injected tiger shark, a work entitled “The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” saying

“It’s a work of art that causes the viewer to think about the brevity of life.”

It would take too long to fully and fairly define modern art in one blog post, but there is something to what Tinterow said I think we can understand. It causes the viewer to think. That, in essence, is modern art.

It is not – oh, please don't do it – a fair or appropriate critique of modern art if you walk into a gallery and say, “I could make that.” Sometimes that’s going to be true, yes, but it still doesn't count as an insult. The point is, 1) You didn’t and 2) How difficult it would be to make is simply not the point. Before modernism, the answer to What is a painting? went something like, “a stretched canvas upon which a trained painter uses his materials to convey depth and the most impressively realistic, naturalistic features of humans and nature possible.” This definition certainly has a place in modern art – it hasn’t totally disappeared. But it is no longer the standard. We now live in a world where skill matters less than thought. Where execution matters less than concept. Take nine-black-squares guy, Ad Reinhardt. He said, “There is something wrong, irresponsible and mindless about color; something impossible to control. Control and rationality are part of my morality.” So Reinhardt, just by hanging up those indiscernible black squares, is saying something about what he thinks about art. He’s also saying something about himself and his own morality, about his desire for control, his desire for the calm that comes from something completely devoid of the chaos of color. So the fact that this artist stared into the face of hundreds of thousands of years of art history and chose to make this very thing becomes significant.

Modernism takes on a hundred different meanings and is constantly in flux (á la postmodernism), but this is an essence: Modern art is about engaging the viewer. It’s about stretching the definition of who an artist can be. It’s about seeing or experiencing something in a new, unconventional way. It’s about exploring the depths of the human soul and psychology visually (see Munch’s “The Scream”, above).

So yes. Sometimes it's frustrating and weird and not-beautiful to stare at a frozen mask of some guy's blood because he's trying to say something about mortality. But let's take the bad (yes, I'd even venture to say frozen blood counts as bad) because there is so much good that's come out of modernism. I will always prefer art that stretches rather than conforms, art that speaks to me rather than depicts a famous face, art that challenges and evokes rather than succumbs. Modernism gave rise to the Impressionists, Abstract Expressionists, Pop Artists and more; to new media artists, performance artists and outsider artists (the reclusive and occasionally insane, more on this on a future Art Every Wednesday post). It meant Jackson Pollock could splash paint on a huge canvas just to express his angsty feelings, or that Kerry James Marshall could courageously evoke the Civil Rights struggle (you can find the fifth part of this incredibly thought-provoking "Memento" series at the Nelson-Atkins in KC).

A few resources.
Notable modern artists:
Eduoard Manet, considered one of the first modernists, whose 1863 “Luncheon on the Grass” shocked viewers when he painted his defiant nude, who gazes back out at us seeming to acknowledge our presence.

Claude Monet, who for as much as we see his posters on bedroom walls and call them pretty, was a radical artist taking part in a radical movement. He stopped trying to represent reality and instead conveyed a less naturalistic glimpse of a moment, an “impression.”

Pablo Picasso, who decided he wanted to see a woman from every single possible angle. At once.

Andy Warhol, who took a superficial, materialistic time in American culture and made art that reflected it. His art is characteristically empty and worships products and celebrities, which is what he saw in his post-1950s world.

Marcel Duchamp, made famous for his “found art” or readymades. Basically, the man said, “If I say it is art, then it is art.” So he put a urinal and a bicycle wheel into an art gallery, and presto! Duchamp proves that it is the artist’s thought that determines what can be considered art. A more extreme conceptual artist is the recently deceased Sol Lewitt, who didn’t even bother constructing anything he made but only drew up instructions because it was only the idea behind the artwork that mattered.

Readings:

Clement Greenberg – an art critic and huge fan of Jackson Pollock and the rest of the Abstract Expressionists – says modern art is that which is only concerned with itself (read: Hey painters, stop trying to make things look real, that’s a sculptor’s job).

Here’s what Marcel Duchamp had to say about the role of artist.

Review of "The Shack"

Here is a review of the incredibly popular book "The Shack" written by two of the staff at the Crossing. The book is a wonderful book to read/discuss... with great ideas/themes as well as things that Christians should be discerning about.


For the pdf, click here:
The Shack Reviewed

Death by Love

Art Every Wednesday (14)

How we experience art is constantly changing. With new technology comes mass production and access. Art evolved through pigments, oils, pastels, water colors, tempera, and photoshop. Story telling and the written word advanced with the innovation of cuneiform, to ink, papyrus, and the printing press. Music metamorphosed with instruments, from the lyre, to the harpsichord, piano, synthesizer, record, tape, CD, and iPod.

Technology changes the way we see art, and the greatest advancement in the mass production and availability of art found its feet in the last 10 years, the world wide web. Let's take a look at how the internet is changing the accessibility and medium of all art-forms.

Photography

Although Photography is relatively new art-form, the digital age transformed it more than possibly any form (outside of music). Check out this TED talk by Frans Lanting, who combines photography, music, and the oral tradition to tell the history of the world.

Poetry

Billy Collins, former United States Poet Laureate, produced a series of youtube.com videos combining his spoken poetry, with powerful images. They furnish his potent verses with a new layer of complex depth.

Sculpture

When Michelangelo sculpted David from cold, harsh stone, he probably never imagined that sculptures centuries later would make kinetic, moving sculptures from wood, powered by wind. Theo Jansen did just this, with the creation of his "beach beasts," seen and described on numerous youtube.com videos.

Architecture

The art of building changes as readily as any professional field. In the following video Reed Kroloff discusses two dueling styles of architecture in culture today, both powered by recent technology evolution. The internet offers users a unique way to interact with, and watch how this technology works.

Music

Most people know how the web transformed the music industry, from Napster to iTunes, most Americans under 30 downloaded a song or two in the last half-decade. Instead of focusing on what most of us know of or participate in, I thought we should take a look at the stranger side of the internet and music. An interactive massive multi-player online game, called second life allows people to create imaginary identities in vast complex worlds, called "islands." A small group of players fashioned their characters after the hit rock group u2, and held numerous in-game concerts. Keep in mind normal people, not game creators, put these concerts on.

Storytelling

After the invention of the printing press oral transmission of stories lost steam. The fine art was limited, but the recorded and reprinted word was limitless. Epic poems filled pages, not ears, but it seems the internet may bring back the old art form. Today hundreds of thousands of bloggers post videos, sharing their hearts and stories, marking the reemergence of the oral tradition.

The beauty of art transforms with culture. With profound excitement, lets transform alongside.

Free Audio: St. Augustine's Confessions

The ChristianAudio.com free audio book of the month is St. Augustine's classic "Confessions". Download it here.

Quotes from the book:

“The greatest source of repair and restoration was the solace of friends… to make conversation, to share a joke, to perform mutual acts of kindness, to read together well-written books, to disagree without animosity, to teach each other something or to learn from one another, to long with impatience for those absent, to welcome them with gladness on their arrival. These and other things come through the heart of those who love and are loved…”

"Wherever the human soul turns to other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if it is fixed upon beautiful things external to you…”

“Let those transient things be the ground on which my soul praises you, but let it not become stuck in them… for the soul loves to be in them and take its repose among the objects of its love.”

Art Every Wednesday (13)

Makoto Fujimura

"Shalom"

Fujimura made this piece shortly before the towers fell on 9/11, reflecting on the piece the morning after 9/11 he wrote this in an email to a friend:
"Create we must do, and respond to this dark hour. The world needs artists who dedicate themselves to communicate the images of Shalom. Jesus is the Shalom. Shalom is not just the absence of war, but wholeness, healing and joy of fullness of Humanity. We need to collaborate within our communities, to respond individually to give to the world our Shalom vision."


Here is an interview done with Fujimura on Challies.com.
From the interview:

"Q:How do you seek to bring glory to God through your art?

A: By being faithful and resourceful to investment in refinement of the gifts given to me, to use my creativity to contribute to community around me. I believe that art is inherently is of and from God (remember that our God is THE Creator), though we twist the gift of creativity given to us. So if you are involved in creativity, you dwell near the heart of God. Of course that does not mean we have personal relationship with the Creator and thereby being able, via the Holy Spirit, to enjoy God’s presence that is revealed via our creativity."

More Paintings by Fujimura:

For more about Makoto Fujimura check out his website and his blog. For more information about his experiences during and after 9/11 read this essay entitled "Fallen Towers and the Art of Tea" as well as this site, which describes the collective response of a group of artists living near ground zero to the tragedy of 9/11.

Adventures in Rest

In her article, “Bring back the Sabbath,” Judith Shulevitz speaks of the “eternal inner murmur of self-reproach.” When I came across the phrase it struck me as an elegant and insightful way to speak of the voice I often hear within myself that tells me to doubt my own worth unless I can pay for my own way. It is an anxiety that makes it feel like the question of whether or not my life is justified is never concluded. When driven by that inner murmur work is only a means to prove that I am not a bum, and rest is only exhaustion. It calls to be satisfied, but it will never quit – not ever – through satisfying it. If the murmur ever ends, it is through stilling it at the root. It requires a quiet of soul in which activity can cease because all the work that needed to be done is already completed. This is exactly the kind of quiet the gospel leads us into.
At the outset, however, entering that quiet feels like dying. It feels like putting our very worth at stake because worth so often hangs on work and activity. But if we console ourselves with productivity when that death knocks on our door we will flee something that could be a teacher.
The bottom line is this: to be driven by that murmur of self-reproach flies in the face of a basic truth of the gospel - I don’t mean basic in the sense of elementary, but basic in the sense that if you do not understand it you may not truly understand the gospel or what it really means for how life has to change - that is, you cannot save yourself. At the heart of the gospel lies the staggering idea that all the work that ever needed to be done has been done. If this is true, then all the work we do is free to just become work again, not currency with which we try to buy our worth. And rest just becomes rest, not a sign of weakness, but a sign of humanness and that is a good thing. Ceasing ceases to feel like death but becomes an act of obedience, a discipline of faithfulness for hearts driven mad by the gospel of work.
The gospel of work goes against the grain of our humanness. As Edith Schaeffer said, “It is not a sin to be limited.” The gospel of work goes against the fabric of the universe. God is the one who feed the birds and clothes the flowers and makes his people worthy and righteous and his work stands. And it forgets that our happiness lies in our simply being creatures before the Creator – not in getting as far ahead in the game as possible, not in making ourselves shiny and worthy alone, not in climbing the mountain of human potential - but in resting in Christ, for that rest is the very peak of the mountain of humanness. That is where the inner murmur ceases and all our love and joy can rise, for that is the place we were made for. When Christ said, “It is finished” it was. The rest is polish. The deep work is done and cannot be added to and cannot be taken away from.

"The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways it cannot intend
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended,
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it."
-Wendell Berry

Busyness, Stillness and Simplicity

A few resources that have helped me think through the amount of busyness in my life and what it looks like to live a life with room for sabbath rest.

Articles
Bring Back the Sabbath: Judith Shulevitz
Learning to be Still in a Nation of Busy Believers: Charles Marsh
Dwelling in Possibilities: Mark Edmundson
Autumn of the Multitaskers: Walter Kirn
Work and Rest: Dan Doriani

Audio Sermons/Lectures
Work: Tim Keller
Work and Rest: Tim Keller
No Sabbath for the Weary?: Ryan Wampler
Work Without Overtime: Dan Doriani


Books
The Timbered Choir: Wendell Berry
Perfecting Ourselves to Death: Richard Winter