Listen: if there's anything on Earth (or in the Heavens) which we Christians ought to know something about, it's Love and Death. In fact, we should be the ones who are exclaiming the fact of Love in Death. We shouldn't be establishing a suicide cult but extolling the fantastic fact that Christ died for our sins because God Loved, and Christ was resurrected in order that death would be destroyed.
There's more art to be made in that one sentence than all the movies Hollywod has ever turned out, and more than either NYC or LA could turn out in music and TV in 10,000 years. Why? Because there is Truth and Beauty in that statement, and it doesn't force us to make false moral choices or reduce our expressions to some gloomy, dismal, atonal text.
The great topic of art belongs to us. The great purpose of art is not, as someone once said, to frame a lie which seems pleasant, but to frame truth by analogy -- and the greatest truth-by-analogy of all time is the Bible.
Inevitably, the discussion in the meta turns to music and someone brings up U2.
More on this topic by: Jan, Mark Daniels, DrKnoxPJ, Jerry Solomon & Jimmy Williams
Thanks Matt for linking to my blog post on the "Secular Christian Artist." It is encouraging that Christians are starting to re-look at art for its beauty/potential to glorify God whether it is "sacred" or "secular." Look forward to your discussions in 2007.
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