The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 5

In our continuing look at the model of the Sons of Issachar in 1 Chronicles 12:32, and how that two-pronged example (understanding the times and knowing what Israel should do) applies to the artists of God’s Spiritual Israel, the Christian Church (Gal 3:6-9; Eph 2:11-22, 3:6; etc.), we saw in my last post that “knowing what Israel should do” translates into the necessity of knowing Holy Scripture as completely as possible, since It is the Divine Blueprint for all of life (art included).  We examined there the importance of a systematic, integrated approach to biblical theology for a balanced doctrinal approach to help prepare us “for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17), including the good work of a calling to musical ministry.

Doctrine is, of course, vital to truly biblical life and action.  It is a truism among Evangelicals that doctrine is primarily presented in Scripture as what is called propositional Truth (I know this seems kind of dry and technical, y’all, but hang in there with me on this, because, although it is complex, it’s also very important for Christian artists).  Propositional Truth is so called because it presents propositions, or straight-ahead statements about the Truth it presents (e.g., “. . .the Word was God” [John 1:1] or “God is light” [1 John 1:5]) and gives direct teaching (or didactic) commands (such as “Flee youthful lusts” [2 Tim 2:22] and “Thou shalt do no murder” [Exod 20:13]; etc.).  Most Christian teaching these days centers on propositionally presented biblical teaching (which is, of course, vital to the Church’s task).

Most Evangelicals would be surprised to realize, however, that the propositional presentation is not the only way that Truth is taught in the Bible.  God has also arranged another mode of communicating His Truth that complements the propositional method: the Representational or Symbolic method.

God has structured Reality in such a way that symbols stand at its heart.  What do I mean by this?  Consider the following:  Romans 1:18-22 teaches that God’s Invisible Attributes are clearly manifest, seen and known in God’s Creation; Psalms 19:1-4 teaches that the heavens themselves declare God’s Glory to the ends of the earth; Genesis 1:26-27 says that man himself was made to bear God’s Image.

Understand what this means—God made all of Reality together, and each part of Reality separately, to reveal Himself.  This is the primary and highest meaning of everything created:  to reveal the Glory of the Creator God.  Everything is a symbol of God, with man, the specific Image-bearer, as a special symbol of Himself.

The Fall has blinded us to God’s Glory in Creation, so that we will not, in our sin, allow ourselves to recognize the Truths that are inescapable in all created things, including (and especially) ourselves (Gen 3; Rom 1:18-32).

God through Christ has acted to save us from this spiritual death and blindness, bringing reconciliation and healing of vision by the Holy Spirit’s re-birth of those who turn in repentance and faith to Jesus (John 3:1-21, 1:1-17).

In this rebirth, men begin to be able to see God’s Glory in Creation again, and the Bible acts as a corrective lens for us to look through and see Him in all of Reality, His Symbol of Himself.  The reborn man also begins to learn by His Scripture-corrected vision how to help others see the Glory at the Heart of Reality (a primary task of every Christian artist).

Next week, we will (God willing) explore the importance of symbols to the artistic calling, and to knowing what Israel should do.  Selah!

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The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 4

Knowing what Israel should do translates for us today into the necessity of knowing Scripture as the Divine Blueprint for what we are to believe and do as members of Christ’s Church, the Spiritual Israel (Gal 3:6-9, 26-29; Eph 2:11-22, 3:6; Rom 2:28-29; etc.).  This involves knowing what Scripture teaches, its Content, knowledge of which prepares the Christian “for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17), which includes the good work of obedience to Christ’s Call to a musical or artistic ministry.

As we saw last week, doctrine (a belief or teaching about something the Bible says) and theology (which means “knowledge of [or about] God”) are important.  Theology is comprised largely of an orderly arrangement of interlocking doctrines.  Christians, for as long as the Church has existed, have been engaged in an effort to organize the body of biblical doctrines into a coherent and consistent system of thought.  The results of these efforts are called, unsurprisingly, systematic theology, and it would behoove all Christian artists to be familiar with theologies of systematic arrangement.  (I recommend for beginners H. Berkhoff’s A Summary of Christian Doctrine, and for the more adventuresome, John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.)

The great value of systematic theology (besides the fact that it renders doctrines more comprehensible, and thus easier to grasp and remember) is that it attempts to present doctrines in a balanced relationship one to another.  This is very important to the Christian artist, especially to the songwriter, because it helps to keep him from taking a biblical doctrine out of context, and presenting through his song an unbalanced and distorted view of that aspect of the Faith.

For instance, Jesus’ Command to “Judge not, lest ye be judged (Matt 7:1)” has frequently been represented in songs as meaning that we should never exercise judgment toward another person at all.  This is a distortion that takes no notice whatsoever of the fact that Jesus elsewhere commands us to “judge with righteous judgement” rather that according to mere appearance (John 7:24), and that St. Paul teaches that, though we do not judge infidels, we must judge those within the Church (1 Cor 5:3-6:7).  (This particular distortion is especially popular with televangelists and other prominent Christian leaders who are discovered in sins of sex or mammon, and who don’t want to be held accountable for it.)  It’s also not unusual to hear songs dedicated to promoting a Gospel of “Belief” alone, without any reference to those pesky and embarrassing Commands to repent (Matt 3:2; Luke 13:3; Acts 3:19, 17:30; etc.).

These are not inconsiderable points of difference, even taking into account the inherent restrictions on content that exist of necessity in short songs (a subject to be addressed later in this series).  The only hope that men have in the world is to be learned in God’s Word, and any distortion of Its presentation inevitably results in increased confusion and despair for those who are seeking to learn truth from it.  It is also true that God does not take kindly to those who misrepresent His Word (Deut 4:2, 12:32; Prov 30:6; Rev 22:18-19).  Doctrinal distortions of this type would be greatly lessened if Christian songwriters would become familiar with the balanced presentation of doctrine contained in most systematic theology.

Doctrine is to affect content (we are, or course, not to promote any content in our art that contradicts Holy Scripture in any way) in our art in a variety of ways:  The doctrine of Creation demands that Man be shown as God’s creature and, thus, as accountable to Him, finding no satisfaction outside of Him; and that men are made in God’s Image, thus having worth, and not to be murdered or treated inhumanly; and that God made matter as good, and that matter is used by God to reveal Himself, with the whole world as His arena of revelation.  The doctrine of the Trinity shows that, as God is both One and Three simultaneously, our societies are to reflect the value of both individual (the One) and men as a gathered many (the Three), and that checks and balances (political and otherwise) are desirable to achieve and continue that balance.  The doctrine of the Incarnation also shows us that the created world (which Christ entered as Man) is good, and that normal (unsinful) human activity is a vehicle for spiritual reality and holiness.  All of these doctrines (and many, many others) have important implications for the life of both Church and World.  We must let these doctrines, in their proper balance, inform all our art with their Truth.  To fail at this is to have failed in the task of the Christian artist, and to being reduced to offering stones as bread, and serpents as fish (Matt 7:9-11).

To know what Israel is to do, we must know the Bible well, and systematic theology is one of the best tools we have available to accomplish this.

The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 3

In the last post, we continued to explore the implications of the example of the Sons of Issachar in First Chronicles 12:32, that of knowing “what Israel should do,” and what that example might mean for Christian artists.  (The other branch of the two-pronged example of the Issacharians was “understanding the times,” which equates to the need to understand our historical and cultural situation, so that we can effectively engage and change that situation for Christ, which we considered in some detail in past posts.)  Knowing what Israel should do translates into the necessity of knowing Scripture as the Divine Blueprint for what we are to believe and do as individuals and members of Christ’s Church.

In my last post, we looked at two main reasons that have kept today’s Church from truly knowing Scripture (e.g., laziness and content-rejecting doctrine), and in the post before that saw that we must view all things through the lens of the Bible, in order to gauge the worth of these things, so that we can know how to proceed in moving our culture toward obedience to Christ.  This is why Christian artists (like all Christians) must know God’s word as to both Its Content and Form, for both of these aspects of the Bible have important repercussions for Christian artistry.  This week, we will begin to look at the need to know Scripture’s Content (since the Bible’s Forms cannot be easily assessed except in light of Its Content), looking at Biblical Forms (God willing) in weeks to come.

In many circles of the Church today, theology is considered to be a bad word.  We are told by those who frequent these circles that theology is bad because it is much concerned with doctrine, which is thought to be only divisive, leading to argument and alienation between Christians who reach different conclusions about what various parts of the Bible mean.  Therefore, those in these circles teach, we should not involve ourselves with either theology or doctrine itself, since these things are held to take our focus off of Jesus Himself and our relationship with Him.  It is not unusual for those who believe this to adopt the slogan, “No creed but Christ; no law but love.”  Is this view valid (or even honest)?

It’s easy to see why people would adopt this belief (which is, humorously enough, a set of doctrines).  History is replete with doctrinal disputes between Christians which have been badly handled and which ended disastrously (generally because those involved in the disputes forgot to heed the biblical doctrines of humility and love for the brethren, sadly enough).  However, theology has contributed almost immeasurably more to the growth of the Kingdom than it has detracted from that growth.  How so?  Because of what theology and doctrine are, and what their function is.

Theology means “knowledge of (or about) God;” it is a system of interlocking doctrines about God and His Purposes that attempts to be consistent with Scripture.  A doctrine is simply a belief or teaching about something the Bible says.  Every person who is a Christian holds doctrines, since Christianity is defined by a set of beliefs the Bible teaches, and that Christians hold, about Christ Jesus:  who He is, what He has done, etc.

Paul the Apostle thought doctrine was very important:  he commanded that sound doctrine be taught by Church leaders (Titus 1:9, 2:1), that sound doctrine conforms to the Bible and was taught by the Bible (1 Tim 1:9-11; 2 Tim 3:16); he taught that we and those who hear it would be saved by heeding sound doctrine (1 Tim 4:13-16), and that we should follow his doctrine-teaching example, which he learned from Christ (1 Cor 11:1). Paul obviously had no problem with sound doctrine (though he was death on unbiblical doctrine (1 Tim 1:3-4, 6:3-5).  Christians are supposed to live by biblical doctrine. 

Theology is just an organization of doctrines that allows us to see how doctrines fit together in Scripture, so that we can more easily understand God in His Nature and in His Relationship with us and the world (and, of course, what He wants us to do in His world).  Theology was largely responsible for the making of the Western world into a Christian civilization; as biblical theology progressively loses its hold on our society today, our culture becomes increasingly anti-Christian.

In light of this, let us look at the slogan of today’s anti-theologians.  “No creed but Christ” seeks to drive a wedge between Jesus and creedal teaching, but all Christian creeds are only mini-theologies summing up the central biblical doctrines about God and His Salvation (the primary creeds being the Nicene, Apostles’, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds, all based on creeds in Scripture such as the one in 1 Tim 3:16, and all of which sum up the essence of the Faith that all Christians hold common, which C.S. Lewis called “mere Christianity”).  Jesus cannot be known apart from the Revelation by the Spirit of the biblical doctrine about Him.  To seek to separate Him from His Own Teaching about Himself is suicidal.

They also say “no law but love,” and in this we see the practical need for theology even more clearly.  How do we know what love is?  By what the Bible defines it as.  What does Jesus say is the distinguishing mark of love for Him?  “If you love Me,” He says, “keep My commandments” (John 14:15, 23-24, 15:10).  How do we know His Commandments?  They are written in His Word, of course.  But there are many of them, especially when you consider that all Scripture is His Word and contains His Commands, both New and Old Testaments (2 Tim 3:16-17).  To relate those many Commands (some of which seem at first sight to contradict each other, though they don’t really do so) to each other, and to set those Commands in their proper context, both in their background and in their relation to Christ and His Purposes, is the function of theology.  To love Christ we must keep His Laws, and this requires an organized theological approach to do so effectively.

All Christians, because they believe doctrines, have some kind of theology, even if it is only a basic, poorly developed, and inconsistent one.  We are all responsible to develop our theologies so that they are increasingly consistent with the Bible.  This is not easy, requiring us to study the Bible (not just have a little devotional three minutes a day, or just listen on Sundays at church, though these things are also important), learning well what it says across the whole Book, how it relates part to part, working to remember these parts, paying serious attention to those whose gift is teaching, working to advance our knowledge of Scripture and how the Bible relates to all the areas of life (such as art).

This is important to us as artists because theological doctrines directly affect the content and form of our art.  Indeed, theology is (or should be) the ocean that we, as Christian artists, swim in.  We will begin next week (Christ willing) to examine how doctrine informs our artistic endeavors, as we seek to “know what Israel should do” in our day and time.

The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 2

In my last post, we began to consider the implications of what it means for the Christian artist to apply one of the two prongs of the model of the Sons of Issachar (1 Chr 12:32) to his artistic vocation—“knowing what Israel should do.”  As we saw then, this phrase translates for us into the necessity of knowing the Bible as the Divine Blueprint for what we are to believe and do, both as individuals and as corporate members of Christ’s Body (the other prong, by the way, is “understanding the times,” which equates into the need for us to understand our historical and cultural situation, in order to influence our society, by our artistry, toward submission to Christ). As we saw earlier, the Word of God remains our only Guide in the unchanging Truth we must communicate to constantly changing history, societies, and traditions (2 Tim 3:16-17; Isa 8:20; etc.).

 We must assess all things through the lens of Holy Scripture to gauge the worth of those things, and to know how to proceed in moving the culture around us toward obedience to the Love of Christ.  This means, of course, that the Bible is absolutely central to any Christian calling, and Christian artistry is not excepted from that necessity for biblical orientation.  The bottom line is that Christian artists (like all Christians) must know the Bible as to both Its Content and Form, and as to how that Content and Form impinge upon his vocation.

Now, for most Christians (especially we Evangelicals) this is almost an axiomatic truism.  We’ve heard that we must know Scripture so often that we have stopped hearing it.  Yet most of us do not know Scripture well at all.  Why not?  There are, I think, two primary reasons for this (though there are many more peripheral reasons):

First, we are lazy.  Western civilization in general (and American culture specifically has been growing increasingly lazier over the last forty years or so, and the Western Church has not escaped the influence of this trend (in fact, there is good evidence we contributed to it greatly).  Despite the fact that at no time in the Christian Church’s two-millennia history have more helps for individual and congregational Bible study on all levels existed, fewer and fewer people are bothering to use the incredible opportunities to learn God’s Word that have been laid before us.  We increasingly insist on smaller and smaller, less challenging, more easily “digested” increments of Scripture (milk instead of meat, cf. Heb 5:12-14), and only want to sip at this insipid gruel in the few minutes set aside for preaching at the Sunday morning service we graciously interrupt our important lives to attend (provided, or course, it doesn’t run over into the ball game or our lunch time).

We must put aside our laziness and selfish pursuits to study God’s Word and Will.  God does not honor laziness, as the Parable of the Talents (Matt 25) so effectively (and chillingly) teaches.  Solomon the King wrote that the ear of the wise seeks knowledge (Prov 18:15), as does the heart of him who has understanding (Prov 15:14).  The wise, he says, store up knowledge (Prov 10:14), and the one who loves instruction loves knowledge (knowledge is imparted through instruction, (Prov 12:1)).  Proverbs 23:12 delivers a straight Command: “Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to words of knowledge.”

Most of us don’t even read Scripture daily, much less study and learn it.  In a time when millions of books, podcasts, DVDs, etc., exist to help us shape our study of the Bible, this is a travesty, and a shame to us all. Let us cast aside our weight and sin of laziness, to run with endurance our God-given race (Heb 12:1-2).  Lazy one—Repent!

Secondly, American Christians do not know the Bible well because, increasingly, the Church’s understanding of the nature of spirituality has been captured by an extremely experience-oriented doctrine that despises and/or ignores the intellectual and historical aspects of the Faith.  Don’t misunderstand me, here, it isnecessary and desirable that we experience, in a living relationship, the Lord Jesus’ Love and Fellowship.  We must have that ongoing experience as part of our lives if we are to be truly biblical in our faith.  But it is equally important that the objective content of Christian Faith be part of our lives.  Otherwise, we become warped and unbalanced.  Let me point out a few of the results of our current experientially-oriented situation.

As the Church has gradually divested Herself of ties to doctrinal content and historical reality (e.g., Who the Bible says Jesus was, and that He really was at all), She has seen rise from her ranks heretics who deny that Jesus was God, or that He truly Resurrected from death, or, for that matter, that He lived at all.  These things don’t really matter, these infidels say, it only matters that you know Him in your “spiritual experience” (most of these folks work at seminaries or head up denominations now).  Another group of heretics have fallen prey to the universalist teaching of the New Agers, saying that doctrine doesn’t matter, just the experience of “the Christ we can all feel and love.”

Admittedly, these are both extreme examples, but they are also both logical extensions of the experience-dominated Christianity all too frequently taught today.  Generally, though, the influence of experientialist teaching has resulted in Christians who know God, but aren’t that interested in working to know about Him, except as it helps them continue to cop their Jesus buzz (and the less effort they have to expend on that, the better they like it).  The quest for good Christian vibrations can’t be interrupted, in the experientialists’ view, by paltry things like serving the world by bring biblical Truth to bear across the spectrum of human need and despair, and bringing the culture of dying humanity into line with God’s All-Encompassing Word.

Since, to a greater or lesser degree, the clear majority of Evangelicals today have been influenced by experientialist imbalance, those millions of Bible study helps sell to few Christians, and our Christian bookstores are rife with books of (mostly bad) fiction, quick-fix psycho-babble, and kitschy Jesus junk.  Few commentaries, systematic theologies, in-depth study helps, etc.  They don’t sell well (if at all). 

This is most curious to me, because the simple truth of the matter is that the quality (and quantity, ultimately) of Christian experience disintegrates increasingly in direct proportion to the lack of knowledge of Scripture’s Objective Content.  The only way to tell, you see, if an experience is really Christian (and not New Age or neo-orthodox, say) is by checking it against the Bible’s Teaching.  Further, if no check is consistently made of on-going experiences, and they do depart from orthodox Christian experience, God is highly likely to withdraw Himself from the situation, and guess who steps into the divine vacuum to give a few experiences of his own (2 Cor 11:14-15)?

Biblical balance is desirable (the opposite imbalance, intellectualistic anti-experientialism, results in cold, dead, dry legalism, by the way). 

Both of these things (laziness and experientialism) that keep Christians from knowing Scripture must be repudiated and repented of by the Church for a number of reasons (the Anger of God Is a good one that comes to mind), not least of which is the one that ties in to the model provided by Issachar’s sons for the artist today:  We cannot “understand our times” unless we know the Bible. 

Knowledge of the Word is primary in our artistic task, because we cannot accurately assess to any depth the times we live in without the comprehensive knowledge imparted by Scripture.  The Bible is the lens to correct our fallen vision.  Like the Sons of Issachar, we must work hard, roll up our sleeves, and don those Biblical Glasses.

The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 1

In the past couple weeks, we began examining the implications and applications of the biblical example of the Sons of Issachar for the Christian artist.  In First Chronicles 12:32, these men are specifically noted for being those “. . .who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. . .”; their example there forming a two-pronged model for artists (and Christians of any other calling, for that matter) to follow in effectively practicing their vocation before God and the world.

Those two prongs are “understanding the times” and “knowing what Israel should do,” which, as we’ve seen in past weeks, equate respectively to (1) understanding our historical and cultural situation so that we can, with good effect, influence our society by our artistry toward obedience to Christ, and (2) knowing Holy Scripture as the Blueprint for what we are to do and believe in the times we live in.  Up until now, we’ve looked primarily at what “understanding the times” means for us, seeing that we are to work to understand the historical development of our culture, so that we can extend Truth to it in ways that it can grasp, and that we are to see our own artistic development in light of the history of our art-form, seeking to better the practice of our art by subjecting it through apprenticeship to those more advanced in its practice (e.g., those better at it than we are).  Thus, “understanding the times” is largely about history and traditions.

We turn now to a consideration of what the second part of the Issacharians’ example, that of “knowing what Israel should do,” might mean for Christian artists.  Israel, of course, was the holy nation of God’s people, and as the New Testament clearly teaches (Eph 2:11-22; Gal 4:21-31; Rom 2:28-29; Gal 3:6-9, 26-29; Rom 4:9-16; etc.), the Church is now Israel spiritually.  Knowledge of what God’s people should do can be based only on the Bible, the Church’s only Standard and Infallibly True Guide to faith and duty (Prov 29:18; Isa 8:20; Gal 1:8; 1 Thess 2:13; 2 Tim 3:16-17, etc.), which is the Light of our path (Ps 119:105).  Scripture, as God’s written Word, speaks to the entire spectrum of human experience, providing men with guidance and illumination for every situation humanity will ever face.  

Because God has spoken to us in His Word (2 Peter 1:20-21) as the Creator from beyond history, and as the One Who has created our history (Gen 1:1; Rev 1:17), His Word will remain forever, though our history will end (Isa 40:6-8).  This means that, though historical situations change constantly, the Bible’s Message remains unchanged and constant, and is applicable to any and all of history’s fluctuating periods.  This is important because it shows us that the Message remains the same, though our ways of communicating that Message will change, to some extent, in reflection of current historical cultural development (in other words, the way our culture communicates artistically).

At this point, we must realize that the two prongs of the Sons of Issachar’s model work in tandem in respect to communicating artistically as Christians.  It’s obvious from the Scripture that traditions and history are vitally important concerning the artist’s task.  In point of fact, however, without the Bible’s guidance, having an understanding of cultural history is relatively meaningless, much like sailing a ship without a rudder.  Tradition is extremely important, but like all human experience, it must be subjected to the Eternal Standards of God’s Word.  Only those parts of tradition (this includes forms, content, etc.) that are in accord with Scripture’s Standards are worthwhile or useful for the Christian (this will leave us with a spectrum of experience and expression that is both wider and narrower than might at first be expected, as we’ll see in the future).  This truth must never be forgotten as we essay to faithfully perform our calling as Christians, because to depart from this practice is to depart from God’s Perfect Blueprint for our lives and callings.

The Bible alone provides us with the necessary eternally true perspectives by which we can judge our fallen history and traditions, rejecting the parts of those that are at odds with God’s Holiness, but holding to and building upon that which is in accord with God’s Will.  This is the path of true Christian progress, artistic or otherwise.  In order to “judge not according to appearance, but make a righteous judgement” (John 7:24), we must truly know God’s Word in all of Its Aspects, so that we can “know what Israel should do” in our day in time.

The Sons of Issachar: Understanding the Times, Part 2

This week, we will continue to examine the importance for the Christian artist of “understanding the times,” a concept drawn from the example of the Sons of Issachar mentioned in 1 Chr 12:32, which states that these were men “. . .who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. . .” (NIV).  This verse shows that they knew God’s Word and how to apply it effectively to their historical and cultural situations, exampling to their contemporaries (and thus to us, cf. 1 Cor 10:11) that the way to proceed in a godly fashion as God’s people must include intimate understanding of both Holy Scripture and our historical setting.  Last week, we considered some of the implications of half of this vital model’s insistence that we “understand the times,” and explored the necessity of knowing our society’s cultural history in order to effectively engage it with our art.

We turn now from last week’s more “theoretical” to a more “practical” applications of the meaning of “understanding the times.”  Those called to artistry (of whatever stripe) must work hard to develop their crafts (Mt 25; 1 Cor 4:2; Prov 22:29).  This requires artists to master the “vocabulary,” “tools” or “moves” (e.g., the artistic components) of their various vocations.  Thus, if the artist is a lyricist, he must learn the language, in its uses, well.  He must study its structure and the way it works in different applications.  If the artist is an instrumentalist, he must practice hard to master his instrument to the extremes of his possible proficiency.  If he is a songwriter, both of them apply.  If he is a performer, he must learn the intricacies of movement (or vocal technique, or whatever is proper to his calling), preparing himself physically, mentally and spiritually to accomplish his goals to the utmost of ability!  In other words, the artist must study what his artistic task means, and how to work it out.  To be able to do this, the artist requires a context for his art.  As we will see (Lord willing) in future weeks, part of the artist’s context is provided by Scripture.  The other part of his context, though, is provided in our experience of history.  It was pointed out last week, we do not make art in a vacuum, but, rather, we do our part within the continuum of time, which allows us the perspective of gradual experience, allowing us critical perspective on our growth as artists.

This means that we must pay attention to the “T” word:  Tradition (a very scary word for most Americans, especially those of us who are Protestant).  Tradition embraces the past (history), and the sum of the past to date (the present).  This presents a God-given opportunity to the artist, that of looking to, and studying, the past of his tradition.  We are to learn to critically examine the past works of art (whether from the last four years or the last four thousand) that defined our artistic tradition, and thus shaped and influenced our approach to our own art, and our opinion of what defines beauty and artistic good.

We must remember that God controls history (it really is His story), and as such, it is His gift to His people.  Do not despise it.  Study and seek to emulate through your own gifts and talents the beauty and presence of God communicated through those past works of art. 

The great lie of modern non-Christian art is that art’s meaning comes from the individual artist alone, and that art must have no reference to the past and its influence (as though either of those things were even remotely possible).  Scripture, though, teaches apprenticeship, learning from those who are more skilled than oneself.  The past (even the distant past) can accomplish this by its art instructing us in the present.  We can learn by seeking to live up to the standards of beauty and skill achieved by past artists whose works of art still inspire us today.  As Hippocrates said (long ago), “Life is short, but Art is long.”

We can also take advantage of tradition by apprenticing ourselves to someone more skilled at our craft than we are in the present, someone who has contributed his own work to our artistic tradition, and who has become more proficient than we are by benefitting longer than have we from study of that tradition (e.g., someone who is more skilled than we are at songwriting, dancing, acting, playing instruments, etc., and thus can teach us new licks, moves, or other components of our craft, can introduce us to past works that we’ve missed, and (very importantly) hold us accountable to develop by assessing our own work at present from a more informed perspective. 

Apprenticeships require the humility to admit that someone else is more developed in their talent than we are, and that we need help to develop as an artist.  If ever we think that our art cannot improve, we fall into a trap, and will be kept by our pride from developing to the potential God demands from us.  We must work hard learning tradition and apprenticing.

 In order to understand our times effectively, we must know the roots of our past from which the tree of our present has grown.  In order to effectively communicate our art to our culture, we must understand how our craft has developed in relationship to that culture, and how the development of that tradition of our artistic calling has effected our artistic task today.  We must be responsible to develop our God-given artistic task to be a bridge of glory, both to our darkened contemporary culture, and to those artists God will one day in the future call to carry that artistic vocation forward into an understanding of their own time to come.  If we fail to do these things well, we will have failed both to understand our times and to follow the example of the godly Sons of Issachar.

The Sons of Issachar: Understanding the Times, Part 1

Last week, we began to examine the application of the Biblical model of the Sons of Issachar to the task of the Christian artist today.  1 Chr 12:32 says of the Sons of Issachar that they were men “. . . who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. . .” (NIV).  As we saw before, this meant that they knew both Scripture and their culture’s history intimately, and that they knew how to apply the Scripture effectively to their situation, so that God’s people would know how to proceed in a godly fashion.  The knowledge of both the Bible and our cultural situation are necessary if we are to know how to proceed as today’s Church.  This is especially true for Christian artists in a culture that worships art and entertainment (as ours does).  We begin this week to examine the importance of “understanding the times,” (e.g. understanding how knowing our cultural history is important for the Christian artist in the present).

Many artists today (Christian and pagan) assume that art is a-historical, that it has no reference to culture as a historical process.  Consequently, they don’t put much (if any) effort into understanding how their art fits into their cultural situation, unlike the Sons of Issachar, who took the time to understand their society, people, and history, so that they could wisely assess their own time’s situation in light of God’s Word.  Understanding our time requires study and hard work, and we must understand that this is part of the artist’s calling.  We must remember that art is not done in a vacuum—it is directed to an audience of real people.  Artists must understand the state of their audiences in light of the factors (historical and cultural) that shape those audiences where they are now, and are shaping them toward where they are moving, so that the artists can serve their audiences by helping them see where they should be moving towards in light of God’s Word.  It is necessary, though, to understand what influenced an audience to become what they are before we can either engage them artistically or speak authentically to their situation.

For instance, the Christian artist should not just address the business of spiritual need and holiness, etc., common to every man and generation (though he should and must address those, as well), but also specific issues that illustrate the basic state common to mankind in his audience’s time (this would involve, at present, issues such as the sanctity of human life [in view of the abortion holocaust], racism, political issues germane to our time and place, the nature of true love, etc.), addressing these from a Biblical framework.  This requires knowing the culture around us, so that we can know both how to artistically engage our audience (metal doesn’t effectively engage most country audiences) and what to address in our audience (cannibalism is not a sin much in practice among vegetarians). 

Let me give you a Biblical example of this principle.  In Acts 17 (Stop now, O lazy one, and go and read it), Paul the Apostle addressed a group of Athenian intellectuals and philosophers.  He had studied the Athenian culture and society enough to have spotted the shrine to the unknown god (not a prominent shrine in Athens), and to engage them by opening his talk with the observation that they were very religious, since they had so many idols!  But also most interestingly, when Paul spoke to them, his whole address was arranged according to an extremely structured rhetorical form developed by Quintilianus and used by all the educated pagans of the day, which Paul could only have learned by studying Athenians, their knowledge of the culture pagan classical speech forms.  And, if that wasn’t enough, Paul quotes the pagan poets Epimenedes, Cleanthos, and Aratus in verse 28, and alludes to Homer (Cyclops Polyphemus) and Plato in verses 26 and 27.  Once again, he could only have learned these poets (whom he obviously knew by heart) by studying them!!!  Paul used these fruits of a classical (and therefore pagan) education to establish cultural points of contact with his educated pagan audience on the Areopagus, and these points provided the platform to present the Gospel’s Truth, to the salvation of Dionysius, Damaris, and others (v 34).

This Biblical practice was later used by Ambrose, Augustine, Irenaeus, and others of the early Church Fathers, as they utilized, like Paul before them to engage their culture and present the Gospel to it.  These men (and many women, as well) paid their cultural dues in order to speak intelligently to their society and be taken seriously by the people of their time; they engaged, and thus changed, their culture by the Power of the Spirit. Western civilization became both Christian and a civilization as a result of Christians understanding their times and knowing what the Church should do.

Yet many Christians today think themselves too righteous to pay attention to the culture at large so that they can win it.  Other Christians are afraid that they might be polluted by it.  These brothers and sisters, though frequently motivated by sincere desire to do what is right, are guilty of idolatry—either of pride or of fear (or both).  Thank God that Paul and the early Church didn’t feel that way.  Western culture would have turned out very differently if they had (all you little Christian buckaroos and buckarettes would be worshipping dark gods indeed, had that happened). 

It is not enough that Christian artists today have talent and content alone; if we are to engage our culture and illuminate it with the Light of Christ, we must follow the Biblical example of the Church Fathers, of Paul, and of the Sons of Issachar, and begin to work hard to understand our times.  We will (Christ willing) look at another aspect of this responsibility next week.

The Sons of Issachar and the Task of the Christian Artist

This week begins a series of posts devoted to applying the Biblical model of the Sons of Issachar to the task of today’s Christian artists.  The First Book of Chronicles, in its 12th chapter, lists the groups of warriors who came to support David the Psalmist while he was living at Ziklag in order to escape King Saul’s wicked persecution of him.  These soldiers recognized that Israel was to be given to David by the Will of God (v 23), and pledged themselves and their abilities to David to help accomplish that end.  This passage lists not only these men, but also notes their talents.  Verse 32 reads, “Men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (NIV).  I believe that these Sons of Issachar displayed a vital ability that today’s Christians (especially those who are artists) need desperately to recover.  What precisely, the reader may ask, is this ability?  What does it mean to “understand the times and know what Israel should do?”

The knowledge of what Israel, God’s people, should do, can be based on one thing only.  Holy Scripture, which, as the Light of our path (Ps 119:105) and the Way to Life (Prov 6:23), is the Church’s only Infallible Guide and Standard for faith and duty (Prov 29:18; Isa 8:20; Gal 1:8; 1 Thess 2:13; 2 Tim 3:16-17, etc.)  The Bible speaks to the entire spectrum of human existence, providing for mankind guidance and illumination for every situation ever to be faced by our race.  The Word of God in the Divinely-Inspired Body of written Truth that reveals the Knowledge of the Triune God, His Creation, and His Saving Acts on behalf of His People.  This Body of Knowledge is the Basis of theology (“the knowledge of God” in Greek), and all Christians should strive to learn and understand Scripture so that they may have an ever-increasing Knowledge of God (theology) to inform and shape every aspect of our lives and actions, so that we might know what God would have us do in every circumstance we pass into.  The importance of theology for the artist is obvious:  It provides the Biblical “Way of seeing” that gives the artist the content or subject-matter of his art, as well as influencing the form of his art, as the artist learns how the various art-forms in Scripture are used by God and His Church to communicate knowledge of Him to different (and all) cultures (study of this is to form the focus of this post, Lord willing, in weeks to come.).

The Sons of Issachar knew the Bible and Its Commands and Precepts (and so should we).  But what, then, does it mean “to understand the times?”  This means that the Sons of Issachar knew the meaning of the historical situation that Israel found herself in.  They understood the history (the origins, development of culture, sociology, etc.) of Israel and the nations surrounding her, as well as the interchanges and relationships of Israel within herself and with the nations round about.  They knew the temper and mood of their people and culture.  They had obviously put serious effort into studying their nation’s history and cultural development.  This type of knowledge is just as important for Christians today as it was in David’s time.  If we as artists fail to understand our history and cultural development, it will hamper the effective fulfillment of our artistic calling greatly.  Only as we understand these areas will we know how to effectively communicate the timeless Truth of Christ in such a way that the culture of our own time will understand and be engaged by it.  Only an understanding of our culture’s place in history (how it developed into the cultural nexus it is, and what it is developing toward will clue us in as to the forms of art that will most readily be received today by the people around us, and as to what the most pressing needs of our contemporary society are, such as the current abortion holocaust crisis, and the breakdown of the concepts of absolute right and wrong, etc.). 

Both types of knowledge (the historical and the theological) were necessary to the Sons of Issachar’s ability to discern the times, and both are necessary to us today if we as Christian artists are to be any help to the Church’s mission to fulfill her Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20).  Issachar’s Sons were only able to interpret their time because of their knowledge of the Key to the Parable of history, the Bible.  However, if they had not intimately known their history and cultural development, they wouldn’t have been able to apply Scriptural Revelation to it, and thus their Scriptural knowledge, while good, would have been useless to God’s People in a practical (or applied) sense.  Both kinds of knowledge together are what allowed the Sons of Issachar to help fulfill God’s Will in their own lives, and in the life of their nation.

This is no less true for us today.  If we are to speak effectively as artists (or as Christians of any other calling) to what the Church and our culture are to do, we must emulate our ancient brothers in the Faith, and seek to understand the times through the lens of Scripture.  We’ll begin to examine the implications of understanding the times for artists next week (God willing).

Art and Work Part 6, The Fruit of Talent: Joy or Wailing

This series on art and work’s relationship to it was the result of study and meditation on the Parable of the Talents that Christ told, and which St. Matthew recorded in the 25th chapter of his Gospel (vv 14-30).  It seems appropriate that a look at the passage, which gave the original impetus to this study, should also serve as its summary.  Because of the length of that parable, and the limited space for this post, I must ask the reader to look it up (gasp!) and read it for himself, so that the following remarks will make sense (go and read it now).

We see several things in this story.  First, that God, our Master, gives us our abilities.  In fact, our English word talent is derived from and related to the translation of the Greek word talanta, which was a monetary unit in New Testament times worth $1,000 in silver content (much more in actual buying power).  This costly monetary unit came in Western culture to symbolize the even more precious natural abilities and gifts given by God to all men, and gave its name (talent) to those gifts.

Secondly, we see that God does not distribute those talents evenly among men (symbolized by the servants). One servant received five talents, another servant two, and a last one just one talent, “to each according to his own ability,” as the Scripture puts it (v 15).  We are not all equally gifted, artistically or otherwise, for God gifts men according to His Own Purposes, though (especially among the Church) the Spirit’s Gifts are distributed for the common good (cross reference: 1 Cor 12:4-27; Eph 4:11-16; 1 Cor 3:5-10; etc.).  We are to use our gifts to glorify God (1 Cor 10:31).

Third, even though God does not distribute His Giftings equally, everyone has opportunity to improve upon their talents, and cause them to grow, as the servant with five talents and the servant with two talents did in Christ’s Parable (vv 16-17).  Fourth, to develop their talents meant that the two servants who did had to use imagination, learning skills, initiative, and effort.  In other words, they had to work to improve their holdings of talents (vv 16-17).

Fifth, this development of talents takes time, such as the Master gave the servants when “he went on a journey” (v 15) returning “after a long time” (v 19).  The servants were expected to use that time to advance their talents.  Sixth, the Master graciously let the servants take part in the growth of what was actually His (v 14), letting His servants act as stewards of the talents, though presumably He didn’t need to. 

Seventh, the servants were held accountable for what they did with their talents (vv 19-30), and were expected to develop those talents for the Master’s Enrichment and Pleasure (vv 21, 23), and were rewarded for tasks “well done,” entering into the Master’s “joy” for being “good and faithful servants” (vv 21, 23).  We artists are to develop our God-given talents to His Glory through diligent work over time as well, that at our accounting, we, too, may be judged servants who have done well. 

The alternative is seen in the servant who simply buried his talent (v 18).  When he was called to account, he gave some of the lamest (not to mention stupidest) excuses on record (vv 24-25).  The Master responded by calling him what he was: wicked and lazy.  The servant was wicked because he let his fear (v 25) keep him from following the Pattern of his Master’s Will, rather than having godly fear that would goad him to obedience (cf. Matt 10:18; Deut 6:2; Ecc 12:13; etc.), and lazy because his wicked ungodly fear of his Master he held more important than obedience, and thus did nothing.

His master recognized the servant for what he actually was, “wicked and lazy,” and pointed out that his quilt was made even worse since he knew what his Master expected (v 26) and yet did not do what he should have done (v 27).  As a result, the unfaithful servant’s action brought forth drastic Judgement from the Master, as his single talent was taken from him and given to the most faithful (also, not coincidentally, the most productive) servant (who had the ten talents).

Beyond this, the unprofitable servant was cast into “the outer darkness,” v 30, one of the scariest and most disquieting verses in the entire Bible, considering its implications for mankind and our responsibility to work as God intends.  Selah. 

We are responsible (artists and everyone else) to develop the gifts and talents God has given us as God wishes us to.  The core message of Matt 25:14-30 is summed up by the Lord Jesus in v 29:

“For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”

We have all been given much; what will we do with what we have?  Time will tell.

Art and Work Part 5: Redemption of Work

This week, we will take a short look at the nature of work (an important issue for artists, since art is work).  Many Christians think that work itself is a curse, a punishment that God has laid on mankind.  As we’ll see, this misunderstanding is fostered by the fact that mankind’s work is largely under a channel for sanctification and a redemptive activity.

How do we know that work is not itself a curse?  Because God works.  In the very first two chapters of the Bible, we are told of God’s work of creation and informed that God “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done,” and that He sanctified that day, because “He rested from all His work” on it (Gen 2:2-3).  Indeed, because God rested from His work on the Sabbath, He commanded men to rest from theirs one day in seven as He did (Ex 20:9-11, 31:15-17).

In these same places in Scripture, men are commanded by God, “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all the work. . .” (Ex 20:9, 23:12, 31:15; Deut 5:13).  These commands simply made explicit the fact that God expected all men to work, as we can see in the fact that He made the first man, our common forefather Adam, for the specific labor of tending (or cultivating) and keeping the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:15).  That Adam had tasks to do is also seen in the fact that God created Eve to be a helper for him (Gen 2:18), and people don’t need helpers unless they have something to do which requires help.  (It’s also interesting to note that one of the jobs God gave Adam initially was naming the animals, a task that requires imagination, one that we would consider today an artistic function (Gen 2:19-20)). 

We see then that work is a part of what man is to be, a part of what it means to be made in the image of the God Who works (Gen 1:26-27).  So, how did people come to believe that work is a curse?  Because work is under a curse generally.  This curse was placed upon men’s work because of the Fall of Man through Father Adam, resulting in the need for much greater effort to achieve much smaller effect than before (Gen 3:1-19). Adam’s progeny have lived with this legacy ever since.

There is, though, cause for hope, joy and relief in this.  Jesus was a carpenter (Mark 6:3).  He worked.  The implications of this simple fact are staggering for mankind.  Why?  Because the Lord Jesus, Who was perfect, sinless man (2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22), as well as being God, hallowed the act of working just as He did the entire range of human existence by sinlessly living out His humanity, showing us that work was an important part of holy living.  In this, as in all aspects of His life on earth, we are to follow His example (John 13:15; 1 Peter 2:21).

 The great news is that He offered Himself, and all that He had done as a perfect man, to God to atone for Adam’s sin and ours, in exchange for our freedom from the Fall and all of its attendant curses (Gal 3:13; Rom 8:3-4, 5:6-21).  For Christians, our unity with Christ has freed us from sin’s curse (Rom 6:1-23; Gal 5:1) positionally (Eph 2:1-7), so that, as we obey Him, we gradually become more and more like Him (2 Tim 2:21; 2 Cor 3:18).  This is important, because we are promised increased blessing on our work as a result of our obedience (Deut 28:1-14), a promise that is a sort of first-fruit blessing that is a foretaste of life in the world to come, a world where, since there will be no sin, there will be no curse at all (Rev 22:3).

 Meanwhile, we are to obediently perform the work God has prepared for us (Eph 2:10), that He has gifted us to do (1 Cor 12:4-11), knowing that, though the effect of the Curse still afflicts our work, we not only one day will be completely freed from its effects, but even now can know Christ’s redemptive blessing and power in our work, as we progress in our sanctification and obedience, seeing our efforts become more effective by God’s grace as a channel of life through Christ to the world.  As we move “from glory to glory” in our lives and callings (2 Cor 3:18), let us embrace the tasks God has given us in both their difficulty and ease, looking forward to the Day when Christ Himself may say to us of our work, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matt 25:21).

 Next week, we will look at the overall summary of what God has to say to us on the subject of art and work.