Crisis, Clarity, and Apostolic Artistry (A Manifesto for Artists & Creatives)
Tracing as far back into human literature and storytelling as we can, the Trojan War features prominently in the annals of history and mythology. It shaped Greco-Roman culture and, in informing Homer’s Iliad, influenced the historical narrative of one of the most formative eras of civilization. And it was fought (of course) over a woman.
Considered the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta was kidnapped by the prince of Troy (or she ran away with him, depending whose account you’re reading). Her husband, King Menelaus of Sparta, naturally exacted swift retribution. Existing treaties drew surrounding allies to his cause, catapulting the known world into war as they launched the siege against Troy, which fell so far to Sparta that historians and archaeologists still aren’t entirely sure where the soil of time has buried it. As for Helen’s fate following the war, it depends which mythologist you ask. Homer wrote Menelaus and her a quaint “happily ever after” in The Odyssey. We’ll go with that for now.
Regardless of whether the story about Helen is true, it is no mistake that so much of human history is built on a war over the hand of beauty, our eternal muse. Yet nothing eludes us quite like her, and our art is still a manifestation of Helen’s evolutions. She is the central theme of most songs, the most pursued character in literary history, and arguably the most exploited virtue in modern advertising.
But we hear this all the time.
The world doesn’t need another book about the value of beauty. What we do need is a healthy path to pursue it past elusive sirens. We need the means to actually behold beauty. To encounter it. To sit in it. To stare at it. Saturate our minds and hearts in it. And we need to know how to steward something so commanding, something so other-than and bigger than us, lest we become our own Troys, fallen to the consequences of our own destructive pursuits.
Artists, in particular, bear a unique dignity and—dare we say—burden of responsibility to serve as guides.
As human beings, we all bear the Image of the Holy (we’ll explore that in a minute), and that’s a gift from our Maker. Every person receives that gift at the conception of their life, and it matters how we steward it. But for us Christ-followers, who also bear the Name of the Holy, well, there’s literally a commandment to not abuse that. And this brings us to the necessary evaluation of what we steward when we bear His Name, and how we bear it.
For artists, this means we now become Messengers. Messengers steward a message; they are not the message. Messengers declare a message (or they’re pretty ineffective messengers). And we, as artist-Messengers, with our weaving of the Image and the Name of the Holy, are now faced with the wonderful, inextricable braid of beauty and truth. Everything we create should proclaim beautiful truth. Everything we create should somehow disciple hearts into affection for Jesus. This is our burden and privilege.
Certainly, the creative Christian community does not need another commentary on the fusion between pop culture and biblical witness. What we do need is clarity, conviction, and confidence—clarity on true beauty and beautiful truth, conviction to declare truth and beauty faithfully, and confidence to steward the mysteries and message of the Better Beautiful, the Holy—such that we proclaim beautiful truths through beautiful means.
We need a backbone. We need a plumb line. And we need an end game.
I am encouraged by this fact: Scripture gives us insight into mankind’s history before Helen and Troy, and it gifts us with the clarity we need to live through the days during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We have everything we need to forge what we need to get where we need to go.
The question we’ll answer at the end of our days is whether or not we brought anyone with us.
THE DREAM
“But I can’t talk good,” he said.[1]
“But I made your mouth and I AM,” He replied.[2]
So Moses was on his less-than-merry way to confront his former family regarding their racist empire built on the backs of slaves. Pharaoh had to reckon blood on his and his fathers’ hands: four hundred years spent abusing and oppressing children of the covenant. He didn’t only have the God who sees, hears, and fights for the needy[3] to answer to; he had the controversy of the everlasting covenant bearing down upon his head. He may have been one of the first kings confronted with the jealous fury of the Bridegroom,[4] but he certainly was not the last.
Nine plagues in, Egypt’s crowned son refused to “let [the LORD’s] people go,”[5] and death would reign within the lines of his kingdom between dusk and dawn for one evening—ending these numbered plagues and ordained hours of pain with a particular kind of deliverance.[6] Death took breath from every household it did not pass over, and when crippling grief woke the Egyptians from their slumber, Abraham’s sons and daughters were released. They were free.
This must have been more than a little surreal for everyone involved, and the hours and days to follow would go down in history as perhaps the most bizarre anyone has yet seen. Soon enough, Egypt’s king would renege on his Emancipation Proclamation and crowd the fledgling Israeli nation against the Red Sea shores, only to see the water pull apart into walls and a paved seabed path for the covenantal nation to “pass through the waters,”[7] escorted and sustained by none other than the Holy One of Israel.[8] But before then, between the Angel of Death and the Exodus, the empty-pocketed slaves of Egypt knocked on the doors of their merciless masters and asked them for parting gifts.
PLUNDER & PLACE
Remarkably, the mourning—and terrified—Egyptians gave Jacob’s dusty sons their finest silver and gold. Israel plundered Egypt that day—just as the LORD said they would.[9] They carried the wealth of the wealthiest kingdom in the world out of its sovereignty, through the Red Sea, and into the wilderness. When the time came to build the Tabernacle, wherein the One who delivered Israel would dwell among them, Moses invited the desert-strewn nation to give what- ever they wanted to help pull it off. It’s important to note this was a “freewill offering.”[10] No one was required to hand over what Egypt had lost to them, these mementos of their newfound freedom and power, both as a nation and as individuals and families comprising it. Incredibly, so many people gave so much that Moses had to make a rule that no one could give to the cause any more.[11] The building crew was waterlogged in donations.
The “who” of this crew matters for our conversation, but we’ll shift for a moment to why anyone was building a tabernacle to begin with. Why would the LORD—the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity[12]—ordain a tent covered in desert dust so He could come hang out? Is He not everywhere anyway?[13]
“In the beginning, God created.”[14] And when He did, He created mankind in two forms: male and female.[15] Appallingly, He created both male and female in His Image.[16] No higher dignity has ever been bestowed to anyone, anywhere; no greater gift could be bestowed to us. Our muddy frames were transformed with a breath and a name; with legs and minds and souls and eyes, we would bear the Image of our Maker, our Creator, and reflect Him, bear Him, everywhere we went and in everything we did.
We were, at once, walking mirrors.
We still are mirrors, despite what Tozer so pointedly referred to as “the mighty disaster theologians call ‘the Fall.’” And when mirrors fall, they shatter. With the man and the woman’s treason in Eden,[17] we shattered. Our reflection of the Holy has been both earnest and warped ever since, with our world of a thousand ills drowning us in consequences we cannot escape. But the Seed, the Son of Man, came to destroy our destruction,[18] and the Story that began in a Garden will end in another.[19] Eden’s shadow speaks of the Husband who dove six feet deep to save the bride cut from His side. The first Adam, in contrast to “Him who was to come,”[20] couldn’t crawl back out of the grave in his own strength. He could not pursue the deception of the forbidden fruit and stay tethered to his Maker. Death’s slow suffocation cut mankind off from Life, and we have been in exile ever since.[21]
TO REPAIR A BROKEN MIRROR
But our story is barreling headlong to a resolution, with restoration in its wings. The One who stooped below the stars to form mankind from dust, a rib, and blood did so to birth His timeless dream: “the Kingdom of heaven is like a Father who prepared a wedding for His Son.”[22] This has always been about birthing and building a family—and He will, despite the obstacles present in any great epic (to which we are no strangers). Eden was not “Plan A,” and we are not dealing with some haphazard attempt to manufacture “Plan B.” We have not forced His hand. This age of Gethsemanes and Golgothas was always meant to reveal and display the stunning glory of the firstborn One, the suffering Servant who forfeited His own life on His own terms[23] to ransom and restore what Eden’s traitors lost.[24] This Image we bear, this story we’re meant to tell, has always, always, always been about the revelation of Jesus.[25] And it is beautiful.
Our exile is nothing more than mutual grief. We’re killing ourselves, grappling for the means and methods to live without the Tree of Life and its Keeper, and He is at war to get us back to the fruit we’re meant for—without the anesthetics and cultures we’ve woven into our worldviews and hearts that so violently oppose Him. We cannot bring the incompatible back into Eden. But we are not meant for eternity in exile. This age will end with all His adopted around the biggest feast anyone has ever seen. He wants a really crowded table. (Farewell, social distancing.)
There are reasons we dream and sing so much about weddings. We’re meant for one.
“Jealousy is a Husband’s fury; therefore He will not relent in the Day of fury.”[26] He will be with His beloved, and whatever gets in the way will burn when He comes.[27] We’ll talk about that in a bit, but when we do, we need to see two things: God is about “restoring all things,”[28] or (as He puts it another way) “making all things new.”[29] He wants to be with His people. He wants His family around the crowded table. And: He will make “everything beautiful in its time.”[30] When John saw “the bride, the wife of the Lamb,”[31] he saw some- thing so gorgeous, he didn’t have language for it (we’ll discuss this soon). As Terry and Lister put it in Images and Idols, “Eden shows us that God always intended for life and beauty to be connected. They are a pair...beauty is essential to human experience because beauty is essential to God and His works.”
TO BUILD THE BEAUTIFUL
It makes sense, then, that when the Israelites were on the (long and sordid) road from Egypt to the Promised Land, He figured out a way to be with them in the wilderness. Moses received detailed blueprints for the Tabernacle—and very specific orders: Get the artists to build this thing. It must and shall be beautiful.
Moses says to the Israelites:
See, the LORD has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and He has filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in knowledge and all manner of workmanship, to design artistic works, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting jewels for setting, in carving wood, and to work in all manner of artistic workmanship. And He has put in his heart the ability to teach, in him and Aholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do all manner of work of the engraver and the designer and the tapestry maker, in blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine linen, and of the weaver—those who do every work and those who design artistic works. And Bezalel and Aholiab, and every gifted artisan in whom the LORD has put wisdom and understanding, to know how to do all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, shall do according to all that the LORD has commanded. Then Moses called Bezalel and Aholiab, and every gifted artisan in whose heart the LORD had put wisdom, everyone whose heart was stirred, to come and do the work.[32]
I wonder what went through Moses’ mind. I doubt he wrestled over “sacred/secular” the way that we do. Probably, he stared at the blueprints thinking, “How are we going to pull this off, here with a bunch of former slaves in the desert?” And I AM answered him: “I’ve got artists here. And they are really good at lots of things—I made sure of that—and they’re going to build the tabernacle, and it’s going to be as beautiful as it should be for the place where you’ll encounter Me.”
Who knows what gigs these guys had in Pharaoh’s fields to equip them with these trades and crafts, but make no mistake: the LORD did not squander their years in Egypt. And He will not squander our “Egypt” years either. Likely, they were born with soil ready to receive the seeds of training and water of diligence, equipping them for the day the Word assigned them to build a beautiful place for mankind to be with his Maker—to give men and women in exile proximity and access to the Better Beautiful.
Here is what we do know: they were the original Renaissance men. These guys could do anything, and it mattered to the LORD. He didn’t tap their shoulders out of happenstance, because suddenly they had beautiful means on their hands and someone needed to do something with all the Egyptian plunder. The means were meant to become a place to encounter Beauty, to see the Beautiful. These guys were born to provide this for their neighbors, friends, and family in exile, and partner with the Shepherd of their souls[33] to steer them into this place of encounter. It was work. They were called and made to show up and do the work “according to all the LORD commanded.”
Perhaps most notably, Moses didn’t scorn their wirings, their life assignments. Rather, he dignified them. These guys got to build the place wherein the Holy would dwell among the men and women bearing His Image and His Name. Perhaps he remembered well the way he had balked at the Voice in the bush, refuting his inexperience and inability to kick off his ministry career with a starting position in a Big Leagues game; perhaps he remembered the unflinching response:
“I made you. I know what you’re capable of. I know what I can do with your life.”[34]
Whatever the case, there in the wilderness, amongst a crowd of former slaves learning to sing holy praise, a unique thing emerged: a tent, a tabernacle, for God’s people to see and touch eternity. In the dust of the desert, in the wake of the Exodus, the priests, the prophet, and the artists built something beautiful: a place for mankind to encou ter the Maker of Heaven, Earth, and Eden.
THE TRUTH FOR EXILES
“I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.”
- Jesus of Nazareth
No one can romanticize the Exodus. The lifelong journey to the Promised Land (that, given the distance, could’ve lasted just a little more than a month) was wrought with heart-level infidelity and accusation; consequently, almost no one who saw the Red Sea split also saw their families begin to root themselves in the soil sworn to Abraham. Many of them died to “fiery snakes”—a consequence of their repeated accusations against the Lord’s leadership, and brazen disregard of His goodness towards them.[35] How could something so glorious go so wrong so quickly?
Underestimate not the seeds and weeds of unbelief.
We are no strangers to this; we ourselves reckon with doubt, with questions—perhaps as artists, we face this more than anybody. The Exile condemns us all to seek what we cannot see, yet bestowed with creation as our compass[36] and eternity in our hearts.[37] As Tozer put it:
The yearning to know What cannot be known, to comprehend the Incomprehensible, to touch and taste the Unapproachable, arises from the Image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its Source. How can this be realized?
He quickly responds to his own question:
The answer of the Bible is simply “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self- disclosure, although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love. Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience. God came to us in the incarnation; in atonement He reconciled us to Himself, and by faith and love we enter and lay hold on Him.
Lay hold on Him. This is the prize and privilege of our lives: to lay hold of Jesus and never let Him go.[38] Remember how He encouraged us to emulate John the Baptist: “The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”[39] We are called to endurance, some- times called “steadfastness” in Scripture. It is, very simply, the dogged resolution to simply not quit—when dreams collapse, when families implode, when friends betray, when hopes mock, when Christ and our Father seem a cosmic mile away from us: Do not quit. Do not forsake the faith.[40] Does this mean we may not wrestle? Of course not. Even an apostle wrote: “Receive one who is weak in the faith.”[41] Jesus knows we’re made of dirt.[42] He is patient with us. He will lead and guide us into all truth, if we keep a humble heart.[43] Humility requires acknowledging our finitude and trusting His Word.
James warns us against the toxicity of unbelief, saying: “The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”[44] James’ words here were written long before the Enlightenment, but we are products of our environment and children of our culture. The humanism of the Enlightenment compounded challenges for truth-seekers in the Exile. We don’t know what to believe anymore, and we no longer trust anything or anyone telling us there’s an absolute.
While I was in college, I found a t-shirt company that printed simple one-liners that were either offensive or thought-provoking (but I was in college, so I thought they were geniuses with a graphic press, and I bought probably five of their shirts). One that I remember read, “Fight moral relativism.” You could probably guess (correctly) this did not often ignite warm reactions. I was a young zealot.
Moral relativism suggests that what is right for me—on a moral level—may not be right for you. For example, my sexual ethic might be different than yours. Perhaps I’m more politically conservative, or more liberal. My philosophy of war may differ from yours. Moral relativism is a classic tenant of anthropology: no one culture is better or worse than another. Within it, we may only observe others; we may not impose our worldview upon them. This could work fine if mankind weren’t drowning in the darkness of the Exile. The problem is, some people think it’s okay to kill other people. Some people think it is okay to beat children. Some people think it is okay to con grandparents who live alone out of thousands of dollars in internet schemes. Some people think a lot of things. Human history is full of civilizations that have imploded in on themselves because “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”[45] We need something more stable.[46] Our only hope is an absolute truth with an absolute ethic.
Admittedly, we don’t often take kindly to someone—even Someone—telling us they know better than we do. Or that they have an insurmountable authority over us, which is connected to our other problem with adhering to an “absolute”: No one is trustworthy with that kind of authority, power, and influence. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings about this issue. Who can be trusted?[47] Would we submit to them even if we found them?
At the risk of painting a caricature, we may all remember what most threatened Pinocchio: he made friends with some young, mischievous boys who wanted to leave everything authoritative in their lives, every- thing intended to create boundaries (even healthy boundaries), and do whatever they wanted. They wanted to leave their lives “doomed” to expectations of maturity and responsibility behind. They wanted to go to Pleasure Island. As FAI Director Jeff Henderson, co-host of “The Better Beautiful” podcast, once reflected:
In the original Italian story [of Pinocchio], the imagery there is much more vivid [than in the film], but it becomes clear that as they live more and more for themselves, they make themselves the center of their own world, that they become jackasses. Throughout all seasons of life, there’s been this thing with a coming-of-age way, we want to be the captain of our own ships and ruler of our own destiny or something like that and cast aside all the hindrances and all the rules and live only for ourselves, and in this day and age, we’re looking at this within the Body of Christ. We call it “deconstruction.” We’re deconstructing our faith and asking, “Who is Jesus? Is He who He says He is? Does He have the right and the authority to govern my life? Is He really Lord? Or, can I go off to this metaphorical Pleasure Island and do whatever I want?”...[The Word answers with] the absolute supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus. He’s the better everything. He is the Better Beautiful.[48]
Increasingly, we are encouraged to “speak our truth.” The language connotes something beyond “share your story” that is worth our examination: if Jesus is, in fact, “the Truth,”[49] and there is in fact only one Truth, then the worst thing I could do with the breath in my lungs while I have someone’s attention is make them listen to the murky waters of my heart’s own brackish well. “My truth” is not neat and cute and valid alongside “your truth.” My story is meaningful and nuanced and worth sharing, and so is yours. But there is only one Truth. If we’re all trying to navigate the Exile and make our way to freedom, the most strategic thing to do would be to just exalt the Truth. Abandoning the only well of cold, clean water for a muddied cup from a brackish spring—and leading others to do the same—is without question the most foolish, reckless, destructive decision we could make. We need the fear of the LORD, and the fear of millstones.[50]
Does this mean we have to fit Truth-honoring art into a cookie cutter? Of course not. Just like Bezalel and Aholiab, you’ve been made with gifts and dispositions to crafts and trades that you’re meant to use to respond to and serve the purposes of God in your generation. You’re designed and called to build something beautiful so people in your generation can find the Truth and sit with the Better Beautiful. For the rest of our time in Exile, we do not shirk from the anger, sadness, fear, joy, love, surprise, pain, and shame of the human experience. We dive in and bring the Truth into it to help others navigate the same.
Everyone bears His Image, but we bear His Name through faith, and therefore, we must bear His Message. We’ll examine this in fuller depth in a later section, but the premise we are establishing before we get there is this: Jesus is the answer to every question. He is the path out of Exile and the Light leading us to life and freedom, and anyone who bears His name in the Exile is a mirror with a Message to every other shattered mirror in our midst: Restoration is coming. So we desperately need clarity on the Message. And we need desires— driven like insatiable desert thirst—for supreme, preeminent, sufficient beauty. It can and will be ours if we go after it. Remember: The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.[51]
Consider these admonitions and meditations from the Hebrew Books of Wisdom, the Ketuvim.
Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise,
And apply your heart to my knowledge;
For it is a pleasant thing if you keep them within you; Let them all be fixed upon your lips,
So that your trust may be in the LORD;
I have instructed you today, even you.
Have I not written to you excellent things
Of counsels and knowledge,
That I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth
To those who send to you?[52]
One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek,
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple.[53]
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Exodus 4:10
[2] Exodus 3:13-14; 4:11-12, my paraphrase
[3] Genesis 16:13; Psalm 12:15; 35:10; 113:5-8; 116:1; Isaiah 59:1; 1 Peter 3:12; 1 John 5:15
[4] Proverbs 6:34; Isaiah 34:8
[5] See Exodus 3:19-22; 5:1-2 as the story begins
[6] Stephanie Quick, “When Death Did Not Pass Over,” FAI PUBLISHING (FAI PUB- LISHING, April 18, 2019), https://www.faipublishing.org/articles/when-death-did- not-pass-over.
[7] Isaiah 43:2
[8] Exodus 14:14-31
[9] Exodus 3:22; 12:35-36
[10] See Exodus 35, particularly noting verses 5 and 21-29
[11] Exodus 36:3-7
[12] Isaiah 57:14
[13] Psalm 139:7-12
[14] Genesis 1:1
[15] Genesis 1:27
[16] Genesis 1:26
[17] Genesis 2:16-17; 3:1-24
[18] 1 John 3:8b
[19] See Genesis 2:15; Revelation 22:1-2
[20] Romans 5:14
[21] Genesis 3:22-24
[22] Matthew 22:1
[23] John 10:18
[24] Matthew 18:11; Luke 19:10
[25] Philippians 2:9-11; Revelation 19:10
[26] Proverbs 6:34
[27] 1 Corinthians 3:13-15; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-2:8
[28] Matthew 17:11; Acts 1:6
[29] Revelation 21:5
[30] Ecclesiastes 3:11
[31] Revelation 21:9
[32] Exodus 35:30-36:5, NKJV emphasis mine
[33] Psalm 54:4; 1 Peter 2:25
[34] My paraphrase of Exodus 3:12; 4:10-17
[35] Numbers 21:4-9
[36] Romans 1:19-20
[37] Ecclesiastes 3:11
[38] Song of Solomon 3:4
[39] Matthew 11:12
[40] 2 Timothy 4:7; Hebrews 12:1-3
[41] Romans 14:1
[42] Psalm 103:13-14
[43] Psalm 25:8-10
[44] James 1:6b-8
[45] Judges 17:6; 21:25
[46] Hebrews 6:19
[47] Revelation 5:1-5
[48] “The Better Beautiful,” Season 1, Episode 1: “Donkeys, Deconstruction, and the Irreducible Minimum,” February 21, 2020. Accessed April 8, 2020, faipublishing.org/podcasts
[49] John 14:6, emphasis added
[50] Matthew 18:6
[51] Matthew 11:12
[52] Proverbs 22:17-21, NKJV
[53] Psalm 27:4, NKJV
