The seminar on art by Matt Hatch and David Sorley made the point best – probably because the message and the medium were so well matched.

In the discussion it was clear that the successful place of art in their church came from relationship; that the key was building trust (between the leaders and ‘creatives’ in the church) gradually over a number of projects. On top of this, the church, acting as a regular client, is effectively a benefactor of Sorley’s creative work both in and outside the church.

The words were backed up by the presentation – the interaction and conversation between the two of them during the seminar made the point just as clearly: here was something that worked because of their friendship and mutual confidence.

Broadening this out, maybe we can summarise the importance of relationship in this way: without building trust more adventurous and creative ideas would be dismissed, the community would be impoverished and creatives left frustrated; without regular clients/benefactors the work would be unsustainable.

A similar point comes out in Malcolm Gladwell’s article Late Bloomers. Taking Cézanne as an example he suggests that:

If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.

This is what is so instructive about any biography of Cézanne. Accounts of his life start out being about Cézanne, and then quickly turn into the story of Cézanne’s circle.
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But for Zola, Cézanne would have remained an unhappy banker’s son in Provence; but for Pissarro, he would never have learned how to paint; but for Vollard (at the urging of Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, and Monet), his canvases would have rotted away in some attic; and, but for his father, Cézanne’s long apprenticeship would have been a financial impossibility.

So the first challenge for those wanting in make culture is to make relationships. To lose the caricature of the artist as heroic individual, or to put aside suspicion (depending which side of the fence you are) and to work on building trust and confidence with those around.

Some of the discussion reminds me of Francis Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics: to talk with people to help them see the logical conclusions of their own worldview. And the difficulty of genuinely living consistently with what they believe. Taking a similar approach via the arts is an interesting idea. Has the potential to be a truly incarnational and compassionate apologetic…

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It struck me recently that many superhero stories feature a strange sort of grace. Here’s how it works in the Spiderman series: Peter Parker is a pretty unremarkable guy until an apparently random accident leaves him with extraordinary powers. He’s done nothing to earn or deserve them. He’s not particularly courageous or virtuous. In fact, he doesn’t start out as a particularly heroic character at all.

So, what is it that makes him a hero? As the story unfolds it seems to work in the opposite way to our expectations: rather than virtue being rewarded, it is the new powers that lead him to heroism. Famously, the recurring theme in the Spiderman stories is that ‘with great power comes great reponsibility’. In coming to terms with his powers, the changes in Parker are more than just the ability to climb walls. Maybe it is the same with all acts of grace.

As Mumford and Sons sang recently, “… that’s exactly how this grace thing works/It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart/But the welcome I receive with the restart.”

I want to come at it from a different angle. And, as happens for me often right now, that angle is in Tim Keller-like direction.

In his article The Gospel in All it’s Forms, Keller says:

I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God. That is, I use the biblical definition of sin as idolatry. That puts the emphasis not as much on “doing bad things” but on “making good things into ultimate things.”

OK, so what he is doing here is moving the focus in gospel presentations from ethics to identity. But it seems to me that this is exactly what Tom Wright has been doing in his ‘new perspective’ of justification. His reading of Paul is that the Law was a ‘good thing’ that had become ‘ultimate thing’; that the Judaism of Paul’s time had come close to treating the Law as an idol. More than this, and famously, he interprets the big issue that Paul is addressing as the separation between Jews and Gentiles. And that separation being based on observation of the Law. That is, that the issue was that the Jews were building their identity on the Law rather than faith in God. Which, of course, is precisely Keller’s working definition of sin.

In the spirit of Andrew Wilson’s post (‘we can have our cake, and eat it’), we should remind ourselves that this doesn’t require us to reject a gospel presentation that is concerned with ethical questions. This is a big gospel, with deep and wide implications.

Going back to Tim Keller:

…there must be one gospel, yet there are clearly different forms in which that one gospel can be expressed.

And perhaps we can go further. Perhaps, for us, to miss the identity aspect is to miss something important. In a culture where identity floats, it possible to get the beliefs right, get the praxis right and still miss something important.

Have you ever imagined how the story of Joseph might play out as reality TV?

Welcome back to Pyramids and Presidents. It’s day 3429 in Pharaoh’s jail and two of the housemates have had dreams. Joseph has revealed his talent for interpretation and now has break the bad news — one of them is for the chop. If you think the baker should get his old job back, text BAKER. On the other hand, if you think the butler is Joseph’s best bet for mentioning his case to Pharaoh, text BUTLER.

Umm, I suspect the viewing figures might drop after the first decade. We’re more into instant celebrity than long-term training. On the other hand, for those of us who will never achieve overnight success, it’s reassuring to know that God does things differently.

I mentioned newfrontiers up-coming Everything conference a few posts ago. They’ve now added some interesting articles to the conference website. Also, some great images in the gallery. Looking forward to this…

In his book, 31 Songs, Nick Hornby starts one chapter with this sentence: “I try not to believe in God, of course, but sometimes things happen in music, in songs, that bring me up short, make me do a double take. … see and feel things I can’t normally see and feel.” Interestingly, theologian Tom Wright says something very similar: “When you hear a great piece of music, you realize your mind and imagination have been enlarged, and you can think thoughts that you couldn’t have thought other how.” For both, something can happen in music that opens us up to new possibilities, to the possibility of God.

No one is saying, of course, that music suddenly makes people believe, but sometimes it can create room to think about things differently. And maybe, in our culture, that is what people need most of all. Before they can face up to God himself, perhaps what they need is space to believe, space to believe that maybe He is there. And perhaps music is one way that they can be given that.

It’s not just music, of course; we can create space for people in many ways. So, maybe we need to consider how our music, our art, our building, our infrastructure, our lives can give people room; consider how we can help them to see things that they can’t normally see.

In my opinion, ‘Spellbound’ is the most exciting film about spelling ever. But, then, I’m not a big fan of ‘Countdown’, so take that as you will. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a documentary about the U.S. National Spelling Bee. It follows some of the contestants and their parents up to the high-tension denouement. (Note the use of a big word in the spirit of event.)

Anyway, there is one part that I find fascinating. One of the girls, who comes from a poor background, says this: I’ve overcome great odds to come this far, so I know I’m going to succeed, because that is what happens in the movies. Look away now if you don’t want to know the result, but she isn’t the eventual winner. The film-makers interview her again after she is eliminated. Her response is this: I’ve overcome great odds to come this far, so I still know I’m going to succeed, because that is what happens in the movies. Even after facing reality, the movies — the stories that she lives by — continue be her reference point.

I don’t think she is unique. Stories make up a big part of our view of the world. Maybe we are all have movies or books or songs that, without knowing it, guide our choices and our hopes. So, then the question I have to ask myself is: what are the stories that motivate me?

Here is one fascinating quote:

[According to the common view creativity] is what happens when people are liberated from the constraints pf conventionality.
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The truth … is that creativity is a by-product of mastery of the sort that is cultivated through long practice. It seems to be built up through submission (think a musician practicing scales, or Einstein learning tensor algebra). Identifying creativity with freedom harmonizes quite well with the culture of the new capitalism, in which the imperative of flexibility precludes dwelling in any task long enough to develop real competence. Such competence is the condition … for genuine creativity…

Let me suggest that neither “Christianity” nor “culture” per se make modern society uncomfortable. It is the self-sacrificial and uncompromising pursuit of greatness and quality in these practices, a life singularly devoted to them, which condemns the virtues of contemporary professional and personal life: compromise, mediocrity, and personal comfort that makes modern society uncomfortable.
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Are we now too sophisticated, too enlightened, too iconoclastic to believe in the myths of great art, great culture, even the possibility of a great life devoted to Christ? We’re not humble. We’re cowards.