Art, Christian Worldview, and the Culture’s Current
Jay Wegter
Culture is regarded by Scripture as an extension of creation. Culture is that which properly begins with creation. In other words, the symbols, categories, and materials used in culture-making are of God’s design. Human culture, with its endless variety of ‘glory-pointers’ is part of man’s life as he was created. The dominion mandate of Genesis 1:18 embraces culture with its broad capacity for enriching human experience. According to Meredith Kline, culture was a ‘religious duty’ (Ken Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, p. 35-39).
In the original plan, there was no shadow between culture and devotion to God; for the satisfaction that accompanied enculturation was inseparable from the sacredness of the creation itself. God’s benediction on creation was not erased by the fall, “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31a). The image of God was the pinnacle of the beauty of creation (Ibid, pp. 42, 51).
Regarding today’s popular culture, modern individualism encourages each person to define his or her own social reality apart from considerations about how the creation is ordered. Thus there is a huge dysfunction, or raw gash between reality in the created order and popular culture (Ibid, p. 85).
So much of pop culture operates on the false assumption that we create our own reality (and that reality is greater than God Himself). God proclaims in His Word that there is one reality ordered by one God. We are answerable to Him for our conduct within that reality. Reality and its center is Jesus Christ (not the autonomous self). Pop culture’s dynamics tend to encourage self-centeredness, with self as the focal point and ultimate reference point—which Christians must avoid (Ibid, p. 101).
The art coming out of popular culture has lost touch with God’s order in creation. The role of defining reality was once reserved for God. The Word of God says that God’s will and Word establish the categories, the meaning, and the significance of all things (‘all things are your servants, Psalm 119:91). Consider how the electronic media of popular culture has usurped that role of defining reality (Ibid, p. 161) (“We will tell you what is important in life; what life is about; what freedom is; what beauty is . . . etc.”) Popular culture has commandeered human sexuality—removing it from its context of sacred creation. The question then for our young people is not, “What can you do or not do sexually?” The question ought to be, “What is the nature of sexuality in the context in which God created it?” (Ibid, p.180).
The world’s philosophies (which make up so much of pop culture) have reduced religion to a private preference. Salvation has been divorced from the purpose of the cosmos. This modern dualism has shoved the majesty of God in His creation to the periphery. The creation as the revelation of God’s majesty, wisdom, and rule has been removed from our consciousness. With the image of God lost, reality is nothing more than what you choose to make it—an extension of the self. The sovereign self with its autonomously shaped identity now uses the world as ‘raw material’ to construct the self.
The electronic media is a modern art form (minus oil paint and brushes). The flood of images in the electronic media shapes a person’s worldview. Entire worldviews are now shaped by images on the screen. Electronic visual media totally conditions the way people perceive the world (Ravi Zacharias, Mind Games in a World of Images).
Pop culture often has a low view of reason (a reflection of postmodern conclusions about certainty). There is an accompanying unwillingness to think upon divine transcendence (the only true source of coherence and consolation). Electronic media images have replaced propositional truth (Ibid.).
So, let’s go back to our original premise—culture is an extension of creation. And creation is “God’s book,” “God’s theatre of glory.” That means that culture (in order to be uplifting) must draw its principles from creation. It must point in some way to God’s order. This certainly is relevant to the issue of the cultural arts. As Ravi Zacharias has stated, “Unless we get a glimpse of eternity; the arts will only take us to the edge of the abyss—if not into the abyss.” Why such a negative statement? The answer lies within our created purpose as the image of God. What we are really longing for is the joy that only comes from contemplating our Creator and eternity.
Says Zacharias, therefore, to fixate on the sensual; the sensate; the book itself, the music; the art form (as if it is the true substance or object of our yearning) is to become subject to the dumb idol—and to have our hearts broken in the process. Worthwhile art is elevating because it is a pointer to realities and yearnings which transcend the temporal and the physical. Art is intended to point beyond itself (to transcendentals).
Our identity as the very image of God is inseparable from the fact that your Creator has set eternity in your heart (Eccl 3:11). That is who you are—a being that yearns for the eternal. Therefore you cannot be satisfied with a finite integration point—it is just impossible. Pop culture, in its preoccupation with individualism and sensuality, seems dead set on having us forget our God-created yearning for eternity. The purveyors of pop culture would have us sell our birthright for the ‘stew’ of temporal pleasure and triviality.
How we need a Christian view of art—for pop culture has conducted a kind of cultural captivity that has replaced God with the self. With this captivity comes one of today’s prevailing errors—namely the idea that the arts were never intended to point beyond themselves. It is the very opposite that is true. Once we understand this—then Christians can ‘redeem’ the arts from their cultural captivity. (Nancy Pearcey coined the term ‘cultural captivity in her book on worldview, Total Truth).
The arts constitute a kind of language which reaches to touch, as well as to create, legitimate longings in the human heart which prose cannot do. Good art speaks of God’s existence in a way that transcends words. Only then does art have the strength it was intended to have (Zacharias).
Would you as Christians agree with the following statement? “Culture is only good when it conforms itself to the way things truly are—when it takes shape in the world as it truly is. God’s divinely established cosmic order determines man’s place in the world and prescribes his norms and behaviors. Says, Ken Myers, there is a time to be counter-cultural” (Ken Myers, Contextualization). (The time to be counter-cultural is when cultural forms oppose God’s created order).
The Psalms tell us that the creation is not just randomly selected raw material— creation has order to it both physical and moral (Ps 96). A divinely established moral order is bound up in eternal fixity to the physical creation. In biblical wisdom literature, the whole creation is pictured not as raw material but as a worshipping chorus of God proclaiming His wisdom, power, sovereign rule, beauty, goodness, and rationality. The creation gives praise to God; but is not to receive praise.
The unchanging theme of Scripture is that the physical order in creation is inseparable from the moral order in creation (this seamless continuum between God’s physical and moral order in creation is a theme running through the Psalms). Romans one is clear concerning this self-evident testimony of physical and moral order, those who disobey God are without excuse—for both the glory of God and the duty of man are evident in creation (Ibid.).
Art imitates and perfects nature—it doesn’t destroy it. Positive culture is developed in harmony with, and in resonance with, the order God established in the cosmos. Healthy cultural forms are those that are faithful to creation. Unhealthy cultural forms are those which deny and suppress creational order and which are the product of human desires which deny or suppress the created order. (Note the relation of the created order to industry, modesty, purity, servanthood, self-control, government, heterosexuality, the nuclear family.) Homosexuality is a cultural form that radically violates something in the created nature of things (Myers).
The church today needs to heighten its discernment in regards to popular culture. One part of the ‘litmus test’ for improving our discernment is to ask, “To what extent do the cultural changes of the moment give us a better view of reality—or, do they detract from, or misrepresent, reality?”
In pop culture, God has been retired to a sub-cultural role. The bulk of modern thought has simply dispensed with God. Modern science, accompanied by secular humanism, made people think that the scientific method was really the only valid way to understand and engage the world around us. “Real knowledge” was scientific—real knowledge was empirically verifiable, measurable, quantifiable.
Part of the outworking of this loss of divine transcendence (as well as explaining everything in terms of natural laws instead of by means of the Creator) was a pervasive dualism which separates creation from redemption. The separation of the physical from the spiritual has been encouraged by modern culture (as if religious views are private and have nothing to do with the real world). Modern culture operates with a huge dualism which separates creation from redemption. Is it any wonder that so much contemporary art is filled with messages of pessimism, absurdity and meaninglessness?
Does the church have an intrinsic interest in culture, or just the message of the gospel? The church does have an interest in culture. The church can play a key role in affirming the sacred canopy of biblical worldview and in so doing remove the dangerous dualism between creation and redemption. For, the major ‘beats’ of redemptive history: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration form the truest, most unified, and most compassionate explanation of human experience—touching fully upon, and explaining rationally, both pain and hope.
The church’s influence on culture can state that cultural life is important—there is no dualism. We reject the cultural relativism of our day which states that all cultural institutions are just social constructions which exist for human needs and desires but do not, nor are not sustained by any given-ness in nature.
The church needs discernment so as not to embrace cultural trends blindly. What is missing today in our discernment is that cultural forms have consequences. Cultural forms are not merely moral or immoral. Sometimes society adopts habits (cultural forms) which deny or distort important aspects of human nature and experience. In extreme cases these are dehumanizing. In lesser cases they diminish our dignity and worth as bearers of God’s image (you will live out your identity—whether it is from God’s Word or contrived and distorted). Discernment is needed. The entertainment industry has a constant agenda in every television program of removing the Christian worldview. And, regarding the academy, Christian students are for the most part naïve about what is riding into the university on the backs of the ‘horses’ of multiculturalism and diversity.
Students today are immersed in a mass cultural phenomenon that is market-driven. They bring a consumer worldview to school. Students don’t love the truth enough to argue for it. They have imbibed their sense of self from consumer culture in general and from television in particular.
We are to call people to an entire renewed life across their cultural experience—in a way that honors creation, human nature, and the commands of God. We ought to be able to encourage church members to have healthy cultural lives. It is just too easy to let the culture tell us how to live and then we’ll add Christianity to it to season it with a dash of salt. The church’s mandate is to honor Christ’s lordship in every aspect of life.