What is at the heart of the conversation between art (in all its form and expression) and the faith of the Christian (in its multiple and varied flavors)?
Here we go again…for more than a decade I’ve been leading an annual discussion with undergraduates at Abilene Christian University concerning the intersection between the real world making of art and the living reality of Christian faith. When I started this class, I knew what the answers were. Well, that’s an overstatement, but I was pretty sure I was on the right track. Now? Oh, it’s a topsy-turvy world we’ve got going here, and I often wonder…what in the world was the Creator thinking as He got to work in that “let-there-be-light”, big bang impulse of a moment?
So without much fanfare, I want to ask you, my friends from far and wide, some of whom I know, and some of whom I don’t…if you were to try to launch a group of passionate young artists on this life long conversation of making form from varied and disparate material, somehow letting that making being informed by a faith in Christ in one of its multiple and various forms (my emerging biases are showing now), how would you articulate the question at the heart of the matter?
How would you articulate the question at the heart of the matter?
I’d like to say it’s simple, but at least for me, I’m still plowing through mounds of complexity. But before I tell you what I think the deal is, as seriously as I know how to ask, please pitch in here. I’d love to have a no-kidding, gather-around-the-question-without-any-great-desire-to-win kind of discussion here. Many of you are far more grounded than I am, and just now I’m sitting in my chair in class, hoping the instructor shows up.
Your turn…
…and thanks in advance.
