Art & Music
Art - A Witness In Itself?
"My voice is my witness" was how rock singer Maria McKee replied, when a
journalist friend of mine asked her why the lyrics on her debut solo album were not so up
front about her faith as her songs with Lone Justice. I remember thinking that that answer
was a bit of a cop out. How ridiculous to think that there could be witness without an
explanation of the Gospel. Surely words were needed. Did Maria not feel a responsibility
to get the word into at least a couple of songs on an album?
Some seven years later I wrote a poem on my honeymoon that tried to express the wonder
of the scenery in Connemara:
"And every angle on the same horizon
Gives another new and beautiful scene
There ain't no words written across the hills
Yet we still know what they mean."
God has an attitude to his art that is quite like Maria McKee's. His mountains are his
witness and he is not going to clutter them with verses or dogma. Art is art. Preaching is
preaching. God as an artist does art.
And God is an artist. That is the first thing we learn about God in Scripture. "In
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1v1) God was first and
foremost an artist, evangelism came later out of another need. God imagined, God designed
and God made. It was also a satisfying experience because as he created he claimed it was
good. Only He could say because only he could appreciate it. It was not made to gain
popular acclaim or for commercial success. It was just made because God was an artist.
It was during this artistic work of creation that "God created man in his own
image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Genesis
1v 27) The first thing that we therefore learn about mankind is that mankind is creative.
It is the only aspect of God that we are aware of at the time of man and woman being made.
So we are fundamentally artists. To be an artist is to reveal within us the image of
God. Why then has the Church been so reluctant to be artistic or encourage artists? Why
indeed is the Church better known for her opposition to the arts than to be a pioneer in
the field? Bad exegesis. Bad theology. A poor witness to revealing the image of her maker.
The enlightenment brought with it a concentration on knowledge and with it and the anti
catholic path that followed the Reformation, Protestantism at least has got bogged down in
a very dry and doctrinal revelation of the Word of God. The sound evangelical battle cry
has been to preach the Word because the Word does not return empty whereas the truth of
Scripture is that the Word became flesh and lived for a time among us and was in no rush
for the first 30 years of his life to say anything - just be a creative carpenter and let
his presence and his creations speak for him.
The end of the 20th Century has at last scene the evangelical end of Christendom waken
up to her failings. Though not all would be advocating the arts, there have been those who
have theologised the need for promoting the arts such as Francis Schaeffer and H. R.
Rookmaaker. There have been writers like CS Lewis through to Frederick Buechner, Wendell
Berry and Tim Winton who have put Christians back into the fiction conversations. There
have been bands like U2 and influential songwriters
like Bruce Cockburn who have changed the
whole attitude to Christians in rock music.
Steve Turner said at Greenbelt in 1989 that it is vital for Christians to be involved
in the conversations that are going on in the world we live in and desire to reveal God
in. He showed how U2 had not only got involved in those conversations but had changed the
very vocabulary of the rock world. Even in recent months and days we find Joan Osborne
singing songs that smack of the incarnation, Tim Booth formerly of the band James singing
a very Gospel orientated song called I Believe and The critically acclaimed if underground
Blue Nile releasing an album on the week I write this that is full of references to Jesus
and holiness and faith.
We need more like it. If you are made in the image of God then you can reveal that
image in your own creativity. That may be in the wall paper of your house or the colour of
your hair, it may be in expressing yourself in your journal or in poetry. It may be in
writing the next Booker Prize Winning book or the next number One hit single. Whatever
way, your art can be your witness.
I saw Maria McKee live just a few years after my mate interviewed her. Half way through
the first song she sang, a song that was not very evangelical in it's content, I looked at
a friend beside me with a smile on my face. Her voice alone told me one thing- God exists.
It was her witness.
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