Art, Culture, & Jesus

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This past Friday night I had the opportunity to attend two lectures centered on Christ and the arts.  It was really neat to see how the two went back to back, different venues, and were so perfectly tied together.

Makoto Fujimura spoke at Duke Divinity School on his work of The Four Gospels for Crossway.  Bruce Ashford, from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, spoke at First Baptist Church of Durham’s Disciple Now Weekend.

Mako’s work on The Four Holy Gospels is astounding.  If you haven’t seen this short video of his work on this project, watch it.  His understanding of theology is much deeper than I would have ever given him credit.  Here are some takeaways from the 90 minute lecture and Q/A:

“Why don’t we stop trying to find everything wrong with contemporary art or culture and highlight what is right?”  I think Christians have a tendency to knock anything that is possibly different.  Fujimura’s art isn’t my primary style, but it is still beautiful and exquisite.  It is still done for the glory of God.  We as a Christian, conservative subculture (if you will) definitely have our opinions and would almost rather tear down culture and art rather than see the beauty in it – knowing that all beauty originates from the Beautiful One.

“The antidote for anxiousness in Matthew’s gospel: use your senses.  Glimpse the eternal purposes of God.”  He was referring to the passage that says do not worry, look at the lilies, look at the birds.  On a conversation on the way to FBCD, I was talking about this comment.  How the lilies don’t even have a brain to be able to worry if they are going to grow or not, the birds just fly and nest and eat, etc.  Can we live in that much dependency upon our great God or do we have a natural way of leaning on ourselves and fretting.

The speaker settled on John 11.  I took much away, but one thing I wanted to share here is about compassion.  Jesus’ compassion: he meets us where we are, takes us where He wants us to be.  My prayer: Teach me Lord to be more compassionate, to know people, to be a studier of people’s hearts, not just what I want them to be.   This takes listening more than speaking, gazing instead of passing quickly, hearing instead of running thoughts through my head.

Best takeaway of the night, and still need to ponder this thought and revel in its beauty: “Restrictions and limitations actually give you more freedom.”  I am thoroughly enjoying this right now.  Anxiety doesn’t creep in as much.  But, such mornings as this, I need to be reminded of who God made me and what His Son did for me on the cross.  I’ll be writing more about this in the coming weeks.

On to Bruce Ashford…few miles away from Duke Divinity, lecture 2.  Dr. Ashford is a friend, husband to Lauren, dad to two little (cute, adorable) girls.  He loves to speak on this topic of engaging the culture with the truth of Christ.

He spent about 25 minutes going through the metanarrative of the work of God in the world (creation, fall, redemption, new creation).  This set his stage for everything else he was going to talk about as the evening progressed.

How is fashion, food, photography, writing, and music all grounded in the meta narrative of the Bible?  He said all art finds its answer in the meta.  The meta shows a strikingly beautiful truth on every part of life.

How did sin corrupt: “spirituality, morality, rationality, creativity, relationality.”  Every one of these relationships are marred and scarred by sin.

Society is made up of families.  Genesis 1-2 says we are to build families, grow families – of worshipers.  Only problem with this is that we tend to grow families of worshipers of other things than Jesus.  What are we training our families to worship? (More on this later for my job.)

“Basis of every question in the world can be answered in the meta.”  God’s truth resounds to everything.

“All beauty should guide you back to the one who is most beautiful.”

Bruce gave 4 criteria for judging art:

1.  Technical excellence.

2.  Validity (is the artist true to himself)

3.  Content

4.  Integration of Content and Vehicle

How do you study art?  How do you anticipate and participate in art?  How are you an artist?  How do you see God in art?

 

New Year’s Much & Link Love (January 3)

Happy New Year!  When do you get tired of hearing that?  I usually have to wait until after my birthday, which is tomorrow.  New Years and birthdays, both great.  I used to dislike having a birthday so close to Christmas (school was out so I never got to celebrate it in school), but now I love it, because not only am I starting a new calendar year, but also a new birth year. 

1.  I had one of the best new years ever!  A friend from seminary came over to Raleigh: we cooked dinner, hung out a cool place in Cary, went to the NCMA, and watched movies.  It was low-key and wonderful.

2.  I already went away from on of my 2011 goals.  I ran in a 5k on Saturday and unfortunately left my cell phone at home so I had no interval timer.  I finished this multi-terrain, ice/mud, hills, loops race about the same time I finished my first one.  So, I wasn’t happy.  But, I did it.  And I had friends cheering me on and running with me!

3.  This is going to be a tough week and a good week.  Tough week with many things going on a work and writing kicked into high gear.  Good week because I get to have dinner on Thursday night with some of the most amazing RDU friends a girl can have, both new and old, and I’ll be missing some too because of vacations and babies.  God is good, isn’t He!

4.  Day one of clean eating went very well yesterday!  I am thankful for oranges and sweet potatoes that I don’t have to buy because of family!  Everytime I have craved nut butter or even milk or egg whites today I thought that God is sufficient for my every need and He is gracious too.  I have included seeds in this clean eating: fruits and veggies only while at home.  Seeds because I eat hummus and tahini is in it – ground sesame seeds.  I’m already thinking post-40 days to see how my diet will be altered, and see how my food-relationships/sin issues have been changed.  Thank you God for the cross!

5.  Bring on the playoffs!  Excited.  We’ll see how long my teams last.

6.  January… here we go: I’m doing the list here rather a whole new post. 

6.1: Birthday celebrating

6.2: Working out and logging milesd

6.3: Stemmerman Inn for my birthday!  Thank you Mom!

6.4: Charlotte to prepare for an upcoming women’s conference I am speaking at in March. 

6.5: Photog!

6.6: Writing and reading.  Sound familiar?

Link Love

1.  One of the coolest things I’ve heard from country music in a while – great on the gender issue too.  Go Zac Brown!

2.  With clean eating for 40 days, I’m making this soup.

3.  For those of you memorizing Philippians, John Piper reciting it may spur you on!

4.  Do you already need help keeping those resolutions?  These apply to any you have made.

5.  One of the smartest guys I know, and do ministry with, gives his list of best reads of 2010.  And he read a lot more than this. 

6.  Some great sermons and talks about keeping resolutions

7.  After taking off most of 2010, John Piper returns and tells all what God taught him and Noel from their leave of absence.  Good stuff.

8.  Also, if you have never memorized long passages of Scripture, here are some quality sermons from Andy Davis and John Piper to help you out and to see the benefit of it. 

9.  If you still need help picking which Bible reading plan to do for 2011, go here.  Justin lays a lot of them out for you.  I am doing Elevate’s B90X from last year, just multiplying it times 3 with some breather days in there. 

10.  Her photos are inspiring.

11. 

Recipe coming soon!