Christian Storytellers Pt VI

So we have introduced the framing story as a concept, as well as compared several false stories to the story...

...so what?

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Christian Art often falls into one of two categories. Kitsch or a not-so-subtle attempt to avoid kitsch...

Neither rises to either originality or, more importantly, the grand legacy and calling of the christian artist...

Much of Christian art is kitsch, a candle-holder that spells Jesus, or a painting of an idyllic Church building. This is simply an unreflective sentimentality about superficial aspects of our faith that are pawed at through the use of some artistic medium, but there is not much depth or power behind it. There are many Christians who decry such stuff. They create art that is as far from this as possible, and in so doing end up falling into the stories of the world. Art simply becomes an excuse for self-expression. A way of sharing personal experiences, thoughts, or feelings...

Again, neither approach rises to the calling of Christ on the author, sculptor, playwright, musician, or painter.

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We live in a room with a single window. The glass is stained and tainted with soot and grime, impossible to get clean; only distorted glimpses of the outside world can be caught with strained eyes. The grey window colors everything behind it with smokey haze.

Outside the spring is dancing and singing! Delightful colors and sounds, new life, budding flowers and gurgling waters...

The sounds are faintly available to life inside the room, but impossible to see, and so easily dismissed as fantasy.

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I cannot find the quote, but remember once reading a paragraph or two by C.S. Lewis wherein he describes the common Christian experience. We arrive at a worship service, hear the story told in scripture and the creeds for an hour, and then march back out into a world for an entire week, (the world in which we work, play, live, eat, and sleep) in which that story is not so often directly denied, but is routinely ignored. Other stories are told, and in fact, in order to successfully work, play, live, eat, and sleep in that world, we must often act is if those other stories are the true ones... and it is the storytellers who are the combatants in this particular confrontation. This is not a war of ideas and truths, but a war of propaganda. The winner will not be the one who tells convincing truths, but rather the one who paints compelling pictures, the one who tells exciting stories...

In our culture we no longer call them storytellers. Instead we call them artists, musicians, professors, even politicians; playwrights and directors, songwriters and sculptors, philosophers and social critics; advertising executives and tech-company CEO's...

...these are the culture creators, the women and men who tell the stories we live in and live by. And they are largely successful in telling stories so loudly, creatively, and compellingly, that we believe them. Even as Christians who know the truth, we believe the false stories...

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We Christians get to hear sermons about life outside the grey room. We are told, sometimes with wondrous flourish, about the Spring that is erupting outside the window

...we are told for an hour a week.

The rest of the week we live in the room, surrounded by those who tell a different story. "The room is all that there is; the many shades of grey, the taste of ash, the smell of soot, is all that is real."