Art is Useless

My last blog I mentioned Andy Crouch. We didn't read his book in class but I believe it relates a lot to what we have been discussing over the weeks with Christians and art.

In Andy Crouch's book he shows the uselessness of art. "Why have wallpaper when wallboard will do?" Why hang paintings on walls when it does nothing to improve the strength of the wall?

He states "I think that we Christians have made our peace, more or less, with useful culture." Christians only applaud movies that make the "call to salvation" at the end. They only see art as useful if it illustrates the Gospel story.

I believe this is why most Christians look skeptically to art- because they do not think it is useful. One thing that struck me too, from this chapter was the fact that he linked art to worship. How Christians view art is most likely the same way they view worship. Because worship and religion is useless. We cannot do anything to appease our God. God will love us no matter what. We cannot do anything to be holy. God gives us His righteousness. Basically nothing we do can earn us salvation, yet we still pray and worship. Worship is a type of art, expressing our gratitude to God for nothing in return.

"The real challenge for the church in its relationship to the arts is not to make some technical adjustments in how we do our art or how we pastor artists. The challenge is to discover Christ taking, blessing, breaking, giving....To rekindle our capacity to be beautifully unuseful to God.

Michel Jean Cazabon