The artist encounters obstacles and enemies on the journey. He faces trials that must be overcome. But these trials refine both the art and the character of the artist. These trials have the potential for spiritual formation.

I want to share with you the rest of David Taylor’s dangers from the Transforming Culture symposium. (Side note: they are planning on having the mp3 files of the main sessions on their website at some point in time.) I think it’s important to identify these dangers so that we can see how they affect our lives and art. I won’t go into all his points–you’ll be able to hear them on the talk. His talk centered around the dangers of art within the church, within the worship service. Personally, they were important to me to hear (1) as I pray about how to get involved more with my church and (2) to consider as my development as an artist. What I’m interacting with here is the latter–how his points affect me in all my art, but mostly that which I’m doing outside the worship service.

With that in mind, here’s what hit me:

• Manipulation. This was not one of the points proper, but something he talked about under another point and something that was touched on in another breakout session I attended. Dictionary.com says about manipulate, "to manage or influence skillfully, esp. in an unfair manner." What struck me is the term "skillfully." Which brings us to the question of bad art v. good art. Both can have skill. It’s how the skill is used. This is a hard balance–how to awaken emotion without manipulating it. I want to make people think. I want to make people feel. I want to compell people to action. However, I want to do it because they’ve made a thoughtful decision to change, not because they feel forced or brainwashed or sappy. This point for me is something I know when I see, but I can’t explain well. The gospels are frought with pain and hope (emotion) and a call to a change in thinking and acting. However, they are not manipulative. They demonstrate ways to respond to Jesus: rejection, following, loving, betraying. They point to which responses are godly and which are ungodly. But they aren’t manipulative. There are no Pavlovian bells ringing.
• The utilitarian subjugation of art. Art can be used for evangelism, to raise awareness for social justice issues or political questions. It can be used to teach. But it doesn’t have to. Good art is worthy in itself. The act of creating is worthy in itself. I desire to draw people to God through my art. I desire to embody, to incarnate Christ and theology in my art. But that doesn’t mean that my art has to be useful for evangelism or a theological lesson or social justice in order to be beautiful to God.
• Immaturity. Oy. Emotions are good, but loss of control is bad. Let’s be honest, art is a touchy subject. So is theology. Bring the two together, and Armageddon threatens. We artists tend to be (although not always) emotional people. So are fights can be ugly. And as much as I’ll fight (haha) for my belief that there’s more objectivity to art than we’ve allowed (separating our preferences from our evaluations of good art), there is an amount of subjectivity both in defining good art and in our preferences. For example, the movie Sweeney Todd. We had a good discussion about it over at Intersection. I think it’s good because of the theme and message (not to mention the incredible music and lyrics). Someone else has problems with the gore. This is where forgiveness and permission come into play. As believers, we give others permission to do what they believe with conviction. Of course, there are limits, and these limits are found in Scripture and understood in the context of the Body of Christ, but this bleeds into another day’s discussion of our allies along the journey…(Like my cliffhanger?)