The Big Think

“I confess that the best way to deter me from watching a movie is to tell me it’s “wholesome.” This is because that word applied to art is a lie on its face, because insofar as art is stripped of the world’s sin and suffering it is not really whole at all.

This seems to be a failing—on the part of artist and consumer alike—in what my Orthodox friends call theosis, or walk, as my evangelical friends say. In short, if Christian novels and movies and blogs and speeches must be stripped of profanity and sensuality and critical questions, all for the sake of sparing us scandal, then we have to wonder what has happened that such a wide swath of Christendom has failed to graduate from milk to meat.”

Why so much Christian art is bad.

I’ve had this ongoing discussion with several friends for years- that there is no grace without a fall, no redemption without something from which to be redeemed. In books, movies, and other types of art, I believe it is important- necessary- to show the to-be-rescued in their full evil and debasement in order for the eventual rescue to mean something. This applies in all art (not just explicitly “Christian Art”, whatever that benighted phrase is supposed to mean).

This, perhaps, is why so much post modern art, with its morally relativistic starting point, carries so little emotional impact for me. Telling me that a piece of art is based on a world with no moral foundation doesn’t make me question the idea that there are absolute morals in the world, it just makes me not relate to the piece of art.

Note that I am *not* saying that all stories need to be tied up in neat packages where the good guys win and the bad guy is either converted or destroyed. Uncertainty is just as much a part of our lives as is the evil that we all see. Denying either is to deny the common experience and trivialize the subject. Christian artists should be the most unflinching when it comes to showing the evil in the world, else where is the value of what we proclaim?

There is a necessary place in art, movies, and books, for the ugly stuff- the profanity, the sensuality, the horrible behavior, the murders, the evil. These imbue the journey of the characters with meaning and make them more relatable to the audience. Without one extreme on the moral spectrum, the other makes no sense. If there is no Great Moral Battle, why would the audience care?

h/t Sean for the link.