In recent years, artists, musicians and filmmakers who follow Jesus have moved away from the phrase “Christian artist”. The reason seems clear enough. The label of “Christian artist” brings with it a perceived shallowness and mediocrity. This is perhaps nowhere more striking than in the medium of film. Christian films are notoriously mediocre and half-baked. Why is this?
I think “Christian artists” sometimes try too hard to preach and neglect to tell their stories as just that: stories. Many of these stories are tragically flat and lacking great drama. All art is narrative, it is a story. Whether through the written word, music, film, drama or visual arts, the artist seeks to tell his audience a story. Art is in some ways nothing more than a high form of communication. And this narrative-centered characteristic of art is what makes developing ”deep” Christian art so hard. We are seeking to tell a story that is so grand and transcendent that our own pedestrian language. Our palette of earth tones is insufficient to tell the story to completion as if we must cut off a few chapters because we don’t have the words that are needed to continue. In that sense, no Christian film, song or story could ever be shallow because it is based in the most fulfilling drama in all of history. It is telling the greatest Truth so “shallow” it cannot be.
That said, artists have a distinct responsibility to translate their stories, their dramas, their yearnings, into elements that their patrons can relate to. Many artists that deal with Christian themes fail to do this in their well-meaning attempts to articulate their theological message.
And that, I think, is the biggest obstacle facing artists who follow Jesus: the false dichotomy between sacred and secular. We have this idea in the back of our minds that if we desire to be artists, we must find a way to infuse our Christianity into our art in order to glorify God. Sometimes we even go as far as to believe that if the Gospel is not explicitly articulated in our art than it is second-rate.
The truth is: if we are born again, than everything we do is sacred. The divide between sacred and secular is arbitrary, not in the sense that nothing is sacred but rather than everything is. Every story we tell should find its way back to the Gospel, explicitly or implicitly. This gives us the freedom, as artists, to pursue our God-given creativity without any obligation to find room in our art for a sermon. The more we are drawn into a relationship with God, the more his word will impact every detail of our lives, including our art. The line between sacred and secular will be erased and God will break out of our religious boxes so we can experience him in all areas of our lives.