of babies and bathwater

Paul: I want to talk for a minute about a specific formative experience in my young life, and maybe Laurie can help me focus my brain on this subject. But in order to do so properly I need to first introduce our readers to Young Paul Mathers. I don't talk about Young Paul Mathers very often, mainly because I don't like Young Paul Mathers very much. I'm sure the feeling would be mutual.
Young Paul led a dissolute life. I drank heavily and pretty much constantly, I smoked almost as much, I recreated with drugs and had a lot of sexual relationships, some in which the relationship was little else and lasted only about as long as that took.

Laurie: I noticed you've switched to the first person midway. I think I preferred thinking of Young Paul Mathers as "him" rather than You.

Paul: Me too, but I don't have that luxury.

Now, I'll get to some of the "why" of this behavior in a moment, but that sets the stage for a specific moment, one of the rare specific moments from that period of my life that I can remember clearly.
You see, I was also somewhat of a hypochondriac, although not enough of one to actually do anything about it. Not surprisingly, I was terrified of death, but totally unwilling to change any of my behavior to avert it. So I lived in kind of a horrified state over the behavior I was willingly engaging in. The intoxicants helped blur that horror into a jaded apathy.

Laurie: Sorry to keep interrupting, but I can't help but think here how much Young Paul Mathers reminds me of Young Laurie Mathers (only I wasn't a Mathers back then), even down to the secret hypochondria.

Paul: At this particular moment I was in bed recovering after having been sick with the 'flu, which sent me into a panic, because every time I got sick I was convinced that this was the time the blood work would come back to the doctor with the death sentence of "Positive."
And I remember laying there thinking about my life that far, some of the better aspects of it and some of the worse. I lay there and thought, "It is time I stopped wasting my life." By that I did in fact mean I needed to stop living in utter decadence and depravity. But there's an important point here which made me bring up the whole dreary story in the first place. Yes, this was when the intoxicants and skirt chasing stopped, but I remember mainly thinking, "You need to stop reading books about vampires, watching cartoon sit-coms, listening to the same 3 minute rock and roll songs again and again. How many hours have you wasted watching Gilligan's Island? You don't even like Gilligan's Island! You need to stop filling your eyes and brain with crap." I remember this indictment against myself vividly, "You haven't even heard all nine of Beethoven's symphonies in your 20 some years and yet how many times in your life have you heard... in fact I bet right now you could sing all of Wishing Well by Terence Trent D'Arby." Because if I lived 1 or 5 or 70 more years, I should not be squandering my time, my mind, and all of the vast riches out there for the taking. There was knowledge, art, depth and the exploration of meaning, the highest aspirations of humankind, all which in our modern age of miracle and wonder are pretty much available for free to anyone who would seek them out. This is about the time I moved into libraries.

Both the self-destructive, pleasure-worshiping behavior as well as the filling my mind with pop-culture bubble-gum junk were symptoms of the same spiritual condition. Which is to say disengaging, numbing one's self. From that time on, not always successfully but always intending to, I tried to engage, to grow and learn more about the world around me, in short, to give a crap about things. Since then, I have little tolerance for cynicism, sarcasm and kitsch. I want to fill my brain with greatness in hopes that it will come spilling back out.

All of which could sound kind of snooty and elitist, which I guess it would be if this were what I was proselytizing specifically. Hopefully our readers by now will have caught on that this is a post about the value of fine arts about as much as the last post was "about" vegetarianism; which is to say hopefully it's about a lot more than that.

Laurie: Funny you should mention that. Our last post had, in my mind, so little to do with vegetarianism that I was a bit taken aback by the response to that aspect of the discussion. The vegetarian bit was meant to illustrate something much bigger.  It's put me in mind of that business in the book of Acts (chapter 10), Peter's vision of refusing to eat unclean meat, in which God tells him, "What God has made clean, do not call common."  I've heard pastor after pastor use that as the proof-text that we Christians can eat pork and lobster.  Although I do not disagree that meaning is included there, it is hardly the point.  The true point becomes clear a bit later in the story, when it came time for Peter to share the Gospel and welcome gentiles into the kingdom of God. He, discerning the higher meaning of the vision, said to them, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean." The Gospel to the nations is a much bigger deal than the eating of pork!


That said, I'm really looking forward to your bigger deal here.


Paul:  I mean, yes I do think people should turn off the 24 hour television "news" networks and turn on NPR instead, or that people should stop reading The Shack and read Till We Have Faces instead. As Auntie Mame said, "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death." I would recommend engaging with the world and finding passionate interest and curiosity to anyone anywhere. I would also highly recommend flossing as a very good idea.

Laurie:  C.S. Lewis, NPR, and floss!

Paul:  I could make a few statements here about how if one becomes engrossed in the Ring Cycle of the Nibelungen, it is highly unlikely that one will turn to a life of gang violence. Or that crack cocaine severely retards one's chess game. Granted, there are limits on what a life of passionately seeking continued self-education can do (I can testify that it does not guarantee wealth. As a parenthetical, one of the Hollywood conventional cheap short-cut stereotypes I detest most is the use of classical music to indicate the decadent wealthy. One of my favorite breaks from this convention is in the Charles Bukowski film Barfly in which the flophouse indigent drunkard wants nothing more than to listen to Mahler), but I think I would be willing to stand by the statement that it does improve a person. I think I can confidently say that continued self-education would make the world a better place for everyone.

Now, I understand what this sounds like to the theologically minded in the audience, but stick with me here. I'm going somewhere specific. This is not my point of conversion. This is not my spiritual awakening. But, in a way, it was sort of a predecessor to that, a groundbreaking that would lead to that foundation being poured a few years later. Because what I'm describing here did not go away at my conversion, in fact if anything my conversion confirmed it, fulfilled it, brought in the meaning behind it all. Not to say that one necessitated the other or even directly lead to the other, but the conversion did not annihilate the passion for the auto-didactic life. In my case I found that it strengthened it. As I feel it should be.

Laurie:  I've always been really kind of amazed, and saddened, at the difference between your conversion and mine in that regard.  I'd spent years in and out of a variety of churches before my rather late-in-life conversion.  I'd been exposed to next to nothing but legalism, and, having never been the possessor of a modicum of self-control prior to conversion, really thought that the ability to "live by the rules" or "act like a Christian" was the sign that somebody really was one. So, when I came to love Christ I thought, "I'm done wasting my life. Now that I love Him, I'll do anything for Him!  I CAN do anything for Him! I'll give up everything except the Bible and a few spiritual books. " And I pretty much did just that. I got rid of hundreds of books (Many of them were trash, and should never have been read in the first place, but MANY of them were classics.) I gave up all media except Christian radio - not the music (I never could stomach the stuff) - just the sermons and talk programs. This served me well for a time, but, eventually, it became legalism and a source of pride. It also stunted my imagination and my ability to relate to others. They would say "I love ice cream!" I would respond, "I love Jesus!"  Not really, that's kind of a standing joke in Casa Mathers, but I was nearly that bad.

When you really love someone, you don't just want to stare at them non-stop.  You want to know them, what they think, and enjoy all the things they enjoy, experience life together with them.  My life with Christ had become a bit of a stare-fest. I tried so hard to keep staring at Him, fearing I would lose Him if I blinked or looked away for a moment. His beautiful creation was lost on me.  All His great works, and the wonders of humankind (albeit flawed) created in His image. All the great machinations of history, in which He displays His sovereignty - all were lost on me. Until you came along, Paul, and reminded me of my security in Christ and the freedom that is in the Gospel.


Paul: Yes. When you first fall in love with someone, if it's really abiding, there's a point where you stop just sitting around staring at them and desire to share your life with them.  All of your life, and all of who you are, and all of who they are.  Either that or, in my experience with relationships, once you get tired of staring at them, you dump them.  I have seen many people do that with Christ.  "Chasing the dragon," I think is what they call it in heroin circles.  Flying from one thing to another to try to keep that initial rush instead of working to maintain a relationship.

Laurie: Exactly, except, even though I get what you mean, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the term "working to maintain a relationship" being used in the context of a relationship with Christ.  I would say that it is His ongoing discovery of Himself to us which keeps us enthralled...He reveals, we are amazed, he reveals more, we remain so.  Other things will certainly compete for our affections, but ultimately, if we've really seen Him, and really loved Him, only He will do and our diversions will, one way or another, in the end point us back to Him.  I say, "if we've really seen Him" because I believe that people who turn their backs on Him for good either have not "seen him", or else have seen Him and came to realize they did not want any part of what they saw (as in John 6).  I say, "really loved Him," because as both of us can attest to, it is possible to think you are "in love" with someone, when what you are really in love with is what you've imagined them to be, or the way they make you feel for a time. When the illusion or good feelings wear off, well, all that's left is the real person behind it all, and how you feel about that person determines whether your heart is in it or not.
Both are very real possibilities. But to see Him as He is, and to adore Him, is to be His forever.

Paul:  Yes, well, any analogy breaks down eventually and in the case of analogies for one's spiritual walk compared with human relationships, analogies are going to be a bit like taking floppy disks to the Large Hadron Collider.  But I'm mixing my metaphors now.  Oh well.  I've buttered my bread and now I must lay in it.

But I think you do play into my point here.  I think, in fact I know, you and I both have experienced falling in love with the idea of a person.  It tends to be a bitter disappointment.  I also know that you and I are in love and it's galaxies beyond anything we've experienced before.  But, yes, "working on the relationship" does not translate.

I would be much obliged if you helped me to bring the topic back to Christianity and the arts at this point.

Laurie:  Well, I think I implied in there somewhere, if not stated outright, that the arts - the creativity of humanity - is a reflection of the image of God in this world.  It is often distorted and perverted to reflect the character of the sinful man who bears it, but for what truth and beauty is in it, it reflects the Creator and brings Him glory.  And so, one would think and expect that in redeemed mankind these expressions would be even more glorious....Does that help?  

Paul: That was a suitable help.

There was a fascinating book written by Frank Shaeffer (the son of theologian Francis Schaeffer who, as many of you know, has taken a rather inscrutable theological route as of late. But I am referring to a text he penned in the 1980s) called Addicted to Mediocrity: Contemporary Christians and the Arts. Although, as I said, a fascinating text, for our purposes I really don't need to tell you much more about it than what the title reveals. It's a fairly concise thesis statement of the book within. Philip Ryken also wrote what amounts to little more than a pamphlet on the topic with Art for Art's Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts. I will not be the first or last to observe that the church once had Caravaggio and Rembrandt, and now has Kinkade.

Now, don't lets go too far with this. I am not suggesting that appreciation of the arts and education make a person qualitatively "good" by any means. Intrepid readers will no doubt point out to me that Caravaggio's personal life is an argument against my point that fine arts and education will make one a better person. In fact, one could assemble a very long list: Bukowski, Caravaggio, Lord Byron, Picasso, Poe, Hunter Thompson, Beethoven and Mozart, etc. of artists who you would not want babysitting your children or buying the house next door to you if you're even slightly concerned over property values. Famously, there were riots, full on riots, at the premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring ballet in 1913. I'm not saying that being passionate about fine art is safe or even all that sane, but I am saying it's an appropriate response to being a human on this planet. In art as in our spiritual life, I don't think safe is the appropriate thing to aim for. In fact, safety is an illusion.

It's a matter of what springs out of the abundance of your heart. I would also point out that one touting safety and mediocrity is revealing the abundance of his heart.

Which leads me to the Christian and, not to cast aspersions, but I've found many in the church who are, in some capacity, opposed to either the arts or even education.  This strikes me as not only the polar opposite of what should be, but also a highly dangerous position.  First of all, if one worships a creator, it would seem to me that the arts and education are fine venues to supplement that lifelong endeavor.  But possibly more importantly, both the arts and education offer an expanding view of the world, the ability to see things through other eyes and awareness of other people, cultures, and ideas.  First of all, this is helpful in that it requires one to continue to think on their faith, hopefully continuing to adjust it when necessary (because we don't have it exactly right, ever, and neither does anyone else.)  Also, exposure to other points of view, awareness that people who hold them are fellow human beings, inspires compassion.  As global citizens in this expanded world, everyone is our neighbor.  We are duty bound to love them as ourselves.  Arts and education are doors to that endeavor.

Laurie:  I can't help in all this but ponder what it says about the robustness of our faith when our creative expressions - those fingerprints of the image of God on our souls - are so anemic, and when claiming to be imbued with the Spirit of God the Creator, we live in so much fear of information, education, diversity, invention, and challenge. We love such a vast God, how is it that we think so small? Is it possible that we've confused walking the narrow road with having a narrow mind? Oh we of little faith....