who have a gifting to tell stories . And then they go to Los Angeles , they go to Hollywood , they go somewhere else and … their faith gets shipwrecked , they fall away . And so , because of that , we have a natural parental-type fear of that kind of thing entering into the church . It also predates back to the Reformation as best as I can tell ,
Prior to the Reformation , the Catholic church at the height , when it had lots of political weird stuff going on , it was also making really , really beautiful things and really gorgeous things . They were so breathtakingly beautiful that it would overwhelm the viewer to hopefully be open to the gospel . At least that ’ s the pure intention behind it , but there were some that thought that could have been idol worship . And so what happens at the Reformation , the church moved further down to everything became simplified … staying away from anything that looks like idol worship .
And there ’ s even people in the church now that still believe things like Christian TV shows are idol worship . And so they don ’ t even watch Christian TV . And so you can get very religious and very hard on either side . But I ’ d say this much is that to me , artistry is telling stories … being a good storyteller . That ’ s what artistry is .
And I think as a believer you can have both of these things inside of you , a heart for the gathering of the believers to make things that we can all sing to God or that help edify that process . But you could also have on the inside of you the ability to tell stories . Jesus simulated both of those things . Jesus in a very pastoral way , they said , “ How do we pray ?” And Jesus taught them how to pray . He didn ’ t just teach them , he actually wrote a prayer for them to sing or to pray back to God .
That worship Levitical pastoral thing where Jesus says , you can pray this word for word , my Father , here ’ s the words and you can pray this to the Father . And it ’ s theologically correct and it ’ s sound , and it comes from the mind of God . Here ’ s something you can pray back to the Father , or you can use it as a springboard and make it your own and have a conversation with God . That ’ s amazing . But then Jesus would also look at a group of shepherds and he would just go , “ How do I explain what the kingdom of God is like ?” And this is the crazy part , is it ’ s the Son of God , but he ’ s also the Son of Man . So he ’ s fully God and fully man . I don ’ t want to drop a grenade in here on the incarnation , but you got to think about it . He ’ s filled with the Spirit , but he also has a human imagination .
So both things are active at the same time , his imagination is being touched by the spirit of God and he creates a story that the kingdom of God is like a shepherd that has 99 sheep and loses one and leaves the 99 to go find the one . And all of those shepherds and farmers watching understand now what he ’ s trying to communicate about the kingdom . They just learned something , but it was through a story . It wasn ’ t through a prayer .
And so I would say that I think that the artistic calling is that comes from the heart of God just as much as the calling to the Levitical calling to lead that comes from the mind and heart of God . And so what I would say is this , is that sometimes when we box ourselves off from things , and I understand there ’ s a difference between you got to protect yourself from
12 December 2023 Subscribe for Free ...