Pastor John, a listener named Alicia emailed to ask, what role does the vast field of

art play in the church? In a nutshell, can you give a theology of art?

There are great books on art, and I have read most of them or written many of them, but

I'll tell you what I think, and that's all I can do, and if it gives some help, I'm thankful.

The word art, I think, comes from a Latin word, r, that means skill, or craft, or craftsmanship.

So here's the way I would define the word, any effort to make something, and that could

be an object or an action, like you make a dance, or you can make an action in a play, or

an object like a carving, or a painting, or a sculpture, or a poem. So any action that

makes something that takes a special skill so that the result is more than utilitarian,

or pragmatic, but moves us more deeply with beauty, or wonder, or something touching

our soul with a sense that life is more than food and drink. So that's a long complicated

definition, but basically it's a craft, a skill that aims at any fact that is more than

just keeping food on the table. And what makes it Christian, I think, so here's the theology

part, is God is an artist. He made the heavens that are telling something about his glory,

in other words, he didn't just make the heavens to protect us from solar rays. They're not

just utilitarian, they're beautiful. They say something about his glory, and Job is just

great on this. As you read the last chapters of Job, God is pointing to his artistry all

over the place, and what it says to Job about his life from nature. And Jesus, the lilies,

and the birds, and the leaven, all of it is more than utilitarian. So my first way of

getting a theology of art is that God is one. And then secondly, I would say the Bible

writers are one. They're artists. They put maybe three-fourths of the Bible is crafted

in some way linguistically so that it's poetic or striking or unusual, and it obviously

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