Every Christian is an Artist

October 02, 2004

“I believe that the Bible teaches that we are made in the image of our Creator and as a result of that, we have creative abilities that, though diminished by the fall, they mirror the Father. Essentially, we are creative because God is creative. We need to follow in the footsteps of the Lord in that way as much as God give us the faith to do that.

Because of the image of God in man, we are compelled to dream, compelled to imagine and bear the fruit of our thoughts in the acts of creativity. I believe that if Jesus if really at the center of our life he’s at the center of our dreams and imaginings as well. I pray that the Spirit of truth brings the word to bear upon our thoughts to the degree that we can contribute redemptively creative ideas, solutions, works of art, and words of love to a crazy world. Anything less is to be less than human and a lot less than what God called us to be.

Francis Schaeffer said that no work of art is more important than a Christian’s life and every Christian is called to be an artist in a sense. He or she may have no gift of writing, no gift of composing or singing, but each one has the gift of creativity in the way he or she lives his own life. In this sense the Christian’s life is to be an art work. The Christian’s life is to be a thing of truth and a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and desparing world.

In the message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases Colossians 3:1: ‘So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.’”

—Charlie Peacock (interview on his album Everything that’s on my mind)

Posted by pablohart on October 02, 2004 08:44 PM

Comments

every time i've logged onto your site these past couple days, i think of "every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief" from The Fly. did you think of that line when you wrote this headline?

Posted by Nathan Hart at October 8, 2004 12:37 PM

Nate, I wasn't thinking of that line when I posted this, but it's kinda cool. Might have been subconscious! :)

I just have always liked what he said in that interview and the other day I was listening to that CD and the interview came on so I listened to it. I immediately posted them on my site because his thoughts shouldn't be locked inside the hidden track on that CD. They needed to come out into the open.

Posted by pablohart at October 8, 2004 2:46 PM

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