One of the best books I have read so far this year. It is a must read for everyone involved with the arts. Nancy explains how arts (music, art, films, writings, architecture. etc. is created with a worldview. I want to leave you with one quote: "God's good gifts - including things like skill and insight - are given to everyone. This is the doctrine of common grace: that God 'causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous' (Matt. 5:45). As a result, most artists' vision is better than their worldview. They are sensitive to dimensions of reality that go beyond what is strictly permitted within the cramped categories of their secular worldview. One might say that the more attuned artists are to actual human experience, the less restricted they are by their worldview, and the richer their vision of the world." I highly recommend this book!
Check out Nancy's husband's website
here!
Below are some excellent quotes from this book:
Through art we can know
another's view of the universe. ~Marcel p. 7
As I stepped out of the cab,
it struck me that our conversation had been sparked by a novel, a work of
fiction. Yet should that be surprising? After all, where do most people wrestle
with the big questions of life - about God, morality, and the meaning of life?
Today's most influential worldview are born in the universities, but they touch
all of us through the books we read, the music we listen to, and the movies we
watch. Ideas penetrate our minds most deeply when communicated through the
imaginative language of image, story, and symbol. It is crucial for Christians
to learn how to "read" that language and to identify worldviews
transmitted through cultural format. William Barrett wrote, an age sees itself
"in the looking glass of its art." p. 11
William Barrett wrote, an age
sees itself “in the looking glass of its art.” p. 11
Ideas are born, nurtured, and
developed in the universities long before they step out onto the political
stage. p. 12
Those with the authority to
define what qualifies as knowledge wield the greatest power. p. 12
One of the most important
steps in recovering a Christian worldview is simply to recognize it, reclaim
it, and reconnect it to its Biblical roots. p. 13
J. Greshan Machen wrote
"False ideas are the greatest obstacle to the reception of the
gospel." Not pop culture. Not consumerism. Not moral temptation. False
ideas. p. 15
The most significant factor
most effective in helping young people retain their Christian convictions was
whether they had a safe place to wrestle with doubts and questions before
leaving home. The study concluded, "The more college students felt that
they had the opportunity to express their doubts while they were in high
school, the higher [their] levels of faith maturity and spiritual maturity.
p. 16
A Biblical motivation for
studying worldviews should be the same principle that motivates all authentic
discipleship: The goal is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind," and to "love your
neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:37-39). Loving requires knowing the person
well. We nurture love for God by studying a Biblical worldview to become more
deeply acquainted with His truth, His character, His purpose in history and in
our lives. And we demonstrate love for others when we study their worldview to
get inside their thinking and find ways to connect God's truth with their
innermost concerns and questions. p. 18
We might say there have been
repeated re-enactments of the day of Pentecost when people from multiple
nations heard the gospel "in their own language" and were converted
(Acts 2:8). According to Lamin Sanneh, a former Muslim from Gambia who now
teaches at Yale University, "Christianity is the religion of over two
thousand different language groups." There are more Christians who
"pray and worship in more languages than in any other religion in the
world. p. 19
In the New Testament times, the
Greeks had a term for the underlying principle that unifies the world into
orderly cosmos, as opposed to randomness and chaos. They called it
the Logos. The Stoic philosophers conceived it as a pantheistic mind
pervading the universe. But the apostle John applied the term to Christ.
"In the beginning was the Word" - Logos (John 1:1). Every
Greek who heard John's gospel understood that He was claiming that Christ
Himself is the source of the order and coherence of the universe. As Paul put
it, "in Him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17). Creation has a
rational, intelligible order that reflects God's creative plan. p. 25
True wisdom consists in seeing
every field of knowledge through the lens of God's truth - government,
economics, science, business, and the arts. When Christians speak of a
worldview, they are simply using modern terminology to restate the Bible's
comprehensive claim. p. 26
The Christian gospel is unique
because it is the narrative of what God has done in history to
accomplish salvation. p. 35
Many church leaders think the
way to attract people into the sanctuary is by using skits, pop music, and
video clips in the worship service. But surprisingly, the study found that real
church growth has nothing to do with tricks or techniques. Instead the central
factor is a church's view of truth. The study found that the more strongly
people affirmed orthodox Christian doctrines as objectively true - for
everyone, everywhere - the more likely they were to be actively involved in a
church. pp. 35-36
Knowing God is a love
relationship that engages the whole person: heart, soul, mind, and strength
(Mark 12:30). To maintain that rich balance, however, Christians must always
lean against the predominant error of their age. And the most characteristic
error today is the break-up of truth. p. 36
Whoever marches on the English
department - and the rest of the university - will end up wielding political
power. ~Todd Gitlin p. 39
The church is a training
ground to equip individuals with a Biblical worldview and to send them out to
the front lines to think and act creatively on the basis of Biblical truth. The
result is not oppression but a wonderful liberation of their creative powers.
pp. 44-45
In Reasons to Believe,
reporter John Marks tries to explicate the Biblical concept of truth - somewhat
like an anthropologist interpreting the customs of obscure tribe. It takes
Marks almost a page, in rising crescendo prose, to communicate what the Bible
even means by truth. "When a Bible-believing Christian talks about truth .
. . he is not speaking about a thing conditioned by culture or crafted
ultimately by language," Marks writes. (That is, truth is not a social
construction.) It is not "affected by tides and times or rendered
different from generation to generation." (Truth is not relative to time
or place.) Scripture is "the explicit word of God." (It has a
transcendent source.) It is "nothing more and nothing less than the
ultimate fact of existence, raw and undiluted." (It is ultimate truth.)
The gospel "does not dissolve in water or burn in fire. It is Truth. It is
final! You can almost imagine trumpets blaring as the text climbs to its
concluding climax. Marks' struggle simply to explain the Biblical
view of truth (which he does not accept) spotlights the challenge faced by
Christians today. p. 45
All art is a language - a
language of color, sound, movement, or words. When we immerse ourselves
in a work of art, we enter into the artist's worldview. It can be
expansive and glorious worldview, or it can be cramped, dehumanizing worldview.
~Dana Gioia p. 76
. . . aesthetic elements grow
ultimately out of worldviews. This can be a difficult concept to grasp. In
popular music, for example, most people readily recognize that
the lyrics express the songwriter's perspective and experience. But
they tend to assume that musical style is neutral. That is a mistake.
Artistic styles develop originally as vehicles for expressing particular
worldviews. As painter Louis Finkelstein says, "The sense of all stylistic
change is that the underlying view of the world changes." pp. 76-77
. . . art is never just a copy
of nature. Artist always select, arrange, and order their materials to offer an
interpretation or perspective. p. 90
Most of the major figures who
jump-started modern science were devout Christians - Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo, Boyle, Newton. In a 2003 study, sociologist Rodney Stark identified
the fifty-two top "stars" who did groundbreaking work to launch the
scientific revolution. Turning then to biographical documents, he discovered
that all but two of them were Christian. Does that surprise you? Today many
people assume that science and religion are inherently in conflict. But
historians of science have turned that assumption upside down. Today most
historians agree that the scientific outlook actually rests on fundamental
concepts derived from a Biblical view of nature. p. 105
The linkage of natural and
spiritual was the trademark of Christian realism. The Catholic apologist Frank
Sheed once said, "The secular novelist sees what is visible; the Christian
novelist sees what is there." Just so. On one hand, Christian realists
affirmed the goodness of the empirical realm known by the senses. On the other
hand, they regarded it as only one respect of a richer, multi-dimensional
reality created by God. In their worldview, Auerbach explains, the influence of
God, "reaches so deeply into the everyday that the two realms of the
sublime and the everyday are not only actually unseparated but basically inseparable."
Truth was unified. Christian realists gave temporal things eternal
significance. pp. 116-117
God's good gifts - including
things like skill and insight - are given to everyone. This is the doctrine of
common grace: that God "causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good,
and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45). As a
result, most artists' vision is better than their worldview. They are sensitive
to dimensions of reality that go beyond what is strictly permitted within the
cramped categories of their secular worldview. One might say that the more
attuned artists are to actual human experience, the less restricted they are by
their worldview, and the richer their vision of the world. pp.
124-125
C.F. von Weizsacker sums up
the difference: "Matter in the Platonic sense . . . will not obey
mathematical laws exactly." But "matter which God has created from
nothing may well strictly follow the rules which strictly follow the rules
which its Creator laid down for it." In this way, he concludes, modren
science is "a legacy, I might even have said a child, of
Christianity." pp. 125-126
The chief aim of science is to
discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and
which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics. ~Johann Kepler p.
126
Secularism is not neutral, though it often claims to be.
In relation to the Biblical God, secularists may be skeptics. But in
relationship to their own god substitutes, they are true believers. To adapt an
observation from C.S. Lewis, their skepticism is only on the surface. It is for
use on other people's beliefs. "They are not nearly skeptical
enough" about their own beliefs. And when they enforce secular
views in the realm of law, education, sexuality, and health care, they are
imposing their own beliefs on everyone else across an entire society. p.
139
Typology is far more than a literary device, however. The
New Testament writers speak of Christ's death and resurrection as cosmic events
in which that any individuals in any age can participate. "I have been
crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). "We suffer with Him in order that
we may also be glorified with Him" (Rom. 8:17 ESV). "Rejoice
that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed
when His glory is revealed" (1 Pet. 4:14). The pattern of Christ's life is
a prototype that can explicate and give meaning to any individual's life,
imbuing both suffering and joy with additional layers of spiritual
significance. It provides the pattern by which your life and mine can be woven
into the larger story of God's redemption history. p. 155
Because all people were created by a personal God, they
cannot completely obliterate personal expression. Even when they reject the
Biblical worldview in their thinking, inevitably it comes out in some way
in their lives. They cannot help expressing their own nature as
individuals created in the image of God. p. 168
In 1925 [Igor] Stravinsky developed an abscess on his
finger, painful enough that he almost cancelled an upcoming piano concert.
"Somewhat to his own surprise, he went to a church, got on his knees, and
asked for divine aid." The finger continued to fester, however, even as he
walked out on the stage. He apologized to the audience for what he feared would
be a poor performance and sat down at the piano - when suddenly the pain
ceased. He removed the bandage and found that his finger was completely healed.
Starvinsky took the sudden cure as a miracle. He returned to the Russian
Orthodox Church and wrote several sacred compositions, many of which draw on
medieval chant. At the top of the score for Symphony of Psalms, for the
first time he wrote the same dedication that Bach attached to all his works:
"To the glory of God." p. 172
As a young man, [Vincent] Van Gogh wanted to become a
preacher, but he was turned down by the theology school where he tried to
enroll. Undaunted, he trained as a missionary and worked as an evangelist in a
poor coal-mining district in southern Belgium. Determined to share the miners'
poverty, he gave away his belongings and slept on the floor. Unfortunately, the
missionary school did not appreciate his passion, and he was dismissed. Finally
Van Gogh realized that art too can be a means of serving God. His swirling
stars and writhing landscape express "a vision that ultimately belongs
more to the realm of religious revelation than to astronomical observations.
p. 189
We must never treat worldview analysis simply as a way to
slap a label on a work of art and pigeonhole it into some neat schema.
Historically, artists were not just making pretty pictures but were wrestling
with profound questions about life - not through words but through color,
texture, tone, and composition. Art is a visual language, and Christians have a
responsibility to learn that language. All worldviews contain some grains
of truth, simply because all people are made in God's image and live in God's
world. Christians are called to identify what is good, and pour it into
Biblical wineskins (to adapt Jesus' metaphor). This explains why Christian
artists are able to employ many of the same stylistic elements as secularist
artists - taking what is true and pouring it into the much richer, fuller
wineskin of a Biblical worldview. p. 208
Christianity provided the unity he [C.S. Lewis] longed
for. Christ's life, death, and resurrection were events that occurred in the
physical world, testable by the same means as any other historical event. Yet
they were also the fulfillment of the ancient myths that Lewis had always
loved. He used the term myth not to mean a story that is false but
one that answers the deep human longing for transcendence. In his own words,
"The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also fact. The old myth of
the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend
and imagination to the earth of history." In other words, the great
events of the New Testament have all the wonder and beauty of a myth. Yet they
happen in a specific place, at a particular date, and have empirically
verifiable historical consequences. The realm of empirical fact is
imbued with profound spiritual meaning. Christianity unifies the two
realms. The Biblical worldview fulfills both the requirements of human reason and
the yearnings of the human spirit. p. 210
The Bible teaches that history is linear, moving in a
definite direction toward a future in which all wrongs will be righted and all
wounds healed. Every event has meaning within this overarching goal or purpose.
p. 223
When Paul writes, "We live by faith, not by
faith" (2 Cor. 5:7), many readers seem to think he is speaking
metaphorically and means "by faith not reason." But Paul is
speaking literally. His point is that the spiritual realm is unseen, invisible.
It takes tremendous faith to act on the basis of realities we cannot see. He
does not mean that Christianity is opposed to reason. Tragically the high
dignity accorded to reason as part of the image of God has been so thoroughly
lost that even theologically orthodox Christians often hold the mistaken notion
that Biblical faith is irrational. This is a major reason they are ineffective
in addressing the contemporary world. They have absorbed the same faith/reason
dichotomy that lies at the core of contemporary worldview. Thus they have no
genuine alternative to offer. p. 225
Throughout history Christians have employed the metaphor
of two books - the book of God's Word (the Bible) and the book of God's world
(creation). And because God is the author of both He has author-ity over
the right way to interpret them. There is an objective standard of truth. By
the same token, human beings, created in God's image, are genuine authors of
their own works. If you want to know what a text means, you ask the author.
p. 236
The same neo-Marxist worldview
has filtered down to theology, where it has inspired black, feminist, and
liberation theology. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the American public
was stunned to discover how radical some versions of black theology can be. For
some twenty years, then-candidate Barack Obama had attended a Chicago church
pastored by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who asked God not to bless America but to
"damn" it. Wright is a follower of theologian James Cone, who
condemns white churches as "the racist Antichrist" and advocates
" destruction of the white enemy." Marxist-inspired theologians
typically say, I'm not a Marxist, I merely use Marxist tools of analysis. Thus
Cone writes, "The Christian faith does not possess in its nature the means
for analyzing the structure of capitalism. Marxism as a tool of social analysis
can . . . help Christians to see how things really are." Cone is
tragically mistaken. A Christian worldview does have the resources to analyze
economic structures like capitalism. But because he does not recognize those
resources, Cone reaches over to the Marxist toolbox to borrow its conceptual
tools. The problem with this strategy is that the conceptual tools we use
change the way we think - just as practical tools, like the car or the
computer, have changed the way we live. Liberation theology often ends up as
little more than theological frosting on a Marxist cake. p. 242
As Paul says, "Let
your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may
know how to answer each person" (Col. 4:6). The study of worldviews
provides the tools to individualize our approach in presenting the gospel.
p. 246
James Spiegel, professor
of philosophy at Taylor University, writes that "every film offers a
worldview, a set of beliefs and values for understanding how the world is and
how it should be." When watching a movie, we should be asking: What
worldview is the movie communicating? Are there elements that are true? Are
there elements that are false and destructive? If Christians do not learn to
ask those questions, they may well absorb nonbiblical ideas without even being
aware of it. T.S. Eliot once noted that the serious books we read do not
influence us nearly as much as the books we read for fun (or the movies we watch
for entertainment). Why? Because when relaxing, our guard is down and we engage
in the "suspension of disbelief" that allows us to enter
imaginatively into the story. As a result, the assumptions of the author or
screenwriter may go unnoticed and seep all the more deeply into our
consciousness. When we "suspend disbelief," we must take care not to
suspend our critical faculties. pp. 253-254
In every subject area, it
is Christians who should think the most deeply and be the most creative - until
people wonder why it is that all the best books and movies are by Christians.
~C. S. Lewis p. 255
"A movie story when 'told' has an informing vision . . . a
frame of reference," writes Robert K. Johnson in Reel Spirituality.
"In fact, no story can develop without some more-or-less coherent
perception of reality, some fundamental opinion about life." Thus,
"any film, as a product of human creativity, contains hints on the
worldview of the moviemaker." p. 262
Of course, a movie is more
than the worldview it expresses. Because filmmakers are made in God’s image,
their art is often better than their worldview, bringing universal themes to
life. p. 264
Because we live in a moral
universe that has been spoiled, every act of redemption involves a kind of
death. After all, the cross is not a piece of shiny jewelry; it’s a symbol of
brutality about a tortured Messiah.
~Rick Pearcey p. 265
While it’s fine to enjoy film as art and entertainment, we
should also watch for the ways it reveals the thinking of our generation – not
primarily so we can launch protests and boycotts, but so we can respond to the
people in our lives more intelligently and compassionately. Learning to “read”
pop culture provides tools to connect with people better and communicate the
life-giving truths of Scripture in language and concepts they will understand. p.
265
No great radical idea can
survive unless it is embodied in individuals whose lives are the message. ~Erich Fromm p. 267
Where are today's counterparts
to Bach? Where is the music and art that expresses Biblical truths so
eloquently that it invites people to embark on a search for God? Christians
must go beyond criticizing the degradation of American culture, roll up their
sleeves, and get to work on positive solutions. The only way to drive out bad
culture is with good culture. After all, Jesus called His disciples
salt and light. The metaphor of light means Christians must seek out
places of darkness and despair, and enter into those places to illuminate them
with the splendor of God's truth. And because salt was used in Biblical times
as a preservative - to prevent food from spoiling and decaying - the salt
metaphor means that Christians must seek out places where society is corrupt
and falling apart, and enter into those places with God's power to preserve and
renew. p. 268
The church must once again
become a place with a reputation for nurturing artists, those with a special
gift for giving visual and imaginative expression to Biblical truth. The arts
are not just window-dressing on a didactic message - a candy coating to help
teaching go down more easily. Scripture itself is made up of a wide variety of
literary forms: poetry, proverbs, prophecy, historical narrative, commands,
parables, love songs, practical admonition, and hymns of praise. In fact, only
a fraction of Scripture is devoted to straightforward didactic teaching. The
writers of Scripture used artistic and literary forms to convey truths too
profound for straightforward propositional statements. pp.
268-269
Christians are called to adopt
the mentality of a missionary, even if they never set foot in a foreign
country. A missionary has to sift the indigenous culture carefully, deciding
which aspects of the society can be redeemed and which must be rejected. p.
270
The same sifting must be done
in every era. On one hand, much of human culture is good, because all humans
are made in the image of God and must live within the structures of the world
God created. They benefit from God’s common grace, the gifts that God bestows
on all creation. As Matthew 5:45 puts it, God causes His rain to fall on the
just and the unjust alike. The implication is that non-Christians can be
creative artists, successful businessmen, skillful doctors, and loving parents.
As Jesus said, even “you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your
children” (Matt. 7:11). On the other hand, Scripture also teaches that sin and
evil are pervasive. No part of life is untouched by corruption and falsehood.
Nothing is theologically neutral. Christians are responsible for evaluating
everything against the plumb line of Scriptural truth. Taken together, these
two themes give Christians a balanced approach to culture – affirming and
supporting what is good, while resisting anything that conflicts with Scripture.
To use Jesus’ metaphor, we are to be innocent as doves but wary as serpents
(Matt. 10:16). p. 270
Today’s parallel to
Victorianism would include praise music that mirrors the vapid emotionalism and
egocentrism of pop culture. I once visited a church where I was startled to
hear the congregation sing lines like “You are my all desire,” and “I want to
feel the warmth of your embrace.” The lyrics made no mention of God or Jesus.
No reference to salvation or justification or any other theological theme.
Nothing to suggest that the song was anything but a love song to someone’s
girlfriend. The lyrics were such an extreme example of the
Jesus-is-my-girlfriend genre that I wondered how any man could sing it with a
straight face – though as I looked around the room, I saw several men with
their eyes closed, arms raised. Why are evangelicals attracted by such
superficial emotionalism? Because they have absorbed a two-story dualism of
their own. We call it the sacred/secular split. The problem is that when spiritual
things are moved to the upstairs, then worship is reduced to little more than
an emotional buzz. Church becomes a brief escape that does little to equip
people to deal with the real world of sin, sorrow, conflict, and alienation.
The sacred/secular dualism isolates God’s truth in the upstairs, away from the
ordinary world – which implicitly denies God’s power to redeem the ordinary world. “It capitulates to the banishment of
the arts and of worship from a materialist world,” says theologian and literary
critic Amos Wilder. And in the process it “abandons the actual life of men as
unredeemable.” pp. 271-272
In Dynamics of Spiritual
Life, Richard Lovelace makes a
compelling case that the best defense is a good offense. “The ultimate solution
to cultural decay is not so much the repression of bad culture as the
production of sound and healthy culture,” he writes. “We should direct most of
our energy not to the censorship of decadent culture, but to the production and
support of healthy expressions of Christian and non-Christian art.” Public
protests and boycotts have their place. But even negative critiques are
effective only when motivated by a genuine love for the arts. The long-term
solution is to support Christian artists, musicians, authors, and screenwriters
who can create humane and healthy alternatives that speak deeply to the human
condition. p. 273
Yet in Art for God’s Sake Philip Ryken says, “God’s gifts are never to be hidden;
His calling is never to be denied.” p. 274
As Dennis Hollinger puts it,
the church itself is the best apologetic. “Postmoderns can best understand a
holy, loving, just, forgiving, life-giving God of grace when they see a holy,
loving, just, forgiving, life-giving community founded on the grace of God.”
The Christian community is the concrete reality where the transcendent reality
of the gospel is made manifest – “a visible, corporate expression of the
Christian worldview. This is a
sobering thought; because the other side of the coin is that the gospel is also
most easily discredited through the
church. What happens when nonbelievers hear preachers proclaim the importance
of the family, but see churches full of workaholic parents with little time for
their own children? When they see power relationships that are as exploitive as
anywhere else? When they see Christians trapped in the same sexual addictions
as the rest of society? When they see evangelical celebrities using the same
dishonest spin tactics as the secular advertising world? Christians may preach
passionately about the need for a Biblical worldview, but unless they are
submitting themselves to a continual process of sanctification, they will not
have the power to live out that worldview – and they will discredit the very
message they are seeking to communicate. pp. 276-277
Self-interest and personal
ambition can so cloud our perception that we literally do not recognize certain
spiritual truths. p. 277
In order to develop a Biblical
worldview, each person must first make a searching inventory of his or her own
areas of sin, temptation, and weakness, and embark on a process of
sanctification in every area of life. p. 277
J. Gresham Machen once said
the church is called to advance the kingdom of God in two ways: extensively by attracting ever more people but also intensively by consecrating our lives ever more deeply to God. As
Machen put it, “The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole man.” p. 277
Francis Schaeffer quote from
1974, “One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them
to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary. The
technical meaning of conservative is
to conserve the status quo. But “we
must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status
quo.” We are called to revolt against false idols and the power they exert over
minds and hearts. Christians should be on the front lines fighting to liberate
society from its captivity to secular worldviews. p. 278
For the first time since the start
of the second millennium of the Christian era, the face of Christianity has
again become brown. The great historic churches of Europe and North America are
not only minorities within the Christian world, but they are static or
declining in the face of real expansion in Asia, Africa, and South America. p.
285
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What the Wind Picked Up: Proof That a Single Idea Can Launch a Thousand Stories by Chi Libris
