5 Lessons About Plateauing Faith from Art-Making
Our imaginations preach at us from years of going to church. Ideas pop into our heads, don’t they? Snippets of truth and untruth. Clippings of truth needing untwisting.
Sometimes, when I feel like my faith in God is plateauing, my trained imagination tells me things like, “read the Bible more!” “Pray more, Matt.” “Evangelize more.”
It is hard to compete with these sayings. They are good things after all, aren’t they? However, God’s wisdom is meant to take scriptural truth and guide us wisely through the specific day-to-day circumstances.
Here are a few things art-making has taught me about those seasons when I felt my faith plateauing:
1. We were designed to make. To be an artist implies you use that skill. Using your craft gives artists the right to call themselves, “artists.” So it is with Christians. Being a disciple of Christ implies your whole life permeates with the life and love of Jesus. We were designed to use what God gave us and steward it. Every time I make something, something that did not exist now exists in the world to be useful and beautiful for whomever. When I say “designed to make” I mean God gave us gifts to invest into the world for his kingdom. Whatever He’s given us, make something with it. When Jesus was asked about the end of world, check out his commands and parable implications from Matthew 24-25. As the disciples and Jesus interact about the destruction about the temple, he says things like this:
Watch out that no one deceives you about signs of Jesus’ return (24:4)
See that you are not alarmed…the end is not yet (24:6)
The one who endures to the end will be delivered (24:13)
If anyone tells you ‘Look, here is the Messiah’… do not believe it (24:23)
Take note of what Jesus is saying here [his coming will be very apparent] (24:25)
Learn the parable of the fig tree: seeing these things means the end is near (24:32-34)
Be alert (24:42), Know this (24:43), Be ready (24:44)
Faithful is the one… (24:45)
…the master who finds the slave working… (24:46)
The virgins who were ready for the bridegroom’s return went in with him to the wedding banquet. Those not ready were not welcome (25:10)
Therefore, be alert, because you don’t know either the day or the hour of the master’s return (25:13)
Invest God’s gifts: The faithful are those who invest their talents God gave them (25:14-30)
Invest in: the needy, hungry, thirsty, stranger, sick, naked, prisoners (25:35-36)
2. Give away. Besides learning to be content and enjoy the gift of artistry from my Father, I’ve learned how fulfilling it is to give that gift away to others. God gave us gifts, skills, and talents to serve and give away. This is not merely giving away artwork (which I enjoy doing) but giving away how to do artwork. There are always people out there who need things (time, talent, skills, mental bandwidth, material goods and services, etc.) you particularly possess.
3. Arts as metaphor for making good works. Arts engage in the realm of metaphor. God gave us each good works to walk in since before the foundation of the world. Good works come about through the act of making them (I’ve written some on this topic here). We make moments with others through words and actions. Have you ever felt encouraged by someone’s words? Ever felt strengthened or motivated by a sports coach to get moving with a renewed kindling toward action? Has a movie ever stirred your heart from a thing? Have you ever been gifted something so wonderful it brought you tears? Yes, those were all things made by someone else. Making isn’t simply about arts and crafts. Making is how we live our lives.
4. Making gives clarity to a thing. Making is all about a journey towards discovery. This might be one of the most misunderstood things about art today. When people view or hear a profane thing, it is easy to conclude the artist has arrived at such destination. Perhaps they have…for that day. But I assure you, art is all about discovery. Picasso’s bulls illustrate this well.
Picasso famously showed this journey of abstraction in his lithographs of the bulls above. Say what you will about Picasso’s own worldview, values, and how he expressed all that. Art making helps us clarify something into it’s simplest form, much like understanding the irreducible minimum of Pablo’s visual bull. Art is the process of getting to see the forest rather than the trees. Understanding this has guided me to focus on the irreducible minimum in bible reading, or, what is God’s heart in whatever passage I read.
5. Making is the completion of understanding a concept. Consuming data is different than learning it. I have found Scripture more crystalizing by engaging in some of the following ways following reading:
Create infographs
Doodle what I’m reading
Napkin drawing of how I’d give that thought away visually
Attempting to write a poem
Writing a song
Painting
These activites have helped my meditation process. And the fruit compounds. I can give these things away. Creating a corpus of Scripturally focused stuff roots the text deeper into my bones.
If we feel our faith is plateauing, what if that restless feeling is because we’ve buried goods things God has given us? What would it look like to use your unique accessible tools which have been on the shelf collecting dust? What will you make with your life today?
