Sufjan does it again...

Well... it ha s been a while since I posted... but I'll be doing more. Here is an expanded version of my response to my friend Zadok's question about Christianity and Art...

I just had a great discussion about this with my dad the other day over a little Sufjan in the car... My feeling is this- the "cheese" as we are calling it seems to result from an assertion or ownership of the truth, rather than an honest exploration of where the truth leaves us. I guess I have to explain context- My dad and I were listening to Sufjan's Illinois album; right around Casimir Pulaski Day, my dad says, "this song is one of the most earnest and honest songs I can remember hearing in a long time. If I think about it too long, it makes me tear up." The song recounts a young boy (Sufjan?) who's young love of a girl is complicated by cancer and finally death; even after praying and yearning, "nothing ever happens" and the young girl passes away, leaving the boy with a gigantic question mark, a huge "WTF?!?!" I agreed with my dad, making he connection that Sufjan didn't give us an answer or a cleverly phrased bit of fundamentalist jargon- he gives us a real-life slice of what it means to be a person of faith and not understand why the "miracle-makin' power" didn't swoop down and cure the cancer. I mean, that's what I wanted to happen. But it didn't. And yet, my faith was somehow bolstered more because I recognized this situation as something very near to the human condition and not some made-up fantasy world where sin doesn't exist or is easily dispensed with or forgotten about sans the bloody sacrifice of Christ. Life is hard- that's part of the curse. Being a follower of Christ has never warranted that you'd get to cut in line wherever you wanted to at spiritual Disneyland! But, the ineffible grace that has been extended to me gets worked out in me, through me, and despite me in the dirty valleys of a life and this world. It is here that I am learning to trust God for my next paycheck, or for my next stage in life, or for peace and a cessation of the violence I see; it is NOT in a fairytail land of gumdrop buttons, "sinless" communities of "light"(thanks TK!), and unchallenging dogmatic resitations set to whatever the hell the kids are listening to today. This is a faux world that does not exist and will never exist- it is not the Promised Land, it is not the New Heaven and New Earth. It is propaganda for a religiosity that does not take the Body and the Blood seriously enough or fear God enough to realize that the answers we have been given are the starting point, not the ending; God loved this place- even with all it's cracks from sin; he loved it so much that his son came to recapture it. We get to be here, in the midst of this cosmic coup, and we get to respond and reflect and wonder and muse about it all. As we live here, I think we straddle darkness and light all the time, and I think that good artists do this regardless of where their faith, or lack of, may be. They are responding to what they see rather than pushing their creation as a means to getting a point across. That, if I remember some of my art history, would look a lot like some of the communist propaganda art which tried to insinuate an ideal and a form that was not real and never would be real.