Why the Arts?
I recently read an article in Christianity Today titled
"Saying More Than We Can Say." In it, Carolyn Arends discusses a question
that seems to be a persistent question when finances get tight--why do the arts
matter? Aren't they just "fluff" that can easily be put to one side?
That question has always bothered me, but I've never been able to articulate
a response that I'm comfortable with. Why is it important that we have
the arts in school? Why are the arts important in worship?
One of the comments in the article struck me in a new way. The first words in
the first book of the Bible are this: "In the beginning, God created..." God
created--and as part of that creation, God created human beings in God's image.
So if the creative impulse is important to God, as beings made in God's image,
it's also important to us.
Yes, the arts (paintings, plays, poems, music) have a place in teaching us
about God. We learn in many different ways, and the arts help us deal with
different learning styles.
But there are other--perhaps more important--reasons why the arts are a
necessary part of life. When we watch someone create--whether it's making a
thing of beauty out of a lump of clay...or mixing colors together to create an
image...or placing notes on a music staff to create sounds that touch our
hearts--we see transformation. It helps us realize that other kinds of
transformation are possible--the transformation of our own minds and hearts into
the being that God desires us to be.
The arts also help us have faith in things we don't see. We live in a
world that spends so much time and energy "proving" life that we sometimes
forget that life is more than things that our five senses convince us are real.
Our faith has become weaker at times--perhaps we need more arts in school
and worship rather than less in order to strengthen our faith.
Karl Paulnack, director of the music program at the Boston Conservatory,
tells the story of Olivier Messiaen, a French composer, who was 31 when he
was sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Messiaen convinced a sympathetic
prison guard to provide paper and a place to composer; in January 1941, his
Quartet for the End of Time was performed for 4,000 prisoners and
guards. To this day, it is considered a masterpiece.
Paulnack asks, "Given what we have since learned about life in the
concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and
energy writing or playing music?...And yet--from the camps, we have poetry,
we have music, we have visual art...Why? Well, in a place where people are
only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is
that art must be, somehow, essential for life. Art is part of the human
spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are."
And so...why the arts? Because we have no choice, not if we are to live and
be the people God created us to be. We are not all going to like the same kind
of paintings, poetry, music--but the arts at their best both nourish something
within us and are ways in which we become part of God's creative process and
raise our praises to the one who is the ultimate creator.
—Pam Robison
