Truth Telling

Isn’t it interesting that “speak the truth” isn’t a fruit of the Spirit? Preaching, teaching, prophesying. None of them are fruit of the Spirit.

Here is the question then about truth-telling: 

What does truth-telling look like with the fruit of the Spirit?

Whose Art Shoulders Do You Stand On?

I remember a European Christian leader telling me about their church history through a painting.

In 1916, Art Nouveau painter, Alphonse Mucha, created this painting entitled, “The Magic of the Word: A Brothel Converted into a Convent.” The Mucha Foundation describes the painting in the following way:

Jan Milíč was a learned young theologian who held positions of responsibility in the church and the court of Charles IV. Horrified by the immorality and indulgences of the clergy, Milíč resigned from his duties to dedicate his life to the city of Prague’s poor and preach against the transgressions of the church.

In 1372, his moral teachings resulted in a number of prostitutes repenting and devoting their lives to help the sick and poor. Charles IV and several wealthy citizens donated property to the cause and Milíč established a refuge, a chapel and convent dedicated to Mary Magdalen.

The Magic of the Word: A Brothel Converted into a Convent (Alphonse Mucha)

You will notice a few things in this painting:

• In the background, the image shows the remnants of the brothel and the crowd of onlookers.

• The construction of the refuge for penitent prostitutes. 

• Milíč, an unassuming figure in a blue shroud with a long grey beard, stands preaching from the top of the scaffolding. 

• The repentant women replace their jewellery with white clothing, signifying their new found purity. 

• The woman with her mouth bound symbolises repentance, rectification and doing good deeds.

The home for these women was called “The New Jerusalem.” 

I’m interested in what Mucha, himeself, did here. He took a story from church history and provided the world with an image of the Missio-gathering. He created an theological artifact showcasing the church in seed form.

Not all art is “church-art.” But all art paints a worldview for the imagination to grasp. Artists today stand not only on Milíč’s incarnational shoulders, but Mucha’s world-building shoulders as well.

Looking at Art

When looking at art, we think we’re critiquing something. 

Little do we realize, art critiques us.

• Why does that disturb me?

• Why does this frustrate me?

What is it exposing about my heart? My prejudices? My hatred? My lack of love for my neighbor? What I love more than God?

Rethinking The Art Museum

Art museums become part of the interpretive framing of all the art it contains. It part of the art’s meta-data. A fork is just a fork when featured at the dinner table. But a 3,000 year old Mesopotamian fork transforms when featured in an art museum. 

Art museums help us follow a sliver of world history. 

For a few hours, we can leave the hustle and bustle of the city and enter into a curated imaginative galaxy of story.

Art museums, however, are a relatively new-ish invention. 

For all their triumphs, they carry with them status, eliteism, class, and hierarchy. 

Not anyone can be featured in an art museum. There is not a textbook on how to even be featured in one. 

One thing I feel the art museum has done negatively for the American imagination is bifurcate

“Art” versus “non-art” in an unhelpful way. The museum has preached to our society, “there are only a few worthy of the title of Artist.”

Negatively, this worldview has robbed the arts of all their play, joy, fun, nuance, and community building capabilities. It says said, “No! This all belongs in this building called a museum! The rest of you peasants enjoy your blue-collared job. Art can’t be a hobby. Hobbies are not art! When you color with your children, that feeling of childhood joy isn’t supposed to be there. Get back to work!” 

No one, of course, has said this out loud. But the imaginary is there. 

God never intended our expressions to be imprisoned in such a way. I propose we get out of the museum-as-art mindset and get back to a more generative world.

Make these your life’s museum: your homes, your workplace, your places of study, your home offices, and your meet ups with friends. 

Take back these as the spaces and moments of rest, joy, play, and hospitality. When we do this, we embody what Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

This frames our world as the museum. 

A generative one. Not a self-seeking one.

We Live In A Phoebe World

In the Friends episode, The One With the Cat, Phoebe literally thinks her deceased mom is in the cat. While the rest of the cast finds this to be completely normal, Ross stands as the only voice of reason. He cannot believe no one else sees just how ridiculous Phoebe’s belief is. He cannot understand why the rest of the group finds it more of a service to go along with Phoebe’s fantasy. 

We live in a Phoebe world. As long as you believe it, that’s all that matters.

In the Phoebe world, we can no longer do Ross-apologetics, flustering ourselves at the ridiculousness of the world’s unbelief and irrationality. You can agree with Ross all day long, but you will seldom find someone from the Phoebe worldview resonating with you.

In James Sire’s The Universe Next Door, Sire unpacks the idea that human reasoning has been essentially shot in the foot in our post-truth world. Since the 1600s, Sire makes the case that philosophers (from Descartes to Nietzsche) have shifted the Western world’s mind: a shift from valuing knowledge to meaning. 

These ideas, according to Sire, have taken much time to sink into culture. But here we are, stumbling out of the postmodern bar at 2am, drunk on nihilistism. 

If we live in a *post-truth, Phoebe, world and human reasoning and science are no longer trusted, then apologetics, ministry, discipleship, missions must engage the realm of the arts. Arts are where post-moderns are looking for, expressing, and making meaning.

---

*Post-truth: determining objectivity from subjective emotions or personal beliefs rather than objective truth.

Resurrection Hope for Crucifixion Work

Today, my new book comes out: Resurrection Hope for Crucifixion Work: 40 Mission Meditations from 2 Corinthians.

I wrote this book over the course of several years to help solve this one problem: how do I stop letting the hardships of God’s mission consume my mind? Turns out, 2 Corinthians is just the book where Paul discloses so much of his own trials but anchors them in a resurrection framework.

If he told the Romans to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2), I imagine 2 Corinthians is an example of him doing so.

This book is written for missionaries, church planters, and lay leaders who are running on low fuel. It’s a 40-day breath of air designed to help you see resurrection life through the lens of your real, daily limitations.

How to get it: The ebook is available today on Gumroad as a digital kit (PDF + EPUB files).

Because this was made as a gift to the Body, it is Pay What You Want ($0+). No financial friction, no paywall. If you want to throw a few dollars into the workbench to help fund physical print runs and ISBN registrations down the road, it’s deeply appreciated. If you need it for $0, take it with joy.

What’s inside the bundle:

• 📖 The full book: Resurrection Hope for Crucifixion Work

• 📄 The Comfort in Affliction Prayer Log & 30-Way Action Guide

👉 Download the Field Manual Bundle ($0+)

If you know someone laboring in hard soil who needs water today, pass this free resource along to them.

What Are Friends For?

Our summer men’s group has been reading and discussing Matt Smethurst’s Tim Keller on the Christian Life. As I reflected on the chapter about friendships, I saw a pattern.

God’s love was not merely an objective reality for mankind. From the seed of his agape (unconditional, self-sacrificial) love, he always summons us in three directions: Out, Up, and Down. Never In. All three work together and constantly move back and forth:

© Matt Taylor

The Out-Up-Down pattern binds Christian relationships in a unique way:

• God summons us Up in a level-up kind of way through the relationships among the ekklesia. Through those leaders over us, his creates in us a cognitive dissonance where the mere presence and Word-speak among the body of Christ draws our attention vertically. Many believers might consider this Sunday-centered experience as the center of their Christian life. But this is why Upward, alone, cannot be our only focus.

• God always sends us Out on mission into the world. This is actually our purpose (Ephesians 2:10). This occurs through the roles he’s given us (Christian, parent, child, boss, employee, ministry leader, etc.). When we only stay Upward, we tend to feel a kind of plateau in our faith journey. We form certain bonds through mission differently than the Upward sphere. God creates communitas through mission. Communitas is that flavor of community that He forms when a group of people share a mission together. If you’ve ever been on a sports team or a short-term mission trip and experienced this magnified bond within a short time frame, that’s communitas.

• But God also calls us DOWN. He roots the gospel in our soul’s soil over time through the context of the Christian community (differently than the relationships of the Sunday gathering context). These friendships are the ones where we can be more vulnerable about our struggles to follow Jesus. They are people who provide safety, and with whom we feel truly seen and heard. But these close relationships don’t let us stay where we are at. They summon us to deeper belief and conformity to Christ. They nudge you to find your identity as a fellow believer in a community and, as Lewis notes, keep the focus continually turning outward from the friends themselves.

This image isn’t perfect (just some visual ideating).

But one thing I know for sure: Each of these relationships get our eyes off ourselves—our pride. They kill the Me Monster, that Mayor Humdinger constantly crying, “What about Me?!”

One might say, “But don’t each of these (Up-Down-Out) impact me?” Of course they do.

But here is the irony. God new-creation’d you to provide purpose through community: to serve in the trenches of the world alongside others, to nourish one another, and to commit to leveling up as apart of others. The irony is these three kinds of relationships, not merely make your life about IN. No, God designed much blessing to your own life through these three “eyes-out” frames.

He Was Everyone’s Best Friend

Boy, what a testimony about Glen Hansard. May we all live such a testimony.