How Satan Twists Genres
Satan deceives. He lies. He distorts truth. He steals, kills, and destroys.
The arts have been his playground ever since the days they transformed the raw materials of earth to construct Babel’s tower.
We must stay on the line of God’s intent for the arts and artistic genres. When we dishonor them, devastating results follow.
There are two ways we see Satan twisting our worldview of the arts: by adding and taking away God's intent for them.
By Adding
Recently, a video made the rounds on social media of artist Roman Signer. The video featured his performance piece of 10 sand buckets stacked on top of each other. Once the buckets fell to the ground, the crowd clapped.
My social media feed contained multiple pot shots at Signer from various people, surprisingly, mostly Christians. At first glance, sure, this performance piece doesn’t look like much of anything. But witnessing contemporary performance art through the lens of a 10-second Instagram doomscroll doesn’t quite grant the artist the benefit of the doubt. The negative comments I heard completely missed the context, story, and intent, and therefore, missed the potential to learn from the piece. The nay-sayers imposed an addition to what this artist's intent.
We distort first by adding to what art is. This damages a couple things: first, it shows a lack of grace to artists and second, we shut the valve from on our own imaginations. By adding to what an artwork is, we steal what it can do for our imaginations. When we add, three results follow:
Golden Calf-ism: We make art more than what it's supposed to be or do. God did not intend for us to ascribe life and such power to artwork. The world isn’t meant to be saved through the arts.
Elitism: God also did not mean for any certain class or status to be higher than any other. The West has done massive global damage by assuming that the Classical arts are the closest to heaven.
Romanticism: While God might have endowed a certain kind of wisdom to craftsmen, He did not ask them to take His throne. Yet, we esteem them as untouchable and perfect saints.
By Taking Away
We can, likewise, take away from God’s intent for genres. When this occurs, we go further than distorting our imagination. We kill it.
Nazi propaganda art was quite aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Beneath it, however, lied curses upon literal curses against entire people groups. The following occurs when we subtract from art forms:
Propaganda: Art gets used as a mere container for a message.
Utilitarian: Art is only valuable only if it teaches.
Sacred: Diminish art forms unless they narrowly fit within a “divine” category (i.e. sacred arts of high church). Historically, some churches placed burdens (theological, financial, etc.) on locals in order to fund church architecture and other “holy” art forms.
The church and her artists must retain the middle. We must boldly take up our God-given crafts, hone them, sharpen them, and use them endowed with all of their glorious and creative purposes.
