Art is culture enlivened: everything from the teapots we use to the chairs we sit on, the paintings on our walls to the novels on our bookshelves, the clothing we wear to the music we hear on the radio, the movies we watch to the structures we live in. Art functions as storytelling, the art of connecting people. We tell stories to make sense of our animated existence, both examining the grime of reality and celebrating the joy of life, acknowledging the sting of death and daring to hope for resurrection. In storytelling we make singular experiences into shared experiences. Art, we might say, is the product of making something of the world.[1]
“Art, we might say, is the product of making something of the world.”
We experience art via aesthetic interaction. Aesthetics affect our souls and physicality in ways that move beyond propositional statements, even capable of stirring and shaping our principal affections. Aesthetic experiences wield the power to awaken meaning in us, in humans. Thus, art stands as a window glimpsing into the great beyond. Because of art’s mystical, unquantifiable quality, it affects the whole of a person—senses and emotions, heart and mind.
Our role as artists springs from priesthood, a theme that permeates the Christian Scriptures. Members of the Israelite priesthood were given the unique honor of serving as mediators between the divine and human realms.[2] To put it simply, the job of the priest was to bring God to the people and the people to God. Humans, stuck in pain, rebellion, and despair, long for human flourishing, a concept that the Scriptures call shalom—peace and harmony for individuals and communities. Priests, while honest about real brokenness, envision and catalyze the restoration of the whole world in every cultural context, helping humans become whole again.
“Priests ... envision and catalyze the restoration of the whole world in every cultural context, helping humans become whole again.”
Storytellers act as culture-makers, shaping entire generations’ perceptions about all aspects of life, about how living works. As such, storytellers operate as stewards, responsible to care for words and images, their service to humanity. It follows that storytellers love words and images in order to love people. Storytellers invite and host shalom.
[1] C.f. Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 23.
[2] Cf. R. K. Duke, “Priests, Priesthood,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 646.