christians, artists and art, argh, nuance, part 2

I had a realization today. One of my continual rants deals with art watered down so as to be understood too easily, or music not being made art because it is afraid to speak in a poetic way that requires thought, pondering, grappling. My biggest justification of this conviction has been the art in Jesus’ parables. Jesus usually veiled the message to cause listeners to deal with it - to discover the depth of what He was saying. We, on the other hand, come up with myriad cutesy ways to paraphrase it so that it just becomes cliché. Many unbelievers immediately recognize the spiel and reject it out of hand. Many Christians think they know the meaning, so they’ve essentially ceased to recognize the depth, or the profundity. Anyway, you know my rant. I’ve pecked that field clean.
Today, I think I got some insight into that thought pattern. Perhaps it’s not only laziness that causes folks to react negatively to veiled, riddled, artist expressions.
On Wednesday, I participated in a telephone conversation with Harold Best about his book, Unceasing Worship. I hadn’t read the book yet, so I wasn’t following all the references, but his points were clear. In this conversation, he stated that having been trained artistically, he had always felt that he should confuse people with his art, and then clear it up later. He said that he’d changed his mind about that now. It seems that he’d justified his conviction just as I have, by noticing that that’s how Jesus did it. But now he feels that approach tends to elevate art to the level of the gospel. Art is not the Gospel. Since Wednesday, I’ve been thinking this through. And I still can’t quite get my mind around it. No, art is not the gospel – but why can’t art contain the gospel. The meanings of Jesus’ parables were sometimes hard to understand if it was understood that they had a meaning. The story itself could have just been a story. It seems to me that since the story is just a vehicle, there is nothing wrong with fashioning our vehicle as artistically as Jesus did. The story contains the Gospel. Shouldn’t we elevate the Gospel to the level of the Gospel? Isn’t the Gospel that we are sharing the same Gospel that Jesus gave us to share? I don’t understand how my modeling Jesus’ methods to tell His story is an example of me elevating my art to the level of the Gospel.
My rant has a part two. If my “art” is only a package for the dissemination of the message that could be spoken more clearly and with less distraction, is that an example of avoiding elevating art? Or is it merely using the Gospel as an excuse to create art. If I can say it more effectively without music, why would I use music? Again, I know I’m dealing with nuances of motivation here. But there is a difference. There is a difference between studying scripture and being moved to sing about it, and looking to the scripture for something to sing about. Is your song the motivation or is the scripture? An artist is compelled to “speak”. He speaks of what is inside him. If he has the greatest message of all inside him, why should he package it in mediocrity?
Help me out here. I’m not claiming to have the final answer, I’m just trying to figure it out.