Art and the Bible

I haven’t read Francis Schaeffer’s Art and the Bible yet, but having seen a handful of quotes, I was inspired to leave a couple of them here because they tickle a part of my brain that’s been going crazy lately.

As evangelical Christians, we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the Lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. We have misunderstood the concept of the Lordship of Christ over the whole of man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives, and for our culture.

The Lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no Platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul, and redemption is for the whole man.

A large part of growth in Christ is learning how to not compartmentalize one’s self. We far too often resort to using a movie’s rating, the lack of an “explicit content” label on a CD or the consensus as to whether something is “Christian” or not to decide what we consume. I wish it were that simple.