All in Art

Awakened From Cold Vulgarity

Lewis teaches us that the best way to defend children from believing in falsehoods is NOT by telling them that fairytales aren’t real. Rather, by inculcating the just sentiments that fairytales offer, children WILL be able to better defend themselves from falsehoods of the worst variety.

In Medias Res

We are characters in a story, we are not the author. We are placed in the plot and given roles. We enter stage right or stage left and are called upon to recite our lines and act.

Reading the Bible as a Literary Person

Unfortunately, it is this type of pragmatic unliterariness that so pervades many Christians’ approach to the Bible. By and large, the modern Christian church has become a temple to the gods of pragmatism. More often than not, your typical non-denominational worship box has just started a new series on “9 Steps to a Gospel Centered Marriage” or a “Kingdom Finances Series.” The hidden message behind these texts is that Christianity can solve your problems.

C.S. Lewis on Being a Literary Person

No doubt there are many morals and messages held in the great works of literature. However, to approach a work of literature with the sole intention of mining these things is to approach literature as an unliterary person. In the case of the literary person, they approach a great work with the main intention to sit under the author’s tutelage. In this posture they receive from the author what the author is offering. What the literary person finds is that the author is offering much more than the unliterary person could ever imagine.

Relativism, Objectivity, & Fittingness

A recovery of beauty in the realm of aesthetics in the church is not going to be an easy task. It is going to take a long time and the odds are unlikely that our generation will taste the fruit of faithfulness. But what greater example of selfless love is there than laying down our own aesthetic preferences so that our great grandchildren can reap the fruit of a robustly beautiful church.