ARTA 200 Regent University Week 6 Forming a Biblical Aesthetic Journal Forming a Biblical Aesthetic Each week, we will look at various passages of scriptu

ARTA 200 Regent University Week 6 Forming a Biblical Aesthetic Journal Forming a Biblical Aesthetic

Each week, we will look at various passages of scripture or a reading from other sources that address Biblical principles and the arts. You will be asked to read and prayerfully consider the assigned passage(s) and keep a weekly journal of your reflections. This journal will provide a foundation upon which you will begin to develop your own biblically informed aesthetic. You will be required to post your entries every week. Your journal entries will not be shared with the class, to protect your privacy.

– 200-300 Words

Prayerfully consider the assigned reading, an excerpt from the book, Scribbling in the Sand: Christ and Creativity, by multiple Dove Award winner, recording artist and author, Michael Card. Write your reflections in your Journal. Make sure your entries are substantial and meaningful to you. Your entries are for your own personal reflection and will not be viewable to your classmates. Participation is required and will be graded. SCRIBBLING
USAND
Excerpt from
Christ
and
Creativity
Scribbling in the Sand:
Christ and Creativity
by Michael Card
Michael
© IVP Books (September 3, 2004)
ISBN-10: 9780830832545
ISBN-13: 978-0830832545
ASIN: 0830832548
The Call to Create
Even though he had been able to put a name to each of thousands of animals the Lord had paraded before him, Adam could not find
a name for the ache he was now feeling in his bones. Later, he would call it loneliness. But it must have been hard to understand the
feeling of being lonely when what you are lonely for does not even exist yet. So before God created Eve, he must have created within
Adam a lonely, empty place that was her exact shape and size.
When she is at last presented to Adam, her beauty demands a response and so Adam sings the very first song: This is flesh of my flesh,
Bone of my bones.
HUMAN CREATIVITY BEGINS
In every way Adam could imagine, Eve was a real part of him.
So now he has a partner, that one other single person who will
make community and creativity possible. Eve completes and
complements Adam. She will make the creative process possible
and pleasurable.
Adam’s first lyric compliments and comforts her. It helps her to
understand where she came from and where she is going as well as
who she is. And all art, ever since, has sought to do nothing more.
As the first couple, the first creative community, stand before their
Creator King they receive the creative mandate:
The instruction to subdue and rule, as creature king and queen over
God’s creation, is a command to extend the image of God out into
the world. They will create children who will carry on that image.
They will plant gardens that, by their blooming, will perpetuate the
rich creativeness and beauty of God. And they will, it is safe to
assume, continue creating and singing songs to one another, like
Adam’s first song to Eve. They will struggle to communicate their
deep feelings to each other. And when Cain, Abel and finally Seth
come along, Adam and Eve will, no doubt, sing them to sleep. They
HUMAN CREATIVITY BEGINS
In every way Adam could imagine, Eve was a real part of him.
So now he has a partner, that one other single person who will
make community and creativity possible. Eve completes and
complements Adam. She will make the creative process possible
and pleasurable.
Adam’s first lyric compliments and comforts her. It helps her to
understand where she came from and where she is going as well as
who she is. And all art, ever since, has sought to do nothing more.
As the first couple, the first creative community, stand before their
Creator King they receive the creative mandate:
The instruction to subdue and rule, as creature king and queen over
God’s creation, is a command to extend the image of God out into
the world. They will create children who will carry on that image.
They will plant gardens that, by their blooming, will perpetuate the
rich creativeness and beauty of God. And they will, it is safe to
assume, continue creating and singing songs to one another, like
Adam’s first song to Eve. They will struggle to communicate their
deep feelings to each other. And when Cain, Abel and finally Seth
come along, Adam and Eve will, no doubt, sing them to sleep. They
will write poems to help them understand who they are and where
they came from. They will seek through their art to compliment and
comfort them as well. And when the first gruesome murder occurs,
it is not hard to imagine the first dirge of suffering and sorrow rising
from the lips of those first parents. All these forms of creativity, even
as far as the weeding of the garden after the Fall, performed in the
presence of God himself in obedience to his mandate, represent
the varied creative ways that people can give themselves, offer
themselves up. And that is to say they are (or can according to our
definition, forms of worship.
Be fruitful and increase in number,’ fill the earth and
subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds
of the air and over every living thing that crawls on the
ground.
(Genesis 128)
This is more than a mandate to make a lot of babies, to become
conservators of the earth. Neither is it a call to become “little
gods,” to somehow imitate God in the mystery of his limitless
creativity. Rather, as romantic responders, Adam and Eve are
encouraged not to answer back in some pale imitative way (real
creativity is never imitative) but to give voice to their resonating
hearts in praise. At its heart this is a call to worship.
CREATE A BOAT?
The Old Testament’s preoccupation with the creative process does
not end with Adam and Eve. There follows a whole procession of
men and women who are caught up, for better or worse, in this
compulsion to create. We see them throughout the pages of
Scripture in the throes of the creative mandate.
But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD… Noah
was a righteous man, blameless among the people
of his time, and he walked with God…. Noah did
everything just as God commanded him.
His image is woven into the fabric of everything we are. His
thumbprint on our lives affects us in ways we will never even
begin to understand. His divine beauty, which is part of our
essence as well, demands a response. We see a majestic
sunset, and a line of poetry comes to mind, or an image to paint,
or perhaps we merely give a sigh that can sound like a song.
Can a work like Moby Dick not be completely understood in
such a way? Is it not an extended, amplified sigh from the pen
of Melville in response to the beauty and terror he experienced
while he was adventuring in the South Seas? Aren’t the pages of
such masterpieces merely signs that point us along in a direction
toward the terrifying beauty of white whales or talking lions-and
toward the God who created them? When we ask this question,
or any question akin to it, we will inevitably discover that God
has already answered it in his Word-answered it before we ever
thought to ask.
(Genesis 6.’8-22)
In all of human history no one had ever experienced the aching
hands and back Noah experienced. No one had ever been
subjected to the ridicule he had heaped on him and his sons for
the decades it took to build that ridiculous boat.
“Boat, what is a boat? For a what? A flood. Now tell me once
again, what is that, and where does this stuff you call rain come
from?”
Noah builds a remarkable and mysterious structure for an event
that has never happened up till that time. There has never even
been a gentle spring rain, the Bible tells us in Genesis 2:5-6,
much less the deluge that is to come. Talk about imagination!
Talk about inspiration! It is not difficult to visualize Noah stepping
back from the monstrosity in his back yard, with the zebras
braying and the monkeys chattering and the ducks quacking
and the hyenas (as well as all his neighbors) laughing, and Noah
The lesson for us to learn from Noah (which we will see even
more powerfully demonstrated in the life of Jesus) for the sake of
our own involvement in the creative process is that bound up with
the creative mandate must be the notion of obedience. Genesis
6:22 tells us Noah did everything just as God had commanded.
Beyond his abilities, his imagination, his common sense and
probably his resources, we must see that it was the command
of God that made the saving ark a reality. The command of God
met the obedience of Noah, and the result was salvation. Sound
familiar?
bimael bereid
from
Noah builds a remarkable and mysterious structure for an event
that has never happened up till that time. There has never even
been a gentle spring rain, the Bible tells us in Genesis 2:5-6,
much less the deluge that is to come. Talk about imagination!
Talk about inspiration! It is not difficult to visualize Noah stepping
back from the monstrosity in his back yard, with the zebras
braying and the monkeys chattering and the ducks quacking
and the hyenas (as well as all his neighbors) laughing, and Noah
saying to himself, “Where did this thing come from!”
our own involvement in the creative process is that bound up with
the creative mandate must be the notion of obedience. Genesis
6:22 tells us Noah did everything just as God had commanded.
Beyond his abilities, his imagination, his common sense and
probably his resources, we must see that it was the command
of God that made the saving ark a reality. The command of God
met the obedience of Noah, and the result was salvation. Sound
familiar?
Indeed the command of God makes everything possible. As
descendants of Noah, our very existence today demonstrates the
truth of it. The command was met with costly obedience.
CREATIVITY ABUSED
From the old lady who fills a page with doodling as she talks
on the phone, to the man who welds together dinosaurs in the
middle of the desert out of wrecked car parts, all around us are
examples of this mysterious, powerful urge (akin to the sexual
drive) to create, to be creative, to live out or somehow respond to
the beauty of our creative Father. Perhaps you can look at your
own life and living room and see peculiar pots or pictures you’ve
created because there seemed to be no other choice but to
create them. People who cannot sing or play a note fill notebooks
with songs. Others labor for decades over novels without the
remotest hope of ever seeing them published. I am reminded of
Richard Dreyfuss in the motion picture Close Encounters, tearing
up his home, driving away his wife and children in the process
of creating a huge scale model of Devil’s Peak, according to an
image the aliens had implanted in his poor unfortunate mind.
After the flood was past, God renewed the creative mandate
to Noah and his family (Genesis 9:1). Their creative response
was to plant a vineyard that led to catastrophic consequences.
Creativity abused! The abundance of the new vineyard led to the
excess of Noah in his drunkenness. Perhaps he forgot who was
the source of that abundant harvest. Maybe he wrongly assumed
that after the ark he was “done” with obedience. Perhaps his
excess of celebration pointed to his forgetting God. It is hard to
tell.
In Genesis 11 we see another example, another response to the

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