till we have faces

I would like to post here a re-worked version of a conversation held recently after reading and posting on "Letters from the Earth" with attention to the modern (American-Protestant, in particular) church model. What came to my attention is that we don't all agree that developing a sense Christian aesthetics is as important as evangelism, discipleship, acts of compassion, etc. I submit that it is essential to all of these functions that we do aim to image the beauty of heaven and of God himself even as we feed the hungry, worship in song, speak of heaven and hell, and baptize disciples. In his reworking of the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche, "Till We Have Faces," C.S. Lewis choses the traditional narrator for the tale, Psyche's unnattractive sister, Orual. The title references a quotation in the book from Orual: "How can the gods meet us face to face till we have faces?" In the work, Lewis posits that a person must become real before he/she can expect to receive [I would also add "before he/she can expect to transmit"] any message from superhuman beings; "that is, it must be speaking with its own voice (not one of its borrowed voices), expressing its actual desires (not what it imagines that it desires), being for good or ill itself, not any mask, veil, or persona." When we do not strive for our very best in speech, in music, in art, and in presention, or when we imitate someone else's best without having their skill or seeking to add to what they have already revealed, we chose to wear a mask. I would call much of the put-on shoddiness, the kitschy definitions of what is "excellent or praiseworthy," and the lack of esthetic vision and discipline in many churches a mask we present to the world--not the true face of Christ, nor of his bride.

In the same vein as Twain's criticisms in "Letters from the Earth," I find it impossibly distracting that people should talk about heaven, for example, which figures so prominently into our motives and bylines for evangelism, while neglecting to make the place of worship, and the music and message offered therein, beautiful. To neglect the form in favor of the substance is tending dangerously toward a disembodied, gnostic rejection of the five senses. How are we to convince people that the resurrection of the body, for example, is anything exciting at all, if we are not continually striving to give them a taste of what a new heaven and a new earth would smell/taste/feel/sound/look like? (This is NOT to be confused with a Thomas Kinkaid-like attempt to paint the world "without the fall": saccharine, idealizing a bygone era of a more predominant cultural Christianity. Art, music, and speech can be redemptive without being cast in so many pastel shades of innocence.)

If anyone thinks that this endeavor will inevitably lead to idolatry, to a focus on the form and not the substance of the body of Christ and the gospel itself, then they have too high an estimation of their earthly talents. If we are to truly pursue the divine image in corporate worship, in form as well as in substance, we will never be able to feel as if we have arrived, as if we have wholly succeeded in reflecting Beauty himself. Beyond this, if anyone thinks that this endeavor will lead to artificiality in worship as believers strive to pursue a particular convention in music, speech, etc., then they have missed the fundamental process by which beauty is revealed in the world. Sometimes effortless, sometimes quite involved, beauty is constantly being perfected, reevaluated, discovered in unexpected corners: excellent artists are relentless, not satisfied with mere imitation of a thing but always striving to capture the essence of the thing as they see it. If a flower, a melody, or a phrase can elicit this kind of commitment from the artist, shouldn't the goal of becoming the body of Christ spur on the community of Christ-followers toward the essence of bearing his image in all things?

In addition to thinking of ourselves as the body of Christ, we are told to think of the Church as the Bride of Christ. Think for a moment about the aesthetic component of romantic love. Participating in church is like marriage, in that you shouldn't abandon the endeavor once you're in it, and you have to continue to find redeeming things about the Other even when you become disenchanted. Using the marriage metaphor, it would be like a wife who, having secured the marriage vow of love and faithfulness from her husband, got lazy and let herself go. Her husband would still love her, but why settle for good when you can aim for the best? This, far from being a Barbie-like, impossible and untruthful ideal, would involve what many self-respecting women strive for: a healthy, balanced body that is still kept attractive for their enjoyment and their husbands'. It is not an either/or proposition: either he loves me for who I am or he loves my body. Clearly, as the Song of Solomon and many other god-fearing texts on erotic love would indicate, he loves her for both. Many husbands whose eyes wander and lead them to be unfaithful would still say that they love their wives, who are good to them in so many other ways. Let's not even introduce the idea of porn here, but talk about men who just go and lust after other, real women in their workplace, neighborhood, or local strip joints. The wife who has let herself gain that 50 pounds and quit caring about her hair and skin being healthy, and who refuses to present her best to herself and to her husband deludes herself that this is not an integral part of showing her love for him, and is in for a rude awakening. She has settled for less than her best, thinking her good intentions will carry her the rest of the way in her husband's heart. And it might work, but this is not a method we would ever recommend or encourage someone we love to pursue. It is a fallback. We wouldn't, at the end of the day, want to imitate her treatment of her marriage. We would find it gratifying if her husband is faithful anyway, or if he was somehow able to see her through the lens he did when she was young and beautiful. But we would always rather emulate the woman who retained both her good intentions and her ability to age gracefully by caring for her body as an act of self-love and devotion to her husband, who loves her all the more because she is both good and beautiful. So the church must strive to be both good and beautiful for the coming of Christ.

Yet what of the imperfections we each possess in one degree or another--our lack of natural talent, beauty, underdeveloped esthetic sense, lack of resources or education--do these disqualify our offerings before God? Christ's love of the poor, marginalized, and broken people he touched in his ministry is an emphatic "No!" Poorly wrought words, melodies, and buildings can considered beautiful, if they are clearly examples of someone's best work at a particular juncture, the first steps in a journey, an earnest plea for restoration, or the promise of a grand undertaking to cultivate a specific talent in the Lord's service. We would not say that they are compelling at all if we knew that the speaker/artist had decided that that was the best he/she could do, and that now there was no need to try for anything more. We would call it mediocre, and say that that person had settled, as it would seem that Cain did when making his offering to God, for less than our best. This is important, because Christ himself was not content to pass by brokenness without bringing restoration, healing, and beauty back into the lives of lame, leperous, blind, and oppressed people. He only did so where he was welcomed to, however. Does he perhaps extend the same to us: "You not receive because you do not ask"? While the Living Christ may not always employ miracles in every situation, does his Spirit not close and open doors before us, leading us in the way we should walk? If God were leading me to step down from a position of musical leadership, for example, because I am not really gifted in that area, or perhaps to cultivate another gift for the good of his people, would I listen? If God created an opportunity for me to participate in a artistic, philanthropic, scientific, or civic venture with non-believers which might grow me in my understanding of his Truth in a particular field, would I embrace it, or find myself too busy, too afraid, or too lazy to do it? If another believer brought to my attention that our Sunday school curriculum, decor, choice of music, or anything else about my church were somehow out of tune with what that person took to be the image of God, would I engage the criticism in a manner honoring to God? Or would I take offense, entrench, coopt others to reinforce my modus operandi, boycott that person's endeavors, transfer churches, step down in a huff from my position as if to say "Can you do a better job? Let's see it!" I believe to do so is to operate without full use of another part of the body: to put a blindfold on, to ignore pain or nausea, to favor one foot over the other. Anyone who's ever incurred a serious injury by ignoring small symptoms knows how foolish this approach is. Who in their best state of mind would override the very sensations that tell us something is wrong and demands our attention?

What many in the church do is just this. We reason with ourselves that there is no need for change if we overlook these "small" disturbances. We settle, before even struggling much to work through, by discipline and training, the cacophany, the shoddy workmanship, and poor communication that naturally result from not putting much effort into things. That premature resignation is what I cannot stand, and what repulses people who pay attention to such things: we wonder, if this preacher/layperson/worship leader feels that they have no further progress to make towards a better offering to God and his people, than why should I follow/go along with him/her in the pursuit of Perfection Himself? It is already human nature to stop trying once people have recognized some measure of success in your work, to rest on one's laurels and squeeze by without continued efforts toward even further inspiration and skill. It's the "good enough" mentality which people perpetuate in church because they have the false idea that because we are sinners and cannot be perfect this side of eternity, that we are absolved from aiming at perfection with the help of the Spirit. There is nothing transformative about this mindset, yet we are to be the body of Christ, continually made new by his Spirit, committed in love to presenting a blameless Bride at Christ's return.

What seem to be secondary questions of "mere" aesthetics, seen in this light, are not secondary at all. We do the body and bride of Christ no favors if we let ourselves and the Church off the hook for so often accepting such poor musical, verbal, or structural renderings. As long as there are non-believers who can paint better, sing better, build better, and speak better, it is an example of even the stones crying out. We may think we are communicating all we need to about the gospel. We are not reaching, however, a great many people who are sensitive to the bruised beauty of the world around us. We must suggest more often and more convincingly that this world God created bears his image and seal of approval ("It is good"), which in its fallen state it is only a shadow of the real, incarnate splendor of the world to come. It may seem counter-intuitive that paying close attention to this world should draw our minds and hearts into anticipation for the next, but that happens to be my view, an orthodox one, of the incarnation and the resurrection of the body.