Christy Tennant serves as Director of Development and Public Relations for the International Arts Movement. She interviewed Mako about his thoughts on "The Third Language." First, some comments from Christy.

One of the things I love about working for International Arts Movement is that I get face time with our founder, Makoto Fujimura, regularly. What a treat it is for me to sit with this inspiring individual, discussing deep issues, wrestling with the things that are difficult to get my mind around, and gleaning insights about beauty and the gospel. In many ways, and I know I’m not the first to say this, Mako is teaching me “how to see” – art, the Bible, Jesus, and the world around me.

At IAM, we talk a lot about something Mako refers to as a “third language. ” This refers to a way of talking about things – culturally, politically, sociologically, internationally – in a manner that seeks to unite, rather than divide. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” so our desire to be unifiers in a disparate world flows from looking at the world through the lens of the gospel. If it matters to Jesus that we work toward making peace with our fellow man, then it must matter to us too.

There are certain words, phrases, and terms that have become tainted by projected meanings or implications, causing these otherwise benign terms to suddenly have a deeply negative or divisive bent. Or, perhaps the words themselves are not benign, but rather beautiful, in their original, fundamental meaning, but because of associations, those words have become divisive.

An example, unfortunately, is the word “evangelical.” As I understand it, at its root, the word has to do with being a messenger of good news. Yet my generation has witnessed this word being redefined so that to the present secular world, it does not suggest “good news.” Rather, it is offensive. As both a noun and an adjective, the word “evangelical” evokes a politically conservative, hypocritical sub-culture within Christendom that, more often than not, bears little resemblance to the character traits Jesus described in the portion of Matthew commonly known as “the Beatitudes.”

Mako Fujimura has been thinking about this third language for years, so recently, while waiting for the glue to dry on one of the paintings he was working on, we sat in his office and talked about it.

MF: In February, I was sitting with Tim Keller at a wedding, and he asked me about how things were going with IAM. During the conversation, I talked a bit about the “third language,” and at the time he listened thoughtfully, nodding occasionally. In the last few weeks, I’ve read Tim’s new book (The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Penguin Group, 2008), and I was delighted to find that from the very opening of the book, he is speaking predominantly in third language!

The way he talks about the gospel is the third language; it’s not mere conservative talk, but it’s also not liberal. It’s “radically comforting, and radically challenging” at the same time. It’s not “Christianeeze” words that have no context or meaning to non-Christians, but it is language that very much points to God’s intent to redeem all of creation and restore humanity to the original intent – bearers of God’s image.

The third language is buzzing everywhere – it’s just in the air. Look at Sen. Obama. He consistently uses language that aims to be unifying – language that doesn’t divide the political landscape.

So the third language unifies. And we need that today. Look at 9/11. This was a momentous historical bookmark that required either divisiveness or using the opportunity of chaos to get back to principles of what democracy can do.

Tim (Keller) is amazingly prophetic. He was doing this (using the third language) in the ‘90’s in his presentation of the gospel. He created a language that broke barriers of conservatism and liberalism – not necessarily intentionally, but he did it. He resisted using the “cultural war” language and, instead, offered a different way for Christians to look at cities and urban centers. Rather than being against the city, with all of its brokenness, he taught Christians to love the city. Or, as some would say, he taught us to be “in” it, but not “of” it – which is a profound biblical teaching. The third language is a way of exhorting Christians not to hate culture, nor necessarily to become “of” the culture, but rather to engage with the existing culture as it is now, where it is now, and change its framework by being in the midst of it. We should approach our place in the city as the Israelites did in Jeremiah 29 – planting ourselves in community, raising our children, seeing them wed, and equipping them, rather than cloistering them in a sub-culture that is all but irrelevant to the rest of the world. This is a goal of finding a third language.

Third language is very transformative and radical, and embodies the same conviction that I had when I moved my family from the suburbs of NJ to the heart of lower Manhattan. If I want to be a Christian in the arts, I need to be planted here. This is not idealism or mere passion – it’s theology.