Theology and Art

I Wonder if The Lord Ever Heard of Me? Socio-Theological Insights from Tupac Shakur Pt 1

Daniel Hodge — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:01:39 -0700

(Please note: There is graphic language which may be offensive to some.)

These days can be a crazy time to live in. There are all sorts of issues that arise on a second by second basis. One begins to ask the very real theological question, “Where is God in all of this?” Moreover, “Does God even care?” Tupac was no different, he asks the question in context and from a marginalized perspective: I wonder if the Lord ever heard of me?

If you have ever had some tough times to live through, then these are questions that are real. They get at the very depth of theological understanding that I look for and where I want to find God. But, they are troublesome in nature; they question existence; they question reality; they question dogma; they question tradition & culture; they even question God—a blaspheme worthy of the auto de fé in the Spanish Inquisition. Yet, in all of this, they are necessary questions for the growth and development of faith. Tupac places these issues at our feet and begs of us to begin the very difficult journey of faith development within the crap of life—the murky middle of faith.

Contextual Issues

In context, Tupac is asking the very real question of God’s knowledge and identity towards him in the ‘hood. Tupac asks:

Walkin around, ready to light sh** up

But since my life is f***, some say I'm slightly nuts

Buck buck is the sound as I move up

Other niggaz pay attention when a fool bust, huh

They make a nigga be a killer; I used to be a dealer

but they wanted to see who's realer

Now them same mother**** wanna murder me

And I wonder if the Lord ever heard of me, huh

I need loot, so I'm doin what I do

Even within the profane of it all, Tupac still asks can God handle me? Can God still accept me within 1) the demand and necessities of my context and 2) the person I have become? Moreover, life is difficult and has caused me to do some things I am not exactly proud of, but, I still need to do in order to survive.

In the epic film City Of God, a young man grows up in a crime-ridden slum of Rio de Janerio. There, life is not as clear and clean cut as it is here; sin is so “clearly laid out” as we have here; life is a complete disaster and one must figure out how to even exist. Is God still present? Yes, of course, but how does one cope with “God’s love” within a messed up and even crappier situation? Again, Tupac asks that very real question: Will the Lord forgive us of all our sins? Does Heaven have a ghetto? Not that Heaven should be ridden with impoverished conditions that necessitate an enclave of ‘hoods, but the question still remains, is there a contextualized version of the Gospel for me? Because all that has ever been displayed to me is a Heaven that is rich, clean, “pure,” free of all “bad things” (which would include me), and a Heaven from a very White Western perspective; this makes for a theological paradox for many living in such horrible conditions. People living in such conditions have never seen a “Heaven like” reality; therefore, it is a valid question to ask. Once again, Tupac asks of us to peer into the messy theology called life.

Holding On

If there was ever a message that was needed in the ‘hood, it is the message to hold on. Far too many times I have seen young people, particularly Black males, loose their grip on hope and dreams and turn to pessimism, despair, cynicism, and doubt of the future. The Gospel of Matthew^{^[1]}recounts Jesus telling His disciples and the crowds, to come unto Him when they were broken, poor spirited, dismayed, and marginalized.

The “hold on” message from Tupac was to encourage those who have given up or were about to give up. Within this message, Tupac encourages his listeners to see that there is hope for a brighter tomorrow:

God

When I was alone, and had nothing

I asked for a friend to help me bear the pain

No one came, except God

When I needed a breath to rise, from my sleep

No one could help me… except God

When all I saw was sadness, and I needed answers

No one heard me, except God

So when I'm asked…who I give my unconditional love to?

I look for no other name, except God (Shakur 1999)

Here in the poem, entitled “God,” Tupac lets the readers know that God does help, care, and love His people. Tupac tells you that God comes when we call on Him and comes when no one else is there.

For Tupac, there is a sense of optimism in the midst of extreme pain, hurt, despair, and violence. Still, Tupac continually calls the person to a higher plain; as Jesus would also do. It is in this higher level of understanding God that we will find a deeper connection to God and His plan for our lives.

This “hold-on” message, however, was contrasted with the constant reality that the streets and ‘hood context were present. For Tupac, there was the everlasting knowledge that this earth was not the final resting place, and that things were, as he put it, fu**ed up! Still within all of the despair, Tupac encouraged you to look for deeper signs of God and peace here on earth. For Tupac, there were too many signs of God in the world not to hold on for something deeper. Signs such as a mother’s love for her children, the miracle of birth, a sunset, natural beauty in clouds, and the simple fact that Tupac knew he was put here on this earth to do something more than just take up space.

This ideology connected with a concept that Rudolf Otto calls “The Mysterium Tremendum” (1925: 12-24). For Otto, this meant the mysteriousness of what God did in spite of an appalling situation. For Otto, this meant that, “A God comprehended is no God” (1925: 25). In other words, holding on, does not always mean it will make sense or will even “feel right.” This was an area for Tupac that helped him deal with the bigger picture of sin and the brokenness of humankind.

Holding on, for Tupac, meant that he could live with a little ambiguity and that God would come, even if it meant God would come when Tupac was dead. This was a hard concept to comprehend, but, holding on and taking our “burdens” to a figure we have never physically felt or seen could also be construed as incomprehensible.

Heard Of Me?

Today we have pressing issues that make us question a lot. Make no mistake, this seeps into our worship, theology, Christology, and even eschatology. Injustice can sometimes be overlooked as long as it is not happening in our own backyard. Moreover, it is quite easy from our ivory pews to miss what is happening right across the tracks (or whatever borderline your city has drawn between the rich and the poor). The real truth is that God has heard of us, but for many, its just too hard to conceptualize that in a lived faith, for others its easy to hide and bury themselves in church after coming out of such nefarious conditions in the ‘hood, still for others it causes a sense of atheism and as Old Dogg in Menace II Society put it, “I don’t think the Lord cares for us too much. Look where we stay at, it’s all messed up!” For the small few who are able to grapple with this it is imperative to develop a contextualized gospel message—much like the one Tupac had for the ‘hood. Someone needs to know that God has not only heard of you, God cares and is ready to walk with you through the crap of both your life and the context you are living in. I know I am ready to get started with that.

[1] Matthew 11:27-30: 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

I Pray for Miley

Mike Howerton — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:57:16 -0700

Today, in honor of her Concert at the Tacoma Dome, I confess that I listened to Miley Cyrus on my wife’s ipod. Through my daughter, Miley, or Hannah Montana, has invaded our home, via Disney TV, cd’s played in our car, and merchandise like cups, nightlights, and toothbrushes. Miley is a big deal around here. So I thought I’d write Miley a quick note. You are welcome to read it, too.

Dear Miley,
I pray for you. I invite others to pray for you as well. I bet that might come across sounding hard, or meanspirited, but that’s not my heart. It is offered with compassion and grace. Here’s what I mean:

Miley, you have achieved the kind of stardom and wealth that very, very few people ever achieve. I’m talking Solomon-like wealth. Flipping through an issue of Time, I read that last year, your merchandise net alone brought in 1.3 billion dollars. Bring in the way Disney has packaged your TV personality into a product. Add in the CD sales and your 3-D concert movie. Remember that you can sell out a stadium concert faster than anyone ever has. There’s a lot of gravy flowing, and Billy Ray’s little girl is riding that train at breakneck speed. Since wealth is power, I pray that you’ll steward yours well.

As far as I know, Miley, you are like 16 years old. I can remember how chaotic and circus-like my life was at 16. There was friend drama, the weeks that circled around our Friday night football games, the invites to parties, the time I crashed my car, and of course the pinnacles and heartbreaks swirling around the quest for a girlfriend. And if life was crazy for me at 16, I can’t imagine how crazy it would be for a person who is an uber-gazillionaire. In America, celebrity is royalty, and Miley, you are the current reigning princess. That has to mess with your head. So I pray that it doesn’t.

Not only that, but I remember making some pretty dumb moves as a 16 year old. And the thought of having every bonehead move photographed and splashed on the front page of a gossip rag is just shameful. I mean that literally…it produces shame. To know that everything you do, every boy you go out with, every fight you have with your dad will be news…I imagine that produces an overwhelming amount of pressure. So I pray for you.

I ran to the punk-pop-beat of your songs today, and I was admiring them. The come across like fun Go-Go’s tunes (I cut my chops on the 80’s) filled with energy, and a bubble-gum-smack voice that cracks at just the right time, like Cosette from my Les Mis Broadway Soundtrack (I am hoping this is a compliment to you both). But here is why I truly like them…the Lyrics. Wholesome, filled with themes of love, of falling in love, and of empowerment. You sing a song to your deceased grandfather called I Miss You, and it’s touching. You have a song with a chorus that says, “Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not strong enough.” And when I see my daughter belting those words out with all that she’s got, I get this crazy lump in my throat. There are so many negative and hurtful messages in the songs of our culture, and I celebrate the ones that are joyful or quality. And so I pray for yours.

In fact, the biggest reason that I pray for you, Miley is my daughter, Alex. My daughter is 9 years old. She wears glasses and plays soccer. She has the most beautiful, innocent, compassionate soul that I’ve ever seen. She befriends everyone, especially the kids that don’t have a ton of other friends. Once her teacher brought in a new student, mid-year, who didn’t speak much English. Alex moved her seat to sit next to her, and stayed with her all day showing her around school, and introduced her to all her friends. The only reason I know this is because her teacher emailed the story to us, and both my wife and I teared up when we read it. I’m tearing up right now as I try to figure out how to communicate the absolute golden nature of this beautiful child of God who has Jesus in her heart and Hannah Montana on her wall. For one reason or another, Alex has placed a portion of her heart in your hands. Miley, what you say matters to Alex. How you live matters. The lyrics in your songs matter, and the choices that you make…I just want you to know, they matter.

They don’t matter to the paparazzi who want to exploit you for a buck. They don’t matter to your PR folks who can figure out how to spin your life in an interesting way and sell the story to VH1. They don’t matter to handlers and managers, because the wild exploits of celebrities are what keep them in business. But they matter to little girls who have never had a hero before, and who have decided that you’re it. Life is going to try to knock those stars out of her eyes soon enough, and so I’m hoping…I’m begging…I am praying for you. I’m praying that you would please handle her heart with care.

And as I pray for you, I’d love to remind you that at the end of the day, this voice, this honor, this wealth, this ride, and this life that you’ve been given…you’ve been given it all by God. He loves you just because you’re you, I know you know that. And the greatest thing you can do, is to offer it all back to Him as a gift.

I’m praying for you.

Sincerely,

Alex’s Daddy

What is Christian Art anyway?

Manuel Luz — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:21:24 -0700

One of the ideas I’ve grappled with over the years is, What is Christian art? I mean, what makes an artistic expression like music or drama or dance uniquely Christian? What does that term mean anyway? And I’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t necessarily anything that has Christian symbolism or religious themes or doves and crosses. More than anything, Christian art must begin to reflect the overarching story of God, the Meta-Narrative, that our Triune God is in the process of redeeming that which has fallen, that which He had created, that which He loves.

The story of all that is, is the story of God. He takes His pen in hand to write this story: Creation, Fall, Redemption. All of history, all of the Bible, all of what was and is and will be, reflects this three act play of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, that God is writing in the universe.

But that’s not all. He writes this story in our souls as well. For all of us have our own stories, our own vignettes of how God’s grace has saved us, changes us. And our stories enter into His larger story of the redemption of the universe.

And this distinction can be subtle or overt. It certainly need not be forced or made formulaic. But it must affect us as artists. It must affect our art. Hilary Brand and Adrienne Chaplin contend in their essential book, Art and Soul: Signposts for Christians in the Arts:

"In working through the most central plot of the Bible’s “grand story”—creation, fall and redemption—we have put in place the beginnings of a worldview. Through these spectacles we can begin to view and perhaps question the many assumptions that are tossed in our direction. Questioning assumptions is, of course, very much in the spirit of the post-modern age, but it is also the spirit of Christ."

We stand in the shadows of differing worldviews—a mosaic of religions, philosophies, mindsets, and historical eras. And in one way or another, art has been an expression for all of these co-existing yet unaligned worldviews. And we also live in a broken world. Because of the fallen nature of this earthly existence, we are thrust into unintended complexity—the universe has been invaded by sin, and as a result, we have disorder, distortion, disease, dysfunction. The universe does not operate as it was intended. We as Christians share the worldview that God created the world and in spite of the world’s broken nature, He is in the business of rescuing it and redeeming it. And in one way or another, our art should be an expression of that. This is what Christian art should be, honest in the brutal and complex realities of this world but also revelatory in the redemption of it.

So when we compose songs or choreograph dance or edit film or write a book, God’s story is told in some small way. Creation, Fall and Redemption. When you can see your art in this way, then I think you can begin to frame what it is to make Christian art.

Emptiness is Abundance

Brett McCracken — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:49:02 -0700

“The most expressive form of art today in connection with religion might be sacred emptiness; an emptiness which does not pretend to have at its disposal symbols which it actually does not have. In all realms of life today we must have some emptiness. … On the basis of a preliminary sacred emptiness, something may develop.”

-Paul Tillich

I believe in the desert. I go there perennially, to remind myself how much I believe. Last weekend, I went out to Joshua Tree, which is a desert National Park about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. It’s a vast, empty, preserved land of rocks, cactus, desert flowers, and lizards. And it’s in my backyard—just an hour away from one of the most hectic, crowded, chaotic cities in the world.

It’s desolate. There’s really not much to see out there. No waterfalls, no amazing mountains, no grand canyons. There is hardly any water anywhere. And it gets hot.

But oh is it beautiful. On a cool spring morning, when the heat is still at bay and the smog hasn’t yet wafted in from L.A., it’s as clear and clean and magnificent as just about anywhere on earth. I can see why U2 named an album after the place.

It’s a place that makes one forget that the world is abuzz just miles down the highway, that there are outlet malls and casinos and Rat Pack mansions down in the valley (Palm Springs). It’s a place that reminds you that flowers can grow in the unfriendliest climates, out of chalky moon dirt that sees rain maybe 8 times a year. Above all, it’s a place that reminds you that there is beauty is the desolate and abundance in emptiness. There is so much inferred in the lack.

In terms of how we live, what we long for, and what we find beautiful—so often the nexus of it is something that is absent. Absence drives our existence more than just about anything. Absence, I suggest, galvanizes us in our protestations against apathy, malaise, and debilitating continence. It gives us a reason to be passionate, to burn brightly and agonize over things like truth and beauty. It gives us hope; and we need hope.

It is no coincidence that so many of our great art works and stories summon the glories and beauty of days gone by, or envisage other worlds, or invoke the images and destinies of what might be (horizons, open roads, the unknown future). All of this is about the beyond: something absent and thereby unbound by our mortal limitations. As Jack Kerouac writes of his restless journey in On the Road, “It was always mañana. For the next week that was all I heard—mañana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.” We live for mañana, for tomorrow, for in our minds, tomorrow can be anything.

One of my favorite pieces of art is The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In that book (which I read every April), mañana is embodied in a green light that flashes from the dock of Daisy Buchanan—a light that Gatsby watches from across the bay, pining for something that remains absent in his life, despite his many successes. “It had gone beyond her, beyond everything,” Fitzgerald writes. “He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

For Gatsby, the green light was not really about Daisy, for she was just as mortal and flawed as him. His ambitions, like every human’s, were ultimately pointing toward that which could not be satiated within himself, or within another person, or with anything in this life. The green light is forever absent in this material world. And yet it still flashes, constantly, through the fog and across a vast expanse. It beckons us to look toward it, to look beyond, to see that the land it sits on is absent, but the light shining from it is present in our world, gleaming in our eyes and illuminating the darkness.

As we approach Easter, one of the most beautiful images of absence that I have been meditating on it that of the empty tomb. Like a sunset, this image is simultaneously joyful and tragic—joyful because it symbolizes a resurrected Jesus, tragic because it is a tomb: we see ourselves (and everyone we love) in it someday. When Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus first encountered the angel and the empty tomb, their immediate reaction was confusion and fright. Had someone stolen the body of Jesus? What was going on? But, as with so much in this life that appears stark and hopeless, there was a silver lining. Jesus was alive. There was hope through their tears, a holy reassurance in His absence. As the women fled the scene, they were “afraid yet filled with joy” (Matthew 28:8, TNIV)—and I wonder if this kind of joy isn’t the best kind there is. Joy amid fear, amid uncertainty, amid absence.

Art should not shy away from those things we associate with absence—loss, sadness, depravity, uncertainty. For without absence, there would be no reason for art. Art comes from the heart, and every human heart is like that empty tomb on Easter morning: missing something.

Where There is No Gift There is No Art

Christy Tennant — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:45:27 -0700

One of the best things about working so closely with Makoto Fujimura is that I have a rich resource of amazing recommended reading, and that from a man who embodies radical generosity in a way I have rarely seen. Books he has given me to help feed and nourish my spirit include "To Kill A Mockingbird," "Surprised by Hope" (NT Wright), and most recently, "The Gift," by Lewis Hyde. (Not to mention Mako's own books, "River Grace" and "Refractions."

I've just started reading "The Gift," and my yellow highlighter and black Pilot are already hard at work, notating and highlighting the incredible insights in this wonderful book.

This is from the introduction:

It is the assumption of this book that a work of art is a gift, not a commodity. Or, to state the modern case with more precision , that works of art exist simultaneously in two "economies," a market economy and a gift economy. Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift there is no art.

One of the assertions of this book, made very clear within the first few pages, is that in order for something to be a gift, it must be given as well as received. On page 9, I highlighted this sentence: "Traditional belief in Wales holds that when the faeries give bread to the poor, the loaves must be eaten on the day they are given or they will turn to toadstools." In the margin, I wrote, "Sound familiar? Exodus 16."

On page 10, I highlighted this sentence: "By keeping the gift they get no more." In the margin, I wrote, "Matt. 10:8, Luke 6:38, Acts 20:35."

In the next paragraph, I highlighted, "a gift must always be used up, consumed, eaten." I noted in the margin, "quail, Spirit, money."

I am very, very excited about this book and am already sad to think it will end in 405 more pages (I'm on page 13 right now).

To order your copy and read along with me, click here.

UNLEASHING THE LION: Arts and Faith

Craig Detweiler — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:30:00 -0800

When I was Austin, Texas screening my movie Purple State of Mind at the Alamo Drafthouse, my friends at The Work of the People grabbed a few minutes with me outside. They produce the smartest and snappiest and most gut punching videos for churches around the world. Nobody creates resources for worship with more originality and verve.

Ever the provocateur, filmmaker extraordinaire Travis Reed launched a few loaded questions my way. No planning, no prep, just spontaneous riffing. His camera rocked and rolled across an array of issues. Fifteen minutes later, our conversation had concluded.

And yet, through the miraculous power of editing, Travis turned those fifteen minutes into three potent short pieces about the danger of televangelists, how to unleash a lion, the role of arts in faith, risk-taking and the resurrection. So take a gander and maybe even dare to download the captivating work of the people.