unambiguous.

Saturday night, I saw a friend make his altar to the Living God.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, altars were monuments marking God’s faithfulness and his miraculous power. God would have his people make them in certain spots at or near the site of significant events, and they would stand for many years as a testimony to what he did in that place.

I have a friend who is the featured artist for and visionary behind John Baptist Records (i’d hyperlink it but the site’s under construction). His vision is to be the voice of the voiceless, the presence of light peace in a world growing in its love for darkness and violence and hatred. His music speaks directly into the things that people care about: sex, relationships, significance, God, love. In his own words, “If I could, I would write 24 controversial songs and make a double album.” He’s the kind of man that doesn’t want to be ambiguous with his words. He’s very clear on how he thinks, how he feels, and who he worships.

It is his unambiguity that makes him an excellent artist.

Things like evil and violence have ambiguity all over them. The first definition that Dictionary.com gives for ambiguity is “open to or having several possible meanings or interpretations.” Each interpretation of our most controversial and important values seems to be self-serving, and we all know that, in the end, only one self-serving interest can abound. For instance, it is the ambiguity of the concept of “peace” that has been the cause of many wars, even over the past 20 years. And it is the ambiguity of concepts like “rich” and “poor” which help us to widen the gap between the two in a way that defies logic. And it’s usually the interpretation backed by the most power that ends up influencing the most people, not necessarily the interpretation that best represents truth and justice.

But that’s the trippy thing about Jesus. His view of the world is backed by the power of the One who created it. What’s more, all of his being is centered on loving us in obedience to the Father, so his self-serving interest is actually that of glorifying his Father in heaven and seeing you and I live amazing lives. That being said, we can say 2 things about unambiguous art:

1. It’s power: The power that backs up truthful art about our relationship with God and the world has as its source the Creator of everything that has ever existed, does exist, and will exist in the future. Find me more power than that…
2. It’s motivation: The very message of Jesus (his euangellion) is motivated by self-giving love between Father and Son, through the Spirit. It was (first) his obedience to his Father and his extreme compassion for us that motivated him to life, death and resurrection

I think we have so much ambiguous art because people don’t know what real power is, and they don’t know what real motivation is. In general, most of us rely on ourselves to get things done in life, and they turn out okay, at best. And most of us are motivated by some pretty crazy people, or arbitrary things, that have no love for us, don’t know us, and give us no sense of destiny or purpose. Last week, I read a line in a book that rocked me. N.T. Wright said, “Something has happened in and through Jesus as a result of which the world is a different place, a place where heaven and earth have been joined forever.” What was ambiguous for so long was made abundantly clear when God showed up in righteousness, suffering, glory and love. My relationship with him is my power and my motivation, to create and to live. I can make my feeble attempt to create art that gives praise to my Creator, but the grace of it all is that He makes it into something beautiful.

This, once again, is my attempt to tell you that beautiful art, art that isn’t ambiguous, is a product of a dynamic relationship with the Creator. You can try and try and try to make beautiful all you want, but I believe that you can’t find beautiful unless you find Beauty.