Entering the Debate

Is it wrong for me to not write Christian poems? Is it okay that I don’t always write about God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit? Should I try to explain the Gospel in every poem I write?

These are questions I have asked and continue to ask myself as I explore my interest in writing. As a Christian, I believe God does everything for a reason. But for what reason did God give me an interest in writing?

From a personal experience, some Christians have told me that I should only be writing “Christian poems”. I didn’t even know what that meant. But they were telling me to write poems explicitly about God. They would tell me that God gave me this gift of writing and if I wasn’t using it to tell people about God, that I was wasting my talent. Steve Turner in his book Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts sums it up like this, “The arts, we [Christians] were told, could be ‘used.’ They could be ‘effective tools for evangelism’” (17).

Which I agree, the arts can be used as an evangelistic tool. But I believe that art can be so much more. What if arts could be harnessed in a different way? Steve Turner continues on in his book to write:

I don’t believe every artist who is a Christian should produce art that is a paraphrased sermon. A lot of Christian art is for the sake of art. But because art is also a record and reflects the questions and anxieties of the time, I would like to see contributions that reflect a Christian understanding of that time. I also would like to see them in the mainstream arts rather than in the religious subculture…I am saying it because debates are taking place in cinema, painting, dance, fiction, poetry and theater on issues where Christians have something to give, and yet they are not even being heard (21).

I think it is true, Christians are not being heard in these debates that are taking place. In part or in whole, Christians have willingly bowed out of these debates. Isn’t it high time that some Christians enter into these debates about culture? Society? Life?

Where are the Christians who are willing to engage with non-Christians? As I have been wetting my feet in the NYC poetry scene, I have noticed that there seems to be a divide. There are pockets of Christian artists and creatives that have workshops at churches or discussions in small groups. And there are pockets of non-Christian artists/creatives slamming at venues, touring the galleries, or dancing in studios. There is no intersect. There is no dialogue between these two groups of people that both enjoy, love, and create art.

For example, I have been going to poetry slams off and on since I have moved to NYC. Poets perform poems about hardships, death, cancer, love, broken homes, 9/11. The gamut is endless. Doesn’t God, and by extension Christians, have something to say about some of these things? Yet when I go to these slams, I assume that I am the only Christian in the venue.

Not to say every Christian artist needs to go out and make friends with a non-Christian artist. Or that every Christian artist needs to stop making “Christian art”. But God being a holistic God, maybe He wants some of us Christian artists to build, paint, write bridges to non-Christian artists in the city.