an excerpt from: Pride

An excerpt from: Pride

Artists are vessels of God often for displaying beauty, sometimes for instruction or teaching or exhortation, sometimes for proclaiming, and sometimes for unifying or directing. But artists are always a vessel and never God. A vessel is a testimony to the handiwork of its Maker.

We don’t attribute to the paintbrush the praise due a beautiful painting. We attribute the praise to the painter. It is the painter who made the brush and the paint and the canvas and the painting. I would not praise the ink and paper of a musical score when I heard it played, I would praise the composer. I would praise the orchestra for faithfully playing what the composer wrote. We would think a person to be a little sick in the head who walked up to a score and praised it and would not even acknowledge its composer, in whose hands it is being held. I might say to the composer, “That was so beautiful! May I study your score? I would like to see what you were doing with the….” But the praise is always due the author of the work, not the work itself. The work itself is the image of what the author knew in his mind and heart. That’s not hard for us to comprehend.

In the same way then, I must understand that I have an Author who has made me, designed me, crafted me as a work of His own, and to Him be the ultimate glory in anything that I accomplish. There is no room for my pride here. I did not make me. I am a living brush made by, and in the image of, God. Paul helps us know our place when he says, “For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7).

So as we study and enjoy the artwork of man (who is himself a vessel, a score), we should be recognizing and enjoying the handiwork of God (the Maker, the Composer). God is not out to rob us of joy when He directs us to see Him as the end of His created man. Our pride is out to rob us of God, as joy in Him is the end. Pride is the killjoy, not God....

HUMILITY KNOWS MORE PLEASURE THAN PRIDE

In Philippians 2:5-11, Paul exhorts us to be humble, obedient to our calling from the Lord, and to seek the approval of God rather than the approval of men. He gives us Jesus as a model. “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

How are we doing in the obedience department, artists? Obeying to the point of death, even death on a cross? Are we obeying the “do not covet” command when we seek the glory that God is due? That would be coveting God wouldn’t it? But Christ was humbly obedient and God exalted Him.

When the time came for the cross, Jesus prayed like this, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee” (John 17:1b). As we work, we should take the lead of Jesus and pray, “Father, give me grace in this work that I may glorify You. Enable me to be faithful in this work that You would be glorified in its beauty, so that my joy would be full. I have seen You, and You are beautiful, and I want others to share in what I have seen of You.” To let the glory in our work run to God is to actually gain more pleasure by ultimately being exalted by God who is the authority on giving praise. No man’s praises are better than God’s praises. So, putting pride to death and walking in humble obedience before God, in faith, is the key to realizing the full pleasures in our art working. But in order to truly obey, we must know what God delights in. “For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).

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excerpt from The Affections of the Heart in Art - a wrestling for the full pleasures in art Jason Harms