Pastor John, a listener named Alicia emailed to ask, "What role does the vast field of art play in the Church? In a nutshell, can you give a theology of art?" There are great books on art, and I haven't read most of them or written any of them, but I'll tell you what I think, and that's all I can do, and if it gives some help, I'm thankful.

The word "art," I think, comes from a Latin word "art" that means skill or craft or craftsmanship. So here's the way I would define the word. Any effort to make something, and that could be an object or an action, like you make a dance or you can make an action in a play, or an object like a carving or a painting or a sculpture or a poem, so any action that makes something that takes a special skill so that the result is more than utilitarian or pragmatic but moves us more deeply with beauty or wonder or something touching our soul with a sense that life is more than food and drink.

So that's a long, complicated definition, but basically it's a craft, a skill that aims at an effect that is more than just keeping food on the table. And what makes it Christian, I think, so here's the theology part, is God is an artist. He made the heavens that are telling something about his glory.

In other words, he didn't just make the heavens to protect us from solar rays. They're not just utilitarian, they're beautiful. They say something about his glory. And Job is just great on this, as you read the last chapters of Job, God is pointing to his artistry all over the place and what it says to Job about his life from nature.

And Jesus, you know, the lilies and the birds and the leaven, all of it is more than utilitarian. So my first way of getting a theology of art is that God is one. And then secondly, I would say the Bible writers are one. They're artists. They put things--maybe three-fourths of the Bible is crafted in some way linguistically so that it's poetic or striking or unusual, and it obviously evidences some craft that is intended not merely to communicate a raw fact but to produce a certain kind of effect in us spiritually, which is what artists want to do.

So there are acrostics in the Bible and there are parallels in the Bible, there are metaphors in the Bible, and these writers clearly are giving artful attention to how they are shaping their words, and they're doing that under the inspiration of God. And maybe one more thing, Paul says, echoing Jesus, "Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." Well that must mean take thought in everything you do to try to craft it in such a way that it has an effect that opens the eyes to see beauty, namely glory, the glory of God.

Which means there ought to be a way of eating pizza and drinking pop or doing the laundry and making your bed and making meals and writing reports and driving your car that are not merely, "I've got to get someplace," or "I've got to get something done," but rather, "I'm supposed to do it so that it has an effect beyond the merely utilitarian." And Jesus said, "Let your light, let your light so shine that men may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in heaven." So there, we're to take our bodies and our lives and cause them to have a kind of brightness so that when people look at them, they look at them and there is a kind of artful intentionality that gets people to see something more than a mere body.

So God is the Maker, right? And we have the mind of the Maker. We talked about this once before, and therefore it seems to me that Christians have the deepest and best foundations for serious art than anybody. Thank you, Pastor John. We did talk about vocation in episode 17 of this podcast series.

Thank you for listening. Please send your questions via email to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please include your first name and your hometown. You can find thousands of other free resources from John Piper online at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony Renke. Thanks for listening.