Artists, even those who are Christian, are fallen people observing a fallen world. Because the world is fallen we have to take notice of its brokenness and acknowledge it in our work. Because we ourselves are fallen we have to monitor our perceptions, because we know that they can be distorted by sin. We should hesitate before calling anything we do Christian art because we don’t know how much of our own pride, selfishness or ignorance has polluted our vision.

Yet it’s not because we can prove that art has benefits that we feel able to incorporate it into our lives. It should be part of the warp and woof of our existence, a part of our enjoyment of God. It is not something separate from life, but something at the heart of life which celebrates the fact that we are creator children of a creator Father.

In a secular society, art itself can be the subject of a religious type of devotion. It’s common to hear artists talk of their work as being their religion—their personal salvation and also their hope for the world. ‘Given the ever-present absence of God,’ concluded the atheist art critic Peter Fuller, ‘art, and the gamut of aesthetic experience, provides the sole remaining glimmer of transcendence.’

The Christian artist will often be an irritant, disturbing the anthropocentric view of the world that fallen nature naturally gravitates toward. Just as people think they have removed God from all consideration of a particular question, the Christian annoyingly puts him back on the agenda in some way. And when God is back on the agenda, people are forced to deal with him, even if only to try to marginalize him again.