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Excerpted from: Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts Harold M. Best InterVarsity Press, 226 pp., $13.00

Idolatry is the difference between walking in the light and creating our own light to walk in. This can happen in four ways. First, instead of faith being its own substance and evidence, faith is misconstrued as leverage for bringing to, or enhancing the substance and evidence of, things that simply are what they are. Second, our works are expected to enhance our faith, in which case legalism and idolatry join forces. Third, perfectly legitimate pursuits can interpose themselves between us and the Lord. Fourth, sin in all its forms is idolatry. Let me make some practical applications to the arts from these four points, particularly the first three.

Whenever we assume that art mediates God's presence or causes him to be tangible, we have begun the trek into idol territory . Our present-day use of music as the major up-front device for worship is a case in point. We need to ask ourselves if we, as worship leaders, are giving the impression that we draw near to God through music or that God draws near because of it. Is music our golden calf? Have we come to a place in our practices where God must say to us, "You cannot worship me in that way" (Deut 12:31 NKJV), meaning that music has moved from a place of offering to one of lordship, from servanthood to sovereignty? Or might he be saying, "You shall not worship me in their way" (Deut. 12:31 NIV), meaning that we have adopted a pagan worldview that imputes a causal force to music that it does not properly have? We need to discover the critical theological difference between being merely moved by music and being spiritually changed by it. Yes, music might bring pleasure and change our pulse rates or blood pressure, but so does taking a simple walk in the park.

I know from personal experience how easy it is to draw people into my confidence with music, using it as a means for creating a bridge between them and me, between God and me and between them and God. When we are told by fellow worshipers that our music is actually making God more real, our repentance must be followed by corrective teaching.

Beauty and quality can become idols. I need to be fully understood here. All Christians everywhere should seek to make, to do and to articulate things as beautifully as possible. Christians who play down the importance of beauty and quality as if they were idols in themselves do not understand that nothing is an idol until we make it into one. Furthermore, the neglect of beauty and high quality in many Christian circles is deplorable and can itself be a form of idolatry. Thus when it comes to exemplary artistic stewardship, the body of Christ can leave an all-too-sloppy trail for the world to follow.

We have to realize that our human love for beauty did not come into being just because we are "cultured" or civilized. It is not too much to say that God makes things beautifully, not because he took art appreciation or studied aesthetics but because it is his way of doing things. We freely choose the same word, beautiful, both to describe his handiwork as well as to describe what we think is the best of ours. Why? Because this deep-down search for our versions of beauty is a fundamental part of being created in his image. It is this link, no matter how scarred and confused, that counts, from the cave drawings of millennia past to Renaissance motets and on to Grandma Moses, jazz and ballet. Even though God did not create us to be slaves of his ideas and opinions, he did create us loving what he loves and calling beautiful what he calls good. Even if we say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we still have a world of beholders who in countless ways want to take the next step, even though it may be barely noticeable or prompt catcalls from someone supposedly more sophisticated.

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48