Write to get the truth out there

In short, we should write to tell the truth, with love. Obviously, a lot of people out there today are communicating, often hatefully, lies and half-truths in scripts, blogs, and books. (Christians, I might add, tend to be best at spotting lies in books with titles like God is not Great. We're not so good at noticing lies of a more subtle nature, say in the film Avatar.) Today's culture, in other words, usually does not write to tell the truth, with love. Instead it gives another prime answer to the "why write?" question, and that is, briefly put, self-fulfillment. Our reason for being on this earth, goes this reasoning, is to fulfill our potential, to "be the best we can be," and as a result be happy.

The Christian would answer, yes, we should strive to develop the gifts God has placed within us. But if that development is not prefaced by our saying, and meaning, "if God wills," then we're on the wrong track. (Remember that famous passage in James?)

A Christian, in other words, should say, "Yes, I'm called to write. But I'm also called to be a spouse (or remain single) and parent (or not) as well as, friend, neighbor, employee or stay-at-home worker. Wisdom is knowing when I should write or when I should skip my writing and help a friend or stranger, or dig in the garden, or take a nap...

When you read about the lives of famous writers, many of them say they let everything (marriages, children, etc.) go for the sake of "art." Actors and musicians also live by this ethic and as a result often do often produce art which, whether they know it or not, in some muted way reflects the image of God. God brings glory to Himself in mysterious ways.

But we Christians are on a different track. We seek intentionally to glorify God in arts and crafts, but we also seek to do so in churches, families, and communities. Bach, for one, wrote, in Latin, "to God alone be glory" at the end of most scores. Hopefully as we go about our days, we writers will "seek first the kingdom" in a thousand ways, with the hope that "all these things"--artistic expression which will last--will be "added unto us."

The result might not, like a Bach cantata, thrill and bless for millenia. But it might just help one other pilgrim on their journey.