Does Your Religious Sensibility Clash With Your Art?

What do you do when you feel it's selfish or frivolous to make art that isn't preachy?

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“Those who do not engage in the traditional arts might be wary of calling themselves artists. They might perceive creativity as something extraordinary or beyond their capabilities. A calling for the special few who are born with these gifts.

Fortunately, this is not the case.

Creativity is not a rare ability. It is not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us.”

-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

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The following post began its life as a social media exchange in the comments on a different reflection.

I then made it into its own social media post, and that got a lot of discussion, so I think there’s something here worth talking about.

This will mostly be a re-post of what I’ve already said on this topic elsewhere, though I’ve edited a bit and added a thought or two as I went through it again. The important thing here is to see this more as a conversation starter than a well-defined conclusion.

A Facebook friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous since he didn’t ask to have his name associated with all this) saw that I had posted something about artistic quality when it comes to this big argument people are having over the use of AI-generated images for things like the covers on indie books vs. hiring someone who looks like they took approximately three eighth grade art classes before doing the damn thing in Crayolas or MS Paint.

This FB friend happens to be an amateur filmmaker. He writes scripts, but also films and does color grading. I think it’s a great pursuit, and I like to encourage him to keep developing his craft. But he said he didn't think his stuff was going to ever be good enough for primetime. Worse, he said, he suffers from mental illness, and so he believes his work in film will only ever be a hobby, not a profession.

I told him that mental illness alone shouldn’t keep him from it. It’s not as though plenty of artists haven’t had mental illnesses. It’s practically synonymous. Van Gogh didn’t cut off his ear and give it to a prostitute for safekeeping because he was well. In fact, he didn’t remember the event at all. There are countless stories about tortured artists that attest to the fact that genius and madness often dance together through the act of creation.

More recently, I’ve discovered that researchers have found that art is supposed to be a pretty effective form of therapy. I told my friend to listen to Rick Rubin talk about putting the audience last when doing artistic work:

My FB friend came back with this:

I want to believe this. But my Catholic sensibilities war against it. I feel like it’s selfish of me just to make art for myself. I should be doing other things for other people instead of spending my free time on just myself. If that’s not art, then it should be something else. Unless I’m just too messed up to help people…

That response triggered something in me I hadn’t been fully aware of.

I've always felt like this, too. When I was young, I found that it was difficult to write science fiction that felt compatible with my religious beliefs and ideals. For the same reason that many religious folks immediately think UFOs or alien abductions must be “demons,” my soteriology could not find a way to admit of the existence of sentient extra terrestrials in a way that didn’t feel destructive to the idea of the unique, exclusive, human-centric understanding of Christ’s incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection.

But there was also this idea that my dream of writing science fiction was not "worthy." That I should be doing something more important than creating entertainment.

I have some idea where this came from.

I had an influential uncle who was very religious, and who I looked up to very much. When I was about 14, I was considering going to the Art Institute in Pittsburgh, which I had discovered through my junior high school art class. I was a gamer, and I liked the idea of getting into video game design. When I mentioned this to my uncle, he said that he thought I needed to do something more "worthwhile" with my life. I remember deflating. I'd been so excited.

But I respected him so much. I felt like I should listen.

I never seriously considered pursuing a career in art again after that conversation with my uncle.