Introduction

As a kid, I longed for my burning-bush-moment. I loved Scripture and I loved my church family and I knew both were valuable sources of wisdom. But, many times, it would have been nice for God to pop down to earth and give me the solid, straight answer for whatever problem I faced at the moment. Hearing God speak would have cleared up so many issues.

I haven’t exactly grown out of this phase. It would still be amazing if God came down, sat in the chair on the other side of the room and said “Alright, here’s what you need to know.” That’s still my preferred option. Probably will always be my preferred option. Yet, I’ve realized something now that I didn’t quite know in my younger years:

God speaks through everything.

In my growing up, God occupied the Bible and that’s about it. Sure, Bible class taught me that God is omnipresent, but practical experience showed that if you really wanted to know God, you needed to open up the Good Book. Other traditions see God’s presence in tradition—in the history of the church—or in the Holy Spirit—a force that provides direct revelation. The Bible, tradition, the Holy Spirit are all amazing sources for knowledge of God and our best sources. I love all three of them and they are at the top of my list. Yet if we say God only speaks through one or all of these, then we have limited God.

Instead, the truth is, that God and God’s truth are in more places than we might realize. Truth is especially hidden in creative media and arts that reflect God’s truth in unconventional, yet powerful ways. God can speak in everything, if we stop to realize the revelations that can occur outside of the church walls.

Theophanies are Everywhere

A perusal through Scripture reveals that God speaks up in very surprising ways. God sends a message through a talking Donkey in Numbers, and a floating hand that offers a cryptic code in Daniel, and operates out of a golden box that will melt a Nazi’s face off if handled incorrectly. Then, of course, there is Jesus. Jesus is the purest, most unadulterated manifestation of God on earth. But we don’t always stop to consider how strange it is that God speaks through a low-class worker from an insignificant town in a rather insignificant region.

To use a fancy scholarly term, we can call some of these moments “theophanies.” A theophany is a visible manifestation of God in a way humans can understand. It is when God shows up in the story. Often times, this term is employed when God is in some kind of human form—like the three men that come to Abraham in Genesis 18 or in the form of the Angel of the Lord. But we can bend and stretch the term to talk about all the ways God “shows up” and speaks through Scripture and our own lives.

On occasion, Christians may operate as if God takes a break after Malachi and comes back in Matthew, only to go on hiatus after Revelation. Yet this is quite a limited view of God. God is not constrained by the limits of our canonical Scriptures. Though we should approach every perceived revelation of God with discernment and community involvement, certainly we can have our minds, hearts, and souls shaped by God’s influence in a variety of other places.

Even Scripture directly testifies to this point. Psalm 19 famously reminds us that, indeed, nature reveals something about God’s nature. The first four verses offer profound observations:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

Psalm 19:1-4 (NRSV)

The Creation cannot help but display so-called “fingerprints” of the Creator. Though words aren’t actually used, we can still learn from these witnesses to God. If Creation herself is a legitimate voice of some level of revelation, then certainly there is good reason to believe that other areas of our world might speak to us as well, if we just listen.

In the recent book The Edge of Everywhen by A.S. Mackey, the author described this very sentiment. Yes, it’s a middle grade book, but that doesn’t change the profoundness of the message. Here is an excerpt that struck me:

Mr. Greene shrugged and said, “Why not? Every time I walk to the edge of the ocean, I close my eyes and listen to the waves rolling in, because the ocean speaks. To those who have ears to hear, to those few people who find the time to really listen, things in this world are constantly speaking.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Piper admitted.
“Who’s to say God wouldn’t be able to take common, everyday things and change them somehow, turning them into a thought or a feeling or a message that only the smallest handful of humans can understand? Such things aren’t only possible, I believe they’re more common than any of us realize. But if we try to talk about them out loud with just anybody, the nice people in white coats may put us in a padded room.”

Mackey, The Edge of Everywhen, 122.

As Mackey points out in her writing, God takes common, everyday things and turns them into something more. Christian teaching has always been focused on God creating beauty out of the broken, turning the common into the uncommon. Biblical figures who were average, insignificant, problematic people are constantly turned into messengers of God. God’s M.O. is to make the ordinary extraordinary. Perhaps we too often forget that God’s transformation doesn’t just occur with people–God wants to renew all creation. God’s transformation can extend to all sorts of things around us if we are willing to pay attention.

So if good theology shows up in your novel and pricks your heart, don’t be surprised. If that song—Christian or “secular” (gasp!)—tugs on your heart and pushes you toward spiritual reflection, that’s God working. God is working behind the scenes in all sorts of mysterious ways.

Fiction is True

The modern world has an unfortunate way of segregating fiction and facts. There are two categories: it is either true or not true. Though this black-and-white reality is comforting, it’s logical, and it makes a good amount of sense, this worldview doesn’t actually represent reality. It is too simple. Plus, it is really not the way humans have operated throughout history. The truth is, stories do not have to be true to have truth.

Christian literature is by no means new. In the early days of Christianity, we get various hagiographies, lives of saints, where these believers do pretty miraculous things (it is hard to tell if they are meant to be taken historically accurate or not). Later we get masterpieces like Dante’s Divine Comedy or Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which have Christian themes and enduring life lessons. Yet just because an unlikely group of pilgrims never did travel to Canterbury and tell wild stories, does not mean we have nothing to learn from it; there are still some pretty scathing rebukes of clergy folk and also wisdom from the mouths of sinners.

I first discovered the spiritual power of literature sometime around eighth grade. I read Randy Alcorn’s book The Ishbane Conspiracy. This is Alcorn’s (and his daughters’, who are co-authors) take on C.S. Lewis’ classic The Screwtape Letters, but instead of just seeing the plotting of the demons, you also get a narrative about the people in question. It’s a book designed for young adults and presents various struggles common to young people. After reading it, I remember being convicted. I told my parents that if I wasn’t already baptized, I would have gotten baptized after reading The Ishbane Conspiracy! It was convicting! While completely fiction, the book had enduring truths about temptation and sin.

But the label “Christian” isn’t required to make some kind of art meaningful. I for instance love the paintings of Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak. His surrealism is often focused on Jewish themes, and is useful for spiritual reflection on the nature of the world and for understanding Jewish interpretation of the thing we call the Old Testament. I also recently came across a book called The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett that used religious themes without being expressly Christian. It left on a wonderfully ambiguous note about the fate of the character’s religious lives that I found quite provocative—it forced me to ask questions about the relationship between belief and ritual.

To again reinforce that “all truth is God’s truth” no matter the source, Augustine in his work On Christian Teaching suggests that even pagan literature offers something of value—if we exercise proper discernment:

“A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature, but rejecting superstitious vanities and deploring and avoiding those who ‘though they knew God did not glorify him as God or give thanks but became enfeebled in their own thoughts and plunged their senseless minds into darkness. Claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the image of corruptible mortals and animals and reptiles’”

Augustine, On Christian Teaching, II.73

So, yes, even fiction can be true. Art offers us something valuable if we learn to look closely, listen carefully, and examine critically.

The Basis for Christian Creativity

When I preach, I like to point out how “the human way of thinking” or our modern values are often the opposite of what God does in Scripture. I already mentioned above about “losers” becoming God’s champions. We would often be quick to choose Jesse’s tall and handsome first son for anointing, instead of waiting for the sweaty, ruddy shepherd boy David to come home from work. We think it’s insane that Jesus waited a few days in John 11 until leaving on the journey to go heal Lazarus—couldn’t he have left earlier and prevented Lazarus from dying in the first place? So often in Scripture, as in our own experience, God’s plan is inventive, surprising, and quite creative. We should expect more than we do that God is going to execute a plan that takes startling twists and turns.

God works with us humans to communicate God’s desires, and often times God’s flare for creativity shows up in the creative work of humans. Look no further than your two-tone leather Bible. Unless you believe that Scripture owes its origin to God putting its authors under a trace where God moves their quills for every jot or tittle, each writing owes at least some part of it to the author’s creative inclination. The Bible isn’t just a list of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots.” It includes narratives, poetry, poetic narratives, comedy, drama, metaphor, ect. Using some literary conventions of the day mixed with innovation, the Bible is a profoundly creative work. The fact that it is creative does not take away from it’s truth; the Bible’s creativity enhances it’s value as a communicative work.

In the text of Scripture, we encounter God commanding some seemingly weird exercises to get people to learn the truth. These can serve as a model for how we communicate God’s revelation today. My favorite example is in the prophetic literature. Ever notice how God puts these prophets through some crazy performances? These are examples of “prophetic theater,” where a prophet’s weird ritual or actions is meant to teach a point.

Ezekiel, for instance, is told to lay on his side for over a year while pretend playing a siege on Jerusalem represented by a brick and he is to cook his bread over a fire of cow’s dung. This grueling ordeal (my professor speculated that it may been “show” or “imagery” instead of something Ezekiel actually did the whole time) had a point: Judah and Israel were tainted by their sin and would be punished. What an image! Based on this, I wrote a short, modernized play based on this incident called Prophetic Theater. In the play, I describe this as method as “street theater meets corner preaching.” It’s entertaining, engaging, and educational—all at the same time.

If we today are in the role of Ezekiel, the prophet acting out God’s message, then a Christian’s creative activity is an act of interpretation. In my undergrad exegesis class (exegesis refers to the method of interpreting Scripture), we learned that exegesis is an investigation, conversation, and art. According to Michael Gorman, the renowned Biblical scholar who wrote the textbooks The Elements of Biblical Exegesis, these three elements make up the exegetical task. Each of these elements is also present in the Christian artistic process. An investigation, for instance, is “a process of asking questions, questions that are often provoked by the text itself” (11). Creators ask questions that are different than scholars (i.e. “What would this look like in modern times?”), but still are question-askers. Interpretation is also “a conversation with readers living and dead” (11). Artists may allude to other works or be influenced by theological traditions as they create art—their work can also be a “response” to a question or statement in the world at the moment. Finally, there aren’t easy answers to many Bible passages because interpreting is an art, not a science–so Gorman says “an exegete needs not only principles, rules, hard work and research skills, but also intuition, imagination, sensitivity, and even a bit of serendipity on occasion” (12). The Christian creative takes those later skills and puts them more fully on display to communicate the message to a wider audience.

Certainly, not all Christian art or media are created equally. Yet, God still manages to speak in surprising places. In work labeled “Christian,” intentional theological reflection is (ideally) incorporated into the piece. In many ways, this is biblical interpretation. Just one example of how this works can be found in The Abide Bible, a study bible edited by Phil Collins, director at Taylor University’s Center for Scripture Engagement, and published by Thomas Nelson. This Bible includes multiple creatives ways to further engagement with the Bible include journaling, picturing yourself in the story, and mediation on famous artwork. It does a remarkable job of connecting creative activity with Biblical interpretation.

Engaging with art is legitimate because God’s voice is heard through all creation and the creative endeavors humans embark on. Perhaps many Christian creatives deserve just as much as a platform as our favorite Bible teachers, since God speaks through the artists too. Serious Christian art is spiritual formation, nourishment for our souls, and lessons that might stick around in our heads way past Sunday lunch.

Conclusion

Since God speaks everywhere through all sorts of things, surely, we can use creative methods to bring God’s voice to a new audience. Plays, podcasts, novels, radio dramas, art, a comedy routine—you name it. All these things and more are valid tools for the expression of our faith.

Theophany Media exists to create a space where we can get cozy with both creativity and Christianity. Welcome here is both intelligence and imagination. We intend to speak of faith but do so with a bit of fun. Together, we can embark on this quest to hear God in all the spaces God occupies.

To see more about what we do, the About page is a great place to start.

Jake Doberenz

Jake Doberenz is a writer, teacher, minister, and creative thinker from Oklahoma City, OK. He is the Founder and President of Theophany Media. Additionally, he ministers at the Mayfair Church of Christ and teaches middle school debate at The Academy of Classical Christian Studies in Oklahoma City.  Jake is almost done with his Master of Theological Studies at Oklahoma Christian University, the same place he recieved an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies with a minor in Communication Studies.

www.jakedoberenz.com