The Worldview Behind the Work of Art: Five Cautionary Statements

1. Also, knowing the worldview of the author/creator often does not offer any glimpse into the purpose or motivation for a piece. As an author/creator, I often create works from imagined worldviews (i.e., worldviews that are not my own) and so my works often bear no reflection of my worldview nor can a worldview be properly tied to them.

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2. The Dane, I’d love to to see you respond to the article (which was written by an artist)!

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3. @The Dane, I can hardly believe that what you said is actually true. I would venture to guess that when you create a work of fiction, your works do bear reflection of your worldview, if even simply by the fact that you are a Christian as you write it.

   How can an awareness of God as creator, man as sinful, and Christ as redeemer not influence everything we do on some level? We may not aware of it explicitly, but out worldview is constantly influencing everything we do.

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4. Hey Drew, let’s take a look at some examples and maybe you’ll be better able to understand how what I said can be entirely true.

   There are two easily accessible ways for my point to be demonstrably true: 1) By producing art that does not bear any reflection of my worldview or 2) by producing art that reflects a worldview that I do not hold. I have done and continue to produce both kinds of work.

   We’ll start with the first, Work That Does Not Reflect My Worldview. Most art is going to fall into this category. Here are two examples:

   • “My Love”

   • “Fantastic Five”

   I’m curious what you might say about this, my most recent pieace of art. “Wall Cherry.” How does this reflect my worldview? How does knowing my worldview (to the degree that you do) shift your interpretation of the piece?

   None of these examples betray any possible worldview of their creator because they could be created by anyone of any worldview. These are works of art that give no insight into my perception of the world and whose interpretation does not shift once one knows of my worldview. They simply are.

   They are products of my imagination, certainly, but one’s imagination is not reigned in by one’s worldview. That’s part of the point of it being the imagination. It creates apart from what one knows. “Write what you know” is weak-kneed advice to those of weak imagination, who cannot ever surpass their own perspectives and expectations of the world.

   This brings us to the other option, that not only would work not reflect my worldview but that it might also reflect another worldview, even one that I find abhorrent. This isn’t quite as evident in my art (though it is sometimes, see The Great and Mystikal Adventures of Kenashito, a 1992 comic work in which I portray my friends and I going on a murderous rampage after discovering a nefarious plot by our school district). Where it may be more evident is in my writing. A couple years back, I scripted a graphic novel that treats the world from a rather nihilistic perspective; friends who read it for critique were often perplexed that the tone didn’t shift in the ending to even give a nod toward my worldview. I’m working on my first novel right now and it also represents a worldview that I do not accept and trying to apply my worldview to it will only confuse readers.

   You ask, “How can an awareness of God as creator, man as sinful, and Christ as redeemer not influence everything we do on some level?”

   That sounds like a good question, but by practice I think we find that it’s not quite as relevant as we would imagine it to be. When I prepare to give change for my eighty-five cent donut, there is not a Christian way of counting coin. I do it pretty much the same as anyone else. I reach into my pocket, pull out my coins, and count out the eighty-five from what’s available. Jesus dying on the cross doesn’t change the fact that three quarters and a dime will likely be the way I’ll go (if I have that). Recognizing God as creator doesn’t shape the way I tie my shoe, enunciate my English, swallow my Coke, or hunt and peck on my keyboard. There are a whole host of things that my worldview affects. But there are a whole host that it does not.

   Worldviews may affect one’s art, but it ain’t necessarily so.

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5. I think you misheard me on some level. I was saying it may not be obvious that a particular work was being influenced by your worldview but nonetheless influence is there.

   Sure, I get your point about the normal every day things we do not being influenced by our worldview.

   I suspect that your Christian worldview is influencing even the way you write when you are trying deliberately not to let it influence you. For instance in the comic you mention, if you were a Christian when you wrote it, you certainly didn’t cease being a Christian when you wrote it and you may have intended your Christian worldview to not influence what you did but it probably did. Where might you have taken the story had God not saved you and changed your heart (which includes your mind)? You can’t answer that question and neither can I.

   If I am to do everything to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31), then I suppose these things are worth talking about. I appreciate your response and it reflects my own lack of thoughtfulness in many ways.
   I would be curious to hear how, and I really am curious as to your response, writing deliberately from another worldview is glorifying to God?

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6. One distinction that might be helpful to make is that between me being a Christian and me having a Christian worldview. The first affects far more than the second. The first motivates me to righteousness and causes me to glorify God and affects my spirit and interactions. The second does none of that but merely expresses the abstract categories by which my mind organizes all the various pieces of information that I believe to be true. Speaking of worldviews is really only valuable when we’re discussing our own beliefs (or those of others) in a way that contrasts them with other organizational systems.

   Still even beyond that, discounting worldview as the thing we’re talking about and shifting focus to the fact of our redemption as the chief motivator/influencer in our lives, I still maintain that we may do things that are either neutral to or violently opposed to our redemptive state. Neutral example: simple addition (there is no reasonable way to make this a Christian act). Opposition example: gossip (I may do this in spite of who I am).

   I would be curious to hear how, and I really am curious as to your response, writing deliberately from another worldview is glorifying to God?

   One of the most common errors readers make is the error of mistaken endorsement. They believe, wrongly, that when an author says something, that author agrees with the thing said. Readers like imaginative works, books that draw the reader into a world devised completely by an author. What they for some reason do not like is to imagine that the work’s conclusions might be illusory as well.

   When I write deliberately from another perspective, even going so far as to promote a perspective other than my own within the scope of the work, this is not an endorsement of this other perspective but merely a presentation of it. If I set out to write a story about an agnostic Jew who’s flirting with the wonders of Buddhism, I’m not going to corrupt my presentation by insinuating my perspective into the story’s unfolding history (unless that insinuation is part of the point of my experiment). Really, it’s an insult to an author or artist to believe that the creation is not an expression of an idea but an expression of the author herself. Certainly there are those single-faceted creators who deserve the insult, but to presume across the board is injustice.

   As to how such a thing glorifies God?

   I don’t harbour any illusions that writing novels glorifies God more than, say, setting up a modem for your mother or shining a shoe for your father. Still, we as God’s children, glorify God in two ways: 1) by actively worshiping him and praising his name, and 2) by using the gifts he has given us in reasonable fashion (doing so reflects his glory as creator in us as his creation). So, when I create a fictional world, whether mirroring the real or the fantasy (for the sake of argument, we can consider any world which breathes by a worldview I do not hold as fantasy), God is magnified regardless. If I create a portrait in words of a life devoted to Krishna, then God is glorified in its existence. If I create a picture in words of the life of an evangelical minister, then God is perhaps equally glorified.

   One might be of better use to some people while the other might be the more useful choice to others. Regardless, both have their place.

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7. I wasn’t assuming that writing from that perspective is an endorsement of it, but I understand where you are coming from.

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