ART
OF THE HOPELESS

Topics: Arrogance; Caring; Compassion; Hypocrisy; Indifference; Judging Others; Popular Culture; Postmodernism; Salvation

References: Matthew 9:36; Luke 15; 19:10

When we look at modern art or listen to modern music and are tempted to write it off (or find it amusing), we do well to remember the words of Francis Schaeffer:

These paintings, these poems, and these demonstrations that we have been talking about are the expressions of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness. Dare we laugh at such things? Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in their art?

Christians should stop laughing and take such men seriously. Then we shall have the right to speak again to our generation. These men are dying while they live, yet where is our compassion for them? There is nothing more ugly [sic] than an orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.

—Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (InterVarsity, 1998)