Through the chaos and tragedy of 2020, we here at Kelli Sallman Writing & Editing have felt a stirring to pursue conversation. Like you, we long for rational discourse, for a safe space to theorize and guess and sort out our ideas. A place where we can exchange ideas without the vitriol that often suffuses modern discourse. To that end, we are creating “Theology in Process,” a dialogue on what we believe, what we are unsure of, and where the two intersect. We want to start that conversation with you, too. This is a place for ill-formed ideas and undefined theories, a place for doubt and a place to search for truth.

This month, we discussed offshoots of the age-old dilemma, what is the responsibility of the artist? What responsibility do they have to their audience and to their art itself? Looking especially at how we resolve stories and how we express artistic vision, here are some thoughts on what it looks like to be an artist in our ravaged world.

Callie: How much resolution should a story have? Are Christian stories required to end with hope?

This is something I ran into a lot doing theater at a Christian university because the people who come to our shows expect resolution. We’re Christians and God is redemptive, so every story has to be redemptive, right? And so there’s this question, can we be good Christian storytellers and not redeem a character? What does that look like? How is that glorifying to God? When you look at Death of a Salesman, is there redemption there? We performed Doubt; is there redemption there or is there not?

But even for tragedies, depending on how you study them, some people will always find hope even at the end. So is there such a thing as the more tragic tragedies that don’t have any hope? And if so, are the extreme tragedies still glorifying to God, or should we stick to the ones where we can mine a little bit of hope out of them at the end?

Wes: One of the things that I look to is Jonah. That particular story has all kinds of selfishness and tragedy in it. Even when it ended, it didn’t end at all the way we want it to. Or look at some of the prophets in the Bible; they didn’t have the ending we would want them to, yet the overall purpose for what they were doing was, from a theological perspective, fulfilling God’s purpose. And I think we do a disservice when we finish every story positively. We reaffirm the Western culture of storytelling when we constantly say, “Oh look, the hero won, or the bad guy got what he deserved” or that kind of stuff. And that’s a sad part of our culture. We need to reaffirm that not everything is perfect, but in the big picture and in the eternal purpose from a theological perspective, it’s the way God designed it to be.

Kelli: Yes, I think our Western culture does have a certain outlook. But Arthur Miller sets up his tragedies on the foundation of Greek tragedy. And the idea of hope in story for the ancient Greek is different from what it is for today’s person who really wants that Hallmark Channel happy ending—which isn’t even necessarily a redemptive ending. It’s often just a “happy” ending.

First, we have to define what is “redemptive” and what is “resolved.” I think at least our modern Western culture tends to have an oversimplified answer. Yes, there is an overarching arc to the entire story in the Bible, and there was always a promise that the story of God’s people would end in God’s victory. But many of the works themselves, like Habakkuk, don’t necessarily have that “tied up with a bow” redemptive ending. Yes, in the book’s final two verses Habakkuk expresses faith in God’s eventual redemption, but that faith directly contrasts with the coming, dark, unrelenting judgment that he finally accepts as the fate of his nation. Hopeful redemption is the oversimplified view of resolution. Resolution can also be that the Egyptian Pharaoh isn’t saved, and that God is sovereign in that outcome—which is horrendous if we want a happy ending or a simple idea of redemption. Resolution can also be that God in his sovereignty does God things like judging.

It’s part of our human longing to say, “I want the end of God’s judgment to be my vindication. I want the story to end well.” But the individual stories in the Bible don’t always end there, and we have to understand, where does this story end badly and how do we avoid that outcome? And for me, that cautionary tale part of story is also a redemptive element and the benefit of some of the Greek tragedies. A huge part of those plays is to teach us how to avoid fate, and if you can’t avoid fate, how do you at least go into it nobly? So what is this tragedy teaching? How is it helping us to live life and to better understand how life works, which is what story does. And then how does that new understanding fit into our entire worldview that includes God’s view of the world and not just ours?

Callie: So are there any stories so unredemptive that they shouldn’t be told? Are there any stories whose resolution is so dark that they don’t offer something of value?

Wes: What do we do about the great falls? I think that the greatest story that would fit into the unredemptive category would be Lucifer’s fall, and not only that, Adam and Eve’s fall. Those are pretty dark. But God tells the story.

Callie: What’s the difference between “This is truth, this is what God has said,” versus “This is what I’m creating in my mind”? Because I think there’s a value inherent to telling stories that are true, especially something like the fall of Lucifer and the fall of man, because without those you don’t see God’s power. But what about stories that I’m creating that are depressing or dark?

Kelli: I would say it depends on what is intended. Let’s say a story that is intended to be purely blasphemous—in its interpretation, not in its details. If the author was to use every portion of story theory and technique to blaspheme God, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t find that worth the paper it’s written on. Now if the characters blasphemed God, I would want to dive into, “Where is the author taking this?” That’s a different thing. Can I put that idea in concrete form for what such a blasphemous story would look like? No, so I’m just thinking theoretically, what I would think of as off limits for the Christian artist in terms of boundaries of art, when we have been charged to in all things glorify God.

I imagine we will have to revisit this question in more detail at another time because while some darkness drags us into darkness, other darkness helps us see light. And the difference isn’t as cut and dry as the presence or absence of curse words, mature content, or violence.

Wes: Do artists fall short in the expression of their artistic vision? Can we, as T. S. Eliot says, have an artistic experience but not the meaning?

Kelli: A lot of people are looking at the experience only but miss the greater construct. People worship the experience of worship music. But we fail to recognize how worship must be directed to the Creator and that worshiping the experience of singing is not actually worshiping the Creator, right?

I wrote an article a year ago about how we have to understand art to comprehend how we can worship God through a clay pot in the same way that we can worship God by breathing out music. It requires an understanding of how we use both the rational mind and our emotional soul in the process of worship, and I based it on Harold Best’s book, Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship in the Arts. Here’s the name of part 1 of the book: Unceasing Worship as Continuous Outpouring. Chapter 1 title: Nobody Does Not Worship. A double negative, you have to figure that one out. But he says a lot of really important things. “Once we grasp the full implications of continuous outpouring, we can speak with authority and freedom about the arts and about the union of authentic worship and artistic action. ... We can come to a clearer understanding of the difference between the things of the world and the spirit of the world. Then we are free to celebrate the riot of human creativity in its worldwide and centuries-long unfolding. We are free to understand how impoverished the church is when it limits itself to just a few ways of raising its voice to the Lord in continuing worship. And finally we can come to a better understanding of the place of quality within the whole.”

So, yes, absolutely on both sides of the equation, artists and the receivers of art can fall short both in the expression of the art, mistaking its connection to worship, and in the understanding of the art they experience, missing its fullness due to a lack of technique, a lack of vocabulary, or just from a lack of celebrating “the riot of human creativity” bent toward God.

Callie: Okay, I have three thoughts. First, I read somewhere that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, and that’s definitely not holistically true, but conceptually it’s great. The idea that, if this is valuable, then we should try to do it even if we aren’t going to do it right.

Shifting to the T. S. Eliot concept, the idea of having the experience and missing the meaning reminds me of Our Town because I’m a theater nerd and everything reminds me of theater. Our Town voices the idea, “Hey, you guys are in this beautiful, intricate life and you’re missing it.” And I think that’s the point of art, to say, “Hey slow down, you’re missing it.” That’s how art ties into our lives and why it has so much meaning to us. Because it makes us breathe and it makes us look.

My third thought is on the idea of expression versus meaning and can something be expressed well without being effective. I think that’s why so many artists don’t get famous till they’re dead. They have this idea of expression, and society takes another one hundred years to catch up and realize what they were saying. Yes, they expressed themselves well. And no, it really wasn’t effective in their time because they were thinking one hundred years down the road.

Kelli: And they didn’t have a very good marketing machine.

Callie: Yeah, that’s true. Their marketing platform sucked.

Kelli: They probably needed a better editor.