I wrote previously about the importance of grit as a musician—the commitment to take an idea and refine it until it has excellence. In this essay, I want to elaborate on that idea, saying that the process of refinement has immense dignity. My argument is that Scripture itself is a work of art that resulted from a long human process. Its composition can be an example and encouragement to artists.
When I was studying music in college, one of my composition professors was a Christ follower. He didn’t talk often about how his faith intersected with his music; but whenever he did, it was always insightful. One way that he did share was this: he would tell his students to beware of attributing their ideas directly to God as the source of their inspiration. He reasoned that sometimes these young artists overestimated how good their ideas were, or at the very least had not yet developed their ideas into an excellence that would be worthy of God’s name. It would be a shame to attribute something shoddy directly to God.
My professor was onto something. I’ve met a good number of fledgling Christian artists that fall into this trap. I remember talking to one particular musician who said, “When you write songs, you know it’s from God because it just flows out of you, and you don’t have to really do anything.” Another Christian artist, when I asked him about his play-writing process, basically told me it was almost like he was unconscious: he just wrote down what God told him.
What’s fascinating is that when writing some of my early compositions, some of what I experienced sort of felt like divine inspiration. I felt a kind of high, where ideas came fast and furious, and I couldn’t write the ideas down fast enough. I sometimes still do experience that kind of euphoric joy at the initial idea of something; but I’ve discovered over time that taking that initial idea and crafting it into a piece that is truly excellent has an unavoidably messy phase of wrestling, cutting, and reworking. It used to be that my initial sparks of inspiration were the final product I showed to people. But now, the initial burst of inspiration is less a final product and more like a compass that gives me direction through a long and sometimes arduous journey to completion.
If you’re a Christian, it might surprise you to learn that the Scriptures themselves have a messy process of reaching their final form. I discovered, for instance, what is called “lower criticism,” where you observe scribes copying manuscripts, many of those manuscripts containing variations over time. Additionally, I became acquainted with what is called “higher criticism,” which uncovers historical processes at work, like where an author borrows material from other sources and adapts it to his own purpose. Initially, these disciplines shocked me. The Scriptures were so obviously human. My question was: How could a human process in any way be brought about by God’s Spirit?
What helped me was the Scripture’s opening page. It depicts God’s realm in the skies meeting with the land below. In terms of literary design, this story culminates with God appointing humans as his representatives in his rule over creation. It’s as though, from the beginning, God desired to unite heaven and earth, human and divine. What’s more, that creation narrative prepares the way for Jesus’ story, who is the ultimate union of heaven and earth, God and human. In other words, it’s folly of me to pit human process against divine work. The humanness of the process is the means God chooses to reveal himself.
As an artist who creates my best work through an arduous process, I take encouragement from Genesis 1. The way God partners with human beings is seldom done by dictating exactly what they say and do. More often, it is by providentially partnering with human beings amidst their work. It’s remarkable how God’s word is the (surprising!) fruit of a long human process. Combine this insight with how artistic Genesis 1 is, and I gain even more confidence that God will partner with me in my artistic process. When I feel discouraged at how painful and uninspiring some days of composing feel, I remember how God used the slow and painful human process of human artists to craft his Scriptures and call it his own word to us.
Artists tend to focus on the initial spark as the moment they call “inspired.” But I have come to see the arduous process of refinement just as integral to the process of inspiration. Like the artists of Scripture before us, we have an opportunity to partner with God in the messiness of a journey toward maturity and completion. After that process—in and through it, not short-circuited—you may have something truly worthy of being called inspired.
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