English translation of Güzelliği Kaybettiğimizde: Kilisede Sanatı Küçümsemenin Bedeli. Miras magazine, issue 57 · 2026. Read the source at Miras. Scripture passages are rendered from the Turkish source.
The relationship between Christians and art has not always been easy.
Church history has given humanity some of its most remarkable architecture, music, paintings, and literature. Yet it has also witnessed periods when art was regarded as unnecessary, dangerous, or even harmful to faith. Today, particularly in Protestant and evangelical circles, we encounter another form of this tension. We are not entirely opposed to art: we use music, design graphics, watch films, and publish books. Nevertheless, we often approach art itself with suspicion, valuing it only insofar as it serves an explicit spiritual purpose.
When a Bible verse appears on a painting, when a song mentions Jesus, or when a novel explicitly communicates the gospel, we readily understand its place in Christian ministry. But we are less comfortable when an artist wants to explore loneliness, death, beauty, human brokenness, or an ordinary moment in life. We have become accustomed to measuring art by asking, “What is it useful for?”
Having worked in publishing for years, I cannot claim to be immune to this tendency. There have been times when we focused on what a text said while giving less attention to how it said it, overlooking weaknesses in form because the message was correct. Over time, however, I have begun to ask: if God wanted merely to convey accurate information, why has he given us such a literary Bible?
The Bible is not a theology manual. Alongside laws and teachings, it contains poems, laments, love songs, historical narratives, letters, parables, dreams, and magnificent imagery. David does not express his thoughts about God only through definitions; he says that the Lord is his shepherd. The psalmist describes creation as declaring God’s glory and the sky as proclaiming his handiwork (Psalm 19:1). When Jesus explains the kingdom of God, he does not rely solely on theological propositions. He speaks of a farmer sowing seed, a lost sheep, a recovered coin, a son returning home, and a father who sees him from a distance and runs toward him.
Imagination occupies such a prominent place in the Bible’s communication of truth for a reason. God did not create human beings as creatures of reason alone. We remember, imagine, recognize beauty, tell stories, and discover meaning through symbols.
Beauty is not unnecessary
Sometimes our dismissal of art rests on an assumption we scarcely recognize: what is useful matters; what is beautiful is secondary. The creation account itself gives us reason to question that distinction.
Genesis 2:9 describes God growing trees in the garden that were both pleasing to the eye and good for food. Both descriptions matter. The fruit sustains life, but the trees also delight the eye. God’s world consists of more than what we need to survive. Creation contains color, variety, form, rhythm, and beauty.
In Art and the Bible, Francis Schaeffer stresses that a work of art should not be valued merely as a means to an end. Recognizing that art need not always preach, teach, or directly call someone to faith is an important starting point for a Christian understanding of art. One of the strongest biblical examples is the construction of the tabernacle. God tells Moses that he has filled Bezalel with his Spirit, giving him skill, understanding, knowledge, and craftsmanship to create designs in gold, silver, and bronze (Exodus 31:3–4).
What moves me is not simply that God gives an artist ability. It is that artistic work and being filled with God’s Spirit appear in the same sentence. Bezalel is not delivering a sermon or teaching a doctrinal lesson. He is shaping stone, metal, wood, and fabric beautifully. Yet his work does not stand outside the sacred.
Can we say the same today?
Turning the artist into a service provider
Churches do not exclude artists altogether. In fact, we often need them. The problem is that, while welcoming the artist, we confine their art to the boundaries of our own needs. We ask painters to make posters, photographers to cover events, writers to prepare announcements, and musicians to play in worship teams. None of these tasks is wrong. The problem begins when we imagine that the artist’s gift consists only of these things.
In The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers explores the relationship between creative activity and humanity’s being made in God’s likeness. Human beings do not produce things merely because they need them; creativity is part of being human. Continually asking Christian artists to prove that their work is Christian is therefore an odd expectation.
We do not question the Christianity of a Christian carpenter’s table because it has no cross carved into it. We do not expect a Christian doctor to preach during every examination. Yet when it comes to art, we may expect artists to display their faith explicitly in every work.
One of the most important things a Christian artist can do may simply be to look honestly at the world. Artists can show how sin wounds us, how fragile love can be, the shadow death casts over us, injustice, loneliness, or the beauty of creation. Sometimes a good novel gives us no answer; instead, it confronts us with a question we have avoided for years.
The Bible itself does this. Job does not resolve suffering in a few easy sentences. Ecclesiastes does not fear confronting life’s apparent meaninglessness. The Psalms contain both praise and cries asking how long the Lord will wait (Psalm 13:1). Jeremiah weeps, Elijah becomes exhausted, and Thomas doubts. Scripture does not sanitize human experience to make it appear faithful.
Perhaps this honesty is one of the things art can teach the church again.
Leaving imagination to others
The cost of dismissing art is greater than artists finding no place in church. A deeper loss occurs when Christians increasingly leave cultural imagination to others.
Our children and young people grow up with stories. Films, music, novels, games, and the visual worlds they follow continually tell them who human beings are, what is beautiful, and what is worth living for. Culture never merely entertains; it also shapes our desires.
Sometimes we have responded with prohibitions alone. Telling people not to watch, listen, or read is easier. Offering more beautiful, honest, and profound stories in response to the stories of our culture takes far more work.
J. R. R. Tolkien uses the term “sub-creation” to describe human creative activity. We do not create from nothing; we make new worlds, stories, and forms from the materials of God’s creation. This offers Christian artists considerable freedom. Artists are not little creators competing with God. They work within creation, using the imagination the Creator has given them.
Perhaps the church’s task, before continually supervising artists, is to offer them firm theological soil. We should consider what artists might create when they are rooted in Scripture, participate in the life of the church, know Christ, and learn to look carefully at the world.
Learning beauty again
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul does not tell believers only to think about what is correct. He calls them to consider what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8).
It matters to me that lovely and admirable things belong within Christian thought. When we reduce faith to learning the difference between right and wrong, we may neglect our ability to recognize beauty. Sin has damaged not only our morals but also our vision. Renewal in Christ includes learning to look at the world again.
Learning to notice a tree, recognize pain in a human face, encounter our own sin in a good story, or consider why a piece of music moves us deeply does not lie outside the life of faith.
Art, of course, is not the gospel. A painting cannot save us, a novel cannot forgive sins, and a symphony cannot reconcile us to God. The church’s center is not art but the crucified and risen Christ. For that very reason, however, we need not fear art. Christianity need not put beauty in God’s place; it knows who is the source of beauty.
The extraordinary opening of John’s Gospel expresses this powerfully: the Word became flesh and lived among us, and his glory was seen (John 1:14).
At the heart of Christianity stands the incarnate Word, rather than an abstract idea: Christ, who could be seen and touched, who sat at a table, wept, suffered, and entered human history.
As we reconsider art’s place in the church, our deepest question is therefore not whether we should hang more pictures or organize more art events. Can we still look attentively at God’s world? Can we make room for artists who honestly portray the beauty and brokenness of human experience? Can we show our children what is beautiful as well as what is wrong?
A church that dismisses beauty loses more than art. In time, it begins to lose its capacity for wonder, its imagination, and one of the oldest languages through which it can speak with the world around it.
Perhaps that is the most important reason to make room for art again: to remember that God’s truth is not only true, but also good and beautiful.