Art and Faith Quotes

“In my experience, when we surrender all to the greatest Artist, that Artist fills us with the Spirit and makes us even more. creative and aware of the greater reality all about us. By "giving up" our "art," we are, paradoxically, made into true artists of the Kingdom. This is the paradox Blake was addressing. Unless we become makers in the image of the Maker, we labor in vain. Whether we are plumbers, garbage collectors, taxi drivers, or CEOs, we are called by the Great Artist to co-create. The Artist calls us little-'a' artists to co-create, to share in the "heavenly breaking in" to the broken earth.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“When we make, we invoke the abundance of God's world into the reality of scarcity all about us.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“The current reality of artists being disconnected from other disciplines, and even, in some cases, being seen as opposed to reason, creates a false dichotomy of knowing. Art is fundamental to the human search for deeper understanding. Art, by extension of this reasoning, is fundamental to understanding the Bible.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“The Bible begins with Creation and ends with New Creation. Everywhere in between, Creator God (the grand Artist) beckons the broken, but creative, creatures (the little-‘a’ artists) to create shalom/peace in the face of our “Ground Zero” reality all around us.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“In order to be effective messengers of hope, we must begin by trusting our inner voice, an inner intuition that speaks into the vast wastelands of our time. This process requires training our imagination to see beyond tribal norms, to see the vista of the wider pastures of culture.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“What kind of a church would we become if we simply allowed broken people to gather, and did not try to “fix” them but simply to love and behold them, contemplating the shapes that broken pieces can inspire?”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“In art, we do not obliterate the darkness. Art is an attempt to define the boundaries of the darkness.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“There is no art if we are unwilling to wait for the paint to dry.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“Perhaps, I ask as an artist, being an artist is not an anomaly to faith, but is central to faith and to the place of the church in the world; and in order to understand the fullness of the grace of God, we all must think, act, and make like an artist.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“God does not just mend, repair, and restore; God renews and generates, transcending our expectations of even what we desire, beyond what we dare to ask or imagine.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“God the Artist communicates to us first, before God the lecturer.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“Some things, of course, are best conveyed in a three-point sermon. But we would lose a great deal if we heard the Good News delivered only as linear, propositional information, for the gospel is a song. I learned from theologian N. T. Wright to regard the very form of hymns and poetry as central to the gospel message.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“Let us reclaim creativity and imagination as essential, central, and necessary parts of our faith journey. Imagination is a gift given to us by the Creator to steward, a gift that no other creature under heaven and earth (as far as I know) has been given. Our dreams and hopes are part of our faith; and of course, like all good gifts from God, we can twist these good gifts and make them into idols. In modernist circles, art has been seen as a way to replace God; the Theology of Making will necessarily place art as a good gift of the Creator God, the Semper Creator, who continues to create into the New Creation. Therefore, art is connected to the holy. Art communities and church community life depend on such roots in the imagination. Such gifts of the New breathe life into all of our communities, and holiness is the result of such imaginative work. I would add that—whether through “sacred” or “secular” efforts—the expression of our imaginative works in social and interpersonal relationships is itself a work of art of God.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“New Creation fills in the cracks and fissures of our broken, splintered lives, and a golden light shines through, even if only for a moment, reminding us of the abundance of the world that God created, and that God is yet to create through us.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“My faith is strong not because I believe in God and God needs my faith; my faith is strong because God created me to have that faith and has chosen me to do God’s bidding.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“Christian community can be, and should be, the most integrated community in the world; the institutions that bear Christ’s name should be an oasis of tears; like Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, we each should be, as T. S. Eliot wrote, a “still point of the turning world.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“Christ knew, when he instituted this table more than two thousand years ago, what we face today. He has been long-suffering and patient with us, waiting for us. He knew that today, we would be faced with horrific destructive powers and chaotic storms in our lives. He is waiting for us to utter, “Lord, by your death, we live.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“Our ability to dream, to envision the future in which justice reigns, is one of the great gifts of God to us. And as we are made in the image of God, we are capable of this kind of dreaming. Fantasy is an escape from reality and therefore erodes true hope; but Godly imagination to dream is a courageous journey into the heart of darkness, into the imprisoned realms of our world, that can liberate us from our “bondage to decay and . . . into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“A church should be a place of nurturing those wings, a context and environment for failing many, many times rather than demanding that believers jump higher and higher in the art of moralism.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“Love demands more than utility; a greater love expands purposefully into an expansive and enduring realm of relational depth. When we say God is purposeful, we need to move beyond our industrial mindset of bottom-line thinking about efficiency and success. God is gratuitously purposeful to bring vast, abundant beauty into our lives.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“We often seek out experienced business minds to lead our church financial drives, but churches rarely seek out artists who exemplify “the gift economy” to help lead in creating the context for their communication. And if we do not consider the context, the context will define our message as much as our preaching and singing do.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“What’s wrong is that churches are not investing enough time and effort in thinking about the context of communication, and they are not empowering makers.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“This combination of the reparative (restoring the object’s utility) and the generative (increasing its beauty and value with gold) speaks to the deepest realm of Kintsugi. We would be wise to consider our own brokenness in light of the wounds of Christ still visible after his resurrection. When Making honors brokenness, the broken shapes can come into focus as necessary components of the New World to come.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“In these days of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, it’s important to remember that the goal of such movements is not to fix an inequity, but to seek a new way for us to see beauty—as in “fair-ness”—in all peoples. Again, in Christ, we are a New Creation.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“In the days of postcolonialism, we need to find our own mending to be a collage-like journey toward healing. The resulting patterns will not be, by design, to restore the old days of national glory, but a beautiful amendment that resonates under a master’s hand.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“often based upon an analytical approach to understanding truth as a set of propositional beliefs, such that understanding and explaining take dominance over experiencing and intuiting.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making