In his book the wounded healer, Henri Nouwen offers a picture of what he calls "nuclear man," what many might seem more or less the archetypal postmodern. He writes:
Nuclear man no longer believes in anything that is always and everywhere true and valid. He lives by the hour and creates his life on the spot. His art is a collage art, an art which, though a combination of divergent pieces, is a short impression of how man feels at the moment. His music is an improvisation which combines themes from various composers into some thing fresh as well as momentary. His life often looks like a playful expression of feelings and ideas that need to be communicated and responded to, but which do not attempt to oblige anyone else.
Nouwen then describes two ways -- the mystical Way and the revolutionary way -- by which the nuclear man tries to "break out of his cocoon and fly." Both of them, he says, can be considered "modes of experiential transcendence" and "open new perspectives and suggests new lifestyles".
I want to just point at the first of these he talks about, which is "the mystical way." Of this, Nouwen writes:
The mystical way is the inner way: Man tries to find in his inner life a connection with the "reality of the unseen," "the source of being," "the point of silence." There he discovers that what is most personal is most universal (cf. Rogers' On Becoming a Person. Houghton Mifflin, 1961, p. 26). Beyond the superficial layers of idiosyncrasies, psychological differences and characterological typologies, he finds a center from which he can embrace all other beings at once and experience meaningful connections with all that exists. [...] In what ever way we try to define this mode of 'experiential transcendence," it seems that in all its forms man tries to transcend his own worldly environment and move one, two, three or more levels away from the unrealities of his daily existence to a more encompassing view which en the Ark ables him to experience what is real. In this experience he can cut through his apathy and reach the deep currents of life in which he participates. There he feels that he belongs to a story of which he knows neither the beginning nor the end, but in which he has a unique place. By this creative distance from the unrealities of his own ambitions and urges, nuclear man breaks through the vicious circle of the self-fulfilling prophecy that makes him suffer from his own morbid predictions. There he comes into contact with the center of his own creativity and finds the strength to refuse to become the passive victim of his own futurology. There he experiences himself no longer as an isolated individual caught in the diabolic chain of cause and effect, but as a man able to transcend the fences of his own predicament and reach out far beyond the concerns of self. There he touches the place where all people are revealed to him as equal and where compassion becomes a human possibility. There he comes to the shocking, but at the same time self-evident, insight that prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.
I once suggested that if the evangelical church is seri
ous about helping people like this to encounter God on their spiritual journey, it will take its patronage of the arts, and its cultivation and shepherding of the community of artists among them very seriously. And by "the arts", I do not mean a church agenda for proclaiming "the gospel" through the arts -- at least not in the sense of using the arts as propaganda. What I'm thinking about particularly is a cultivation of mature aesthetic sensibilities in the body of the church, and in the practice of corporate worship.
Now the evangelical church isn't particularly known for its mystical bent. And some might even argue that mysticism and evangelicalism don't mix. I tend to disagree. Some might suggest that instead of trying to add a mystical element to corporate worship in an evangelical church, it would be better just to send most people to another church altogether. The idea behind this would be that no church can necessarily be all things to all people. But I'm a little bit skeptical about perspective. Now I would agree that the church will never be a place in which everyone is happy all of the time, and everything happens just as everyone wants it to happen. But there's something really attractive to me about the idea of a church that is eclectic in its worship experience. We divide ourselves into categories of "mystical" and the lack of a better word "anti-mystical," and we try to send people of one inclination somewhere else, what is that saying? In my mind, it tends to create an "us versus them" mentality. I think this us versus them mentality can be remedied at least to some degree when these different kinds of people share the same space, the same physical location. I think there's even something to be said if there were different services held at that same location, and under that same church name. That establishes a common ground. Of course to be ideal if everyone could share the same space at the same time, and that might be something that the church could be aiming at, but I think there's value even that just the space is shared.
But the goal, I think, would be that those who aren't naturally inclined in the direction of mysticism might possibly be able to grow in such a way that they can appreciate that. I kind of see it analogous to developing taste for food or for drinks. Then on my own experience, for example with coffee, I had to grow into that taste. And now I really love coffee. There are ways in which we can grow and develop the ability to appreciate experiencing God in different ways. The psalmist says "taste and see that the Lord is good." My imagine here is a community of believers that are committed to tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, and willing and open to exploring new ways to taste, and new ways to see. That is, I think, part of the work that should go into arts ministry.
The arts don't have to be propaganda in order to help people to come to know the gospel. I remember reading a quote from Bono that said something like "I don't understand why people try to make music evangelical; it's intrinsically evangelical." I think what Bono was trying to get at here is that mystical quality that music and the arts often have. Now I would not want to say that all art has to be mystical and quality, but that is a feature that much art -- especially much of the best art -- seems to possess. When the church purposes to cultivate artists into being the best that they can possibly be, one result is going to be art with this mystical characteristic being produced, thus creating space within the evangelical Christian community for Nouwen's "nuclear man/woman" to be able to break out of his or her cocoon.
