Blood and Stone, Grace and Truth

^{I once again have finished Hutchmoot and written my thoughts–though this time around we were Homebound for Hutchmoot, COVID-19 stranding us all in our respective states. Over 3,000 people got to participate, which is a joy, and it was wonderful, which is another joy. I am grateful.}

Nathan came to David after he sinned and told him a story. It’s a passage of scripture I can rarely get through without tears. As a kid and teenager, I used to wonder at my visceral reaction and search my own heart for sin.

But as I’ve come to know myself, I’ve realized that most of the time, that clenching I get in the pit of my stomach and the salt water that pricks at my tear ducts is more about the story itself than what’s going on in my own heart.

A powerful man abused his power at the expense of a weaker person.

That is just not right. And I know it in every fiber of my being.

I heard that story recounted three or four times in the past few days. It was held up as an example of “stealing past the watchful dragons” of the human heart and overcoming the defenses we build.

Russell Moore said, “Nathan is not giving David an argument, but an experience.” He’s taking the king into the story and letting the story do its work. Because that’s exactly how stories work–and the abstraction doesn’t do the same thing.

Nathan’s encounter with David is about speaking truth to power through art. Heidi Johnston reminded us that stories, in addition to giving us “a glimpse of beauty and truth we otherwise might miss…also present us with realities about ourselves we might otherwise deflect.”

There is a fine line between art that carries in it resonant truth and art that clobbers a message home. To navigate alongside that line and still remain on the better path is not a work for the faint of heart.

But it is a good work.

I have seen debates in our current cultural context between the camp that says, “Create beauty, create good, create true things–that is the way to shift a culture. That is the way to make a change” and the camp that says, “No, the problem is here and now. We’ve got to make an argument–maybe even fight as dirty as ‘they’ do–to have any impact at all.”

What if both are right?

We live in a disenchanted world. The mud and slime that is unearthed and slung about in accusation is ugly and disgusting.

Is it possible that art can both raise our eyes up from the mud into beauty and mine that mud for clay?

Can story both show a glimpse of what ought to be and challenge what is?

Can a tale about a man who loved his single ewe lamb change a king’s heart?

We know the Story that can reenchant the world. It is full of blood and stone and grace and truth.

Let us make art of both.