Our God is an Artist

The God we worship and emulate is an artist. The first thing we learn about our heavenly parents is that they make beautiful things: stars, suns, planets, oceans, sky, sunsets, mountains, cherry trees, blue whales, herons, leopards and the crowning creation: the bodies our spirits were given to dwell in. The rapturous splendor of our world and our bodies are works of art that reveal the love God has for us. A love so great they sent us to a home of overwhelming beauty. 

This is why art is much more than decoration or ornament. Art is revelation, an uncovering of the fundamental nature of reality: that we were painted on the same canvas as all of creation; that light overcomes darkness, that we were born into love and shall return to love. 

These deep truths are why we respond so powerfully to beauty. Beauty is the promise of happiness—the horizon of our longings that points us towards our true home. A home that isn’t elsewhere in the clouds, but here, on this earth, but transformed through our faith and love, in partnership with our God. God didn’t want us to stay in eden, but to go forth and build Zion. We are called to beautify the world with our hands and imagination and to live in righteous communion. We are apprentices of our artist God, invited to develop beautiful souls and reflect that beauty into physical and symbolic forms—landscape design, architecture, sculpture, fashion, poetry, painting and all the creative arts. Art is the project of making a home where joy can take root and flourish. 

But art isn’t only about happiness. It is also an answer to loss and suffering. We cannot prevent pain and tragedy from occurring in our lives—but we can transform it. Vincent Van Gogh, Beethoven and JRR Tolkien each took the raw material of their earthly suffering and alchemized it into art that bore witness to eternal truth, goodness and hope. A hope that heals. A hope that ultimately connects us to our savior who is the author and source of our greatest hope. That in Jesus, all that is lost shall be restored, all that is dead shall be made alive. 

This address was given at the opening of The Compass Gallery, on August 15, 2024.

Zachary Davis is the Executive Director of Faith Matters and the Editor of Wayfare.