Lately I find myself thinking quite a bit about children’s literature.
What is it they are about? Where are they trying to get at? What do they carry within their stories, pictures, and characters? How are children carried within them? How are these stories, pictures, and characters carried by children after they are read time and time again? How do these books shape the child’s imaginations at such an early stage of her life and what she thinks, feels, and imagines in the moment and moments to come?
The context for my thinking about children’s literature stems from the practice my wife and I have in reading to our daughter who is now three. We are constantly thinking about appropriate and good stories to read to her. We are constantly thinking about how to use these stories to introduce her to truth, goodness and beauty.
This year’s annual Brehm Lectures heightened my ruminations on this topic. In particular, Davis and Fujimura got me wondering if this conversation applies to children’s literature, and if it does, how. As I began to think further about it I was struck by how children’s literature presents new questions and horizons for considering the relationship between prophecy and art. In particular, I was struck by how children’s literature can help us become aware of the depth and mystery of prophecy and art.
Davis drew attention to something often missed in reading the prophets – prophecy takes practice. Prophecy is an art, a skill. It cannot be reduced to the movement from immediation to mediation. Nor can it be reduced to the categories of being given and giving. Nor can it be reduced to listening to God’s words as they are given and then simply speaking them. A prophet is no mere puppet. The prophet must have not only the right ears to hear and mouth to speak, but the right touch to affect and the right movement to be effective.
Fujimura drew attention to something often missed in understanding art – common grace is never absent. Artistic instinct and creative impulse are fundamental to human personhood and are a gift of the triune God. Only the creator God can offer creativity to make art. Thus, art is possible only because of common grace. The art the Christian or non-Christian creates thrusts us back into the world of lived experience where the divine moves in life and glory. The artist, whether she wishes to or not, is who she is on account of God. The artist is an artist because of common grace.
Such is the skill and life of a prophet and artist as Davis and Fujimura suggested. But what about the prophetic and the artistic? Must the prophetic only come from the prophet? Must the prophetic be prophecy? Can a work of art be prophetic even if it doesn’t come from a prophet? Can it be prophetic even if it doesn’t have a prophetic aim?
In considering these questions we have to remember that prophecy is for God’s people. The medium doesn’t always matter (Numbers 22). The prophecy is what matters. That God communicates to his people and gets his message across to them is what matters. Shakespeare is not Jeremiah. Caravaggio is not Martin Luther King Jr. Yet, both of these artists were in one form or another prophetic to and for the church. The artist does not necessarily have to know God like the prophet in order for his work to be prophetic. God is in charge of prophecy and the prophetic. Like beauty, the truth is prophetic, and even demons can speak the truth (Mark 1:34).
Telling a story of human suffering and delight can remind God’s people of their history in Christ and encourage them to anticipate their future state of glory. This story doesn’t have to come from the Bible. In fact, it is most often the stories that are not in the Bible that get us running to the Bible for hope, comfort, and security. Like the stories of our own lives or those lives around us. All art, insofar as it depicts something related to the human condition, or tells the story of an experience or experiences, which all art inevitably does, can be prophetic to and for God’s people.
Even the pen of Nietzsche can lead one to worship.
Here before me I have the most recent addition to my daughter’s library: When Pigasso Met Mootisse. A fantastic book. It is not difficult to see how the book is a work of art. The question I keep asking myself is, can this book be prophetic? If this were a story about David and Goliath there would be hesitation. But because its story and characters and illustrations are not about David and Goliath or Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus or Paul for that matter, does this mean it cannot be prophetic? Can the story of Picasso and Matisse not speak to my family and I and remind us of our history and destiny in the triune God who created all things, including the artistic skill, friendship, and beauty evidenced in this story? Can this story not edify us? Can God not use this to speak to us in our current circumstances?
I would like to think that somehow and someway God could always use a story such as this one to speak prophetically to his people. If he can use an ass, he can use a bull and a pig.