The Last Sin Eater is the newest film from FoxFaith to hit theatres. I’ve come across two different reviews so far that both point out one of the biggest problems of “christian movies”, the reason why most of them struggle to be even mediocre art.

Peter Chattaway, in his review for Christianity Today, says “The very concept of “sin eating” is so unusual that the film cannot help but be at least a little interesting. However, the movie suffers from the same sense of inevitability that afflicts so many other Christian films; at times you suspect the filmmakers are not all that interested in the phenomenon of “sin eating” for its own sake, but regard it as just another set-up for an evangelistic punch line.”

And Joe Leydon, reviewing the film for Variety, says “Never afraid to overstate the obvious, helmer and co-scripter Landon establishes, underscores and italicizes each plot point with the well-intentioned didacticism of a Sunday School teacher.”.

Reading these quotes, I’m reminded of a chapter from Unceasing Worship, a book by Dr. Harold Best, the former dean of the Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College, titled The Arts in Contrast. Unceasing Worship has influenced my thinking on the arts and on worship more than anything else I’ve read. I first heard about the book from Michael Card, who was sent a copy to review before it was published. After reading Mike’s endorsement on the back of the book and hearing more about it from him, I immediately ordered a copy. My friends probably got tired of me quoting it all the time for a while after I read it.
The book is divided into two parts; part one is about “unceasing worship as continuous outpouring”, and part two is on the subject of “unceasing worship and the arts”. Here are a couple of the passages that I have highlighted in this chapter (emphasis added):

Many Christians are more than Word-centered; they are word-and-message obsessed and have a tendency to expect everything in the arts to act like the Word acts and to give out messages the same way the Word does. To them, every artistic action should clearly make some sort of witness point. If it does not, its content is manipulated until it does.

So when we try to make certain art forms do what they are incapable of, or undertake what other art forms more easily do, we commit two errors at once. First (believe it or not), we denigrate the Word. Unwittingly, we are giving the impression that the Word needs help from every quarter possible, when it is actually the other way around – everything we know of needs help from, and is informed by, the Word. The irony of this is that this error is most often committed by those who are the most outspoken in their belief in the accuracy, power and self-sufficiency of the Word. This belief, furthermore, may be perpetuated by two related assumptions. First, we can become so obsessed with words that we end up worshiping them and then making everything after their image, instead of simply trusting in them for what they are: treasures in earthen vessels paying full service to the revealed Word. Second, the ghost of pagan philosophies about divinely and humanly created things still haunts the Christian mind. We too quickly assume that we can insert our beliefs into what we shape so that it actually transmits the same message to the observer or listener.

Once we look at the various art forms this way, seeing how some of them do certain things extremely well and others do them poorly or not at all, we should strike a balance and celebrate each art form for what it does uniquely well. This is enough.

This issue is not limited to the church. As irritating as it might sound, totalitarian regimes often use art the same way, though with an evil motive. Please understand that I am not trying to create a linkage between the church and totalitarianism. I am merely saying that a passion to make a message consistently clear, whether this passion is holy or wholly evil, can lead to a flawed methodology. In the case of totalitarianism, the artist is coerced into being a messenger of the state, and any art that fails to speak the message clearly is destroyed and the artist is prosecuted. Any art that encourages people to think on their own is suspect, because thinking on one’s own might undermine the prerogatives of the state. In spite of the evil of this approach to art, the church can make this parallel assumption: whatever art is done, it must align itself with truth. If it does not do this clearly, the artist is suspect or is expected to manipulate the art until it does.

What does this mean for the arts in the church? Simply this: instead of pushing art forms beyond their limits, we must allow art to be art.

We must allow each art form, with its particular vocabularies and structures and contours to go directly to God in their purest form, uncluttered by our weak and untrusting spirits that get nervous if everything that we do does not shout John 3:16.

Our task is to make art as honestly and freely as we can and then offer it to him, and when we do, he will do his work in a way that will validate both his power apart from the arts and the arts themselves as given over to him. He alone can free us from the worrisome thought that the arts are a failure unless they “preach”.

Harold Best – Unceasing Worship