Is Christian Art a Narrowly Defined Thing?

Alex Medina writes:

When we only recognize art as being distinctly Christian when it is preaching the gospel, a Christian who is not looking for selfish-gain and desires to make music that is less explicit is seen as shrinking back from their faith. A Christian who desires to make an entire album about nature, beauty, and social justice is not being unfaithful to the Gospel of Christ. They need no justification to create art. They are free to create art about anything and everything that belongs to their God, which is everything.

Norway’s “Memory Wound”

In 2011, 77 Norwegians were killed on July 22nd. Norway’s prime minister said, “A paradise island has been transformed into a hell.”

Now, the country plans to develop a memorial on Utoeya island by cutting through it and sealing it with the victims’ names. They are calling it “Memory Wound.” “Visitors to the memorial, which is titled Memory Wound, will by guided down a pathway through the island’s forest into a tunnel that leads to the wound. The tunnel ends abruptly at the cut, where visitors will be able to see to the other side,” reports The Verge.

See large mock-ups of the memorial.

Norway's "Memory Wound"

In 2011, 77 Norwegians were killed on July 22nd. Norway’s prime minister said, “A paradise island has been transformed into a hell.”

Now, the country plans to develop a memorial on Utoeya island by cutting through it and sealing it with the victims’ names. They are calling it “Memory Wound.” “Visitors to the memorial, which is titled Memory Wound, will by guided down a pathway through the island’s forest into a tunnel that leads to the wound. The tunnel ends abruptly at the cut, where visitors will be able to see to the other side,” reports The Verge.

See large mock-ups of the memorial.

Gaming the Bestseller List

When I read this article about a prolific pastor-author hiring a marketing firm to put his book on the bestselling “Advice, How-to” list, I wondered how it could possibly work. I roughly understand how a company could coordinate purchasing 3,000 books, both in bulk and individual sales, but what would they do with all of those books?
Apparently, they return them. This WSJ article on authors buying their way onto bestseller lists, says some marketers believe hitting that list once is the doorway to invitations and future success. Once you’re on the list for a week, you can claim to be a bestselling author.

Last August, a book titled “Leapfrogging” hit The Wall Street Journal’s list of best-selling business titles upon its debut. The following week, sales of the book, written by first-time author Soren Kaplan, plunged 99% and it fell off the list.
Something similar happened when the hardcover edition of “Networking is Dead,” was published in mid-December. A week after selling enough copies to make it onto the Journal’s business best-seller list, more hardcover copies of the book were returned than sold, says book-sales tracker Nielsen BookScan.

Isn’t this equivalent to creating an award to give to yourself so you can claim to be an award winner?
The marketing idea hamster Seth Godin recommends ignoring the NY Times lists altogether. “The curious know that there are in fact two lists for non-fiction hardcover books. The first list, the regular list, is the list of ‘real’ books of the sort the Times would like people to read. The second list is a ghetto, a place for How To, Advice, and the always coveted ‘Miscellaneous’ books to reside. This list was invented by the editors at the Times because these books were crowding out the other, better, books from the list.”
He says questions about serving your readers become overwhelmed by concerns about placement on the Times list. Is your goal as an author to serve your readers or your message, or is it to serve the eccentricities of this list?
Jared Wilson, who has a new book out, lists five reasons buying placement on any bestseller list is dishonest, egocentric, and poor steward, among other things. Speaking particularly to pastors who write:
“If you’re simply trying to expand the audience of the gospel — or your gospel-teaching material — wouldn’t it be more effective to simply purchase thousands of copies of your book and give them away to lost people? Or, alternatively, not to sell your book at all and just give it away for free? (Did Keith Green make any bestseller lists? Has John Piper?)”

I Am Pursuing Freelancing Writing, Editing

Let me write about myself for a minute. For the past several months, I’ve been pursuing a new line of work and I spent part of that time wondering what that line should be. I’m still looking for work in various ways, but my main thrust this year will be freelance writing and editing.
I am bidding on projects through Elance.com and Writer.ly (these sites are now defunct). I haven’t gotten to other freelance venues yet, and I like the testing options available through Elance. They verify your skills to a degree. If you have work that could be hired out, you can post a job with Elance and invite me to bid on it. Naturally, I would do my best writing ever, and the project would be more profitable than your wildest dreams, and we would sing each other’s praises for months. The regulars at the pub would love us for at least a day. Maybe two! Feel free to look at my Writer.ly profile too. It’s still in beta mode, but some people are finding work there.
I am happy to have made new connections with a couple editing services. There are two other organizations who have me on their writing roster also. Of course, there’s LinkedIn for general networking. With all of these connections, I am not at all busy. I’d like to try being busy, for a change of pace.
I started this blog in 2004. Lars joined me several months later. Since we’re an established lit-blog, we are asked to review various independent books. Every time I agree to receive a book for review, I hope to love it. I usually don’t, and I wish I could reply with an offer to edit this already published book. It would be rude to make such an offer, but the need bleeds upon the page. Through these new services, perhaps I can field editing requests from authors who have a good story and need help making it great.

“Hell Can Be Easily Built of Apathy”

A friend of mine, the pastor of this wonderful church, quoted this on Facebook:

“We hope that by believing less we will become less vulnerable to spiritual manipulation. We cannot be duped, we imagine, if critical doubt weakens the force of our commitments. If there is no truth, then we will not quarrel over our visions of the truth. If nothing is worth fighting for, then nobody will fight. However, an iconoclasm of truth will not succeed. Hell can be as easily built of apathy and diffidence as of megalomania and fevered ideological zeal– perhaps more easily for it is difficult to wake from the narcosis of a velvet barbarism that desires no truth.” — R. R. Reno, Commentary on Genesis

"Hell Can Be Easily Built of Apathy"

A friend of mine, the pastor of this wonderful church, quoted this on Facebook:

“We hope that by believing less we will become less vulnerable to spiritual manipulation. We cannot be duped, we imagine, if critical doubt weakens the force of our commitments. If there is no truth, then we will not quarrel over our visions of the truth. If nothing is worth fighting for, then nobody will fight. However, an iconoclasm of truth will not succeed. Hell can be as easily built of apathy and diffidence as of megalomania and fevered ideological zeal– perhaps more easily for it is difficult to wake from the narcosis of a velvet barbarism that desires no truth.” — R. R. Reno, Commentary on Genesis

The Secret Life of Wystan H. Auden

Poet W.H. Auden was generous, loving man, and apparently he wanted that to remain a secret. Edward Mendelson writes, “In an age when writers as different as Hemingway and Eliot encouraged their public to admire them as heroic explorers of the mind and spirit, Auden preferred to err in the opposite direction, by presenting himself as less than he was.”

He sought out the marginalized in the crowd. He gave a large among to keep a homeless shelter operational. He disliked his public image and political grandstanding. Mendelson states, “In 1939 he left England for America, partly to escape his own public status. Six months later, after making a speech at a political meeting, he wrote to a friend: ‘I suddenly found I could really do it, that I could make a fighting demagogic speech and have the audience roaring…. It is so exciting but so absolutely degrading; I felt just covered with dirt afterwards.'”

(Thanks to Alan Jacobs)