Art's Exile From Religion
"Myth is eternal, but it never stops changing..."
I have been eternally moved by the stories of the Bible since I was a child. But even in adolescence, I could tell that something was missing in these stories. As the years went on, however, I realized that the incompleteness of these stories, intentional or not, is what has allowed them to last thousands of years to our time. These myths are not simply the stories that we tell ourselves, as many might say; they are the foundation of the stories that we are called to tell one another.
Daniel McCoy, in The Viking Spirit, said, "The process of ceaseless development ... is intrinsic to myth and religion ... To quote Abram ... 'Myth is eternal, but it never stops changing ...' The best way to be 'true' to ... myths and religion is to continue to reinvent them for one's own time and place." The reason that religion seems so dead is not because of an increasingly agnostic society as science and the internet become more prevalent, but rather due to the failing of those within each sect to retell these stories to empathize with the human condition that our modern world faces at this very moment. These legends, myths, and stories are not intrinsically stale; they fall to their death and beat back to life with time and with artists.
Paradise Lost, the Divine Comedy, and the Alphabet of Ben Sira, to name a few, are all attempts to bring these stories back to life. And while in this modern world people seem to have the desire to retell Greek and Norse myths, as we should, few seem to tackle retelling the stories of the Bible. Perhaps those who could too quickly seek shelter outside of their church before they could tell the story, and those within an organized religion do not have the insight or courage to retell these stories. But while the majority of the world treats the Hebrew Bible as doctrine, these religions will gasp their final breath as they continually don't allow themselves to be reinterpreted—most completely unaware that the majority of their beliefs are not traditional to the origin of their religion but were reimagined centuries or millennia ago to provide a timely respite.
At some point, artists left religion, and religion left art. While art used to be primarily funded and supported by organized religion, at some point it ended. Art is not something of mere aesthetic or rhythmic appeal—these, after all, are superficial forms of art at best—but rather, art tears a hole straight through the soul and calls you to patch it back together, stronger than before. This, in turn, strengthens the religion itself. But this would require the church to reinterpret its own teachings and undermine those who came before them. How few realize that Jesus, after all, was a progressive in his era?
But therein lies the issue... At some point, religions started having figures come along (i.e., Jesus, Muhammad) that became branded as the end all, say all to further interpretation of religious texts. Thus, all religious interpretation is restricted, and all extrapolation frowned upon, with no recognition for the fact that such interpretive liberties and extrapolations are what brought these faiths to life. When color departs, who’s to blame those that only see black and white.