I may have posted this as a quote on Facebook before, but I wanted to post a longer version here. This is from an essay called ‘How Art is a Gift, a Calling, and an Obedience’ by Andy Crouch. It’s in a collection of essays titled For the Beauty of the Church edited by W. David Taylor.

Art and worship stand together on the common ground of the unuseful. And this is why our attitude toward art ultimately has a great deal to do with our attitude toward worship. Much is at stake in whether we think that our worship is a free response to grace or an exercise in persuasion, an effort to get either God or people to do what we want them to do. If we ultimately have a utilitarian attitude toward art, if we require it to justify itself in terms of its usefulness to our ends, it is very likely that we will end up with the same attitude toward worship, and ultimately toward God.

- Andy Crouch

Filed under: life by Jonathan