I recently wrote an article defending Lecrae and his attempts to reach the world with the message of the Gospel. Since that time, I was shown another article defending Lecrae on rapzilla. (HT: Andrew) And then I found another article today on The Gospel Coalition asking the question ‘Must Art be Evangelistic to be Christian?‘ written by Alex Medina – one of Lecrae’s producers. Quoting Sho Baraka, Alex writes:

The problem is that we have created a theological truth from cultural and systematic preferences. So now hip hop is an office in the church and not a vocation or art. We first must start here before we can move forward. It’s something we’ve all been guilty of implying in one way or another.

This is the problem many Christians face as we attempt to interact with the culture we live in. People are always asking how far is too far? At what point is it too much like the world and not enough like Christ? We shouldn’t try to make music and art something only done in the church-but should be able to use music and art in general as a way to point people to the cross either directly or indirectly. My college president always told us “All truth is God’s truth” and I would go on to say that anything beautiful is designed by God and God made it good. Yes, it has been warped by the fall and distorted by sin, but God still created us in his image to bear his likeness and be like him in the way we create. How can we better push people to make art to the glory of God? Be encouraging them to continue to work on their craft as they become better and better at deflecting the glory to God.