Worship: Fame or Faith?

"Art dealers flatter the public in its worst tendencies & bad taste. What concerns you & me is: draw austerely, be serious, be honest...If you were to be a rising star in the current state of affairs, I would have less respect and sympathy for you than I do now."

Vincent Van Gogh

 

I grew up traveling a good bit around the world on educational tours and so I'm thankful to have actually gotten to see some of Van Gogh's work in real life several times. I hope for those chances to come again now that I'm a little older and able to stand still in one place for longer. I have loved his work a long time. So when I heard Don Mclean's "Vincent" in college I was very moved and began to learn more about Van Gogh's life. More recently, Matthew Perryman Jones has written a beautiful song called 'O Theo' about Vincent's journey. 

Van Gogh really struggled, of course, with the Church, within himself, with the world of art that he inhabited. I am a singer/songwriter also struggling in my own ways. This week I'm locked away in a friend's upper room writing some songs for a worship album. "Worship Album" is such a loaded term these days, isn't it? The church has gone through its own 'industrial revolution' and music is a massive industry. So worship has become a big money maker ironically and more of a market genre description. 

When I read this quote, I thought of the 'art dealers' of our time - the industries that shape the expectations and intake of our culture in many ways. Van Gogh says they 'flatter the public in its worst tendencies and bad taste". Wow.  Van Gogh is so discouraged by that 'current state of affairs' that he doesn't really even want to be successful if it means being successful by the terms of the art industry. 

So as I write a 'worship album' I struggle with the burden of 'the current state of affairs'. I struggle to throw off pride, desire for success, and to be faithful. I struggle to work not from insecurities but from discipline and loving service. Van Gogh worked in faith, it seems to me. If fame has any really useful and healthy purpose it probably works best after a person is dead as a reward for having been faithful to God while working without much affirmation in this world. I wonder if fame in this world is really a kind of escape from having to trouble with faith?

Fair wages, on the other hand and reasonable acknowledgement of accomplishment are a natural function of work well done. The best wage is good fruit in our own lives and the lives we touch. "The worker is worth his wages," Jesus says. In an industrialized church culture where mega-church is often synonymous with mega-pastor and mega-worship leader, I, like Van Gogh am not sure I really want to be terribly successful. Maybe I can learn to find a little corner of society to do faithful, 'austere, serious, honest' work in. I feel confused by it all a lot of the time and so deeply involved in the confusion too.