The Arts Benign?

'While the arts are benign and contain no spiritual content in and of themselves, they can be used of God to draw people to Him. ' (quote from The Road We Travel)
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Here is the definition of "benign" from Dictionary.com
1. Of a kind and gentle disposition.
2. Showing gentleness and mildness. See Synonyms at kind1.
3. Tending to exert a beneficial influence; favorable: a policy with benign consequences for the economy. See Synonyms at favorable.
4. Having little or no detrimental effect; harmless: a chemical additive that is environmentally benign.
5. Medicine. Of no danger to health; not recurrent or progressive; not malignant: a benign tumor.
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I am guessing that quote was leaning to #4. I have some friends (fellow artists) who were somewhat in disagreement with that statement. But I would say that if I were to ask you if singing, painting, dancing, drama were good or bad and you answered one way or the other, I could point out many examples to the contrary. But then we would be bringing out specific examples of singing, painting, etc. So the above statement is probably true, in my opinion.

The act of singing (or any other art) is a tool. You can sing a God-glorifying song or a world-glorifying song or maybe something you might consider neutral, like "I've Got Rhythm"...:-)

And while the act of singing may be benign, it can be used to elicit emotional responses...and a beautiful melody can stick in your head. If the words that are piggybacking on that melody are not God-honoring, you then wind up meditating on something worldly without meaning to. Or even a song that has faulty Bible in it, like ANY song that talks about us dying and becoming angels...(just an example, but that always gets me).

Almost any tool that is just sitting is probably benign (gun, knife, dancing, painting, baseball bat). But once someone picks it up to use, it is no longer just "the art" in and of itself...it takes on a life and goal of whatever the crafter wills for it to be...and that can be powerful for good or evil.

Grown Up Talk

Staring at the blank page...not my best place, so I am just starting and however this first entry goes, at least I will have started. I looked at some pretty fancy blogs, but I know if I try to do that, I will never get past the first week, so simple, for now, is best.

In reading some other blogs, I came across this one from the Sojourner blog...I hope it is OK to use, because Kiki said this very well, and it is my heart, also:

(quote)
"the past few months I realized that I don't know Biblically where a lot of my beliefs came from. Much of what I think is my doctrine is simply what was passed down to me. So I want to be able to defend each of my positions, based on what see in the Word, not on tradition or history."

So, as I am blathering on about "whatever", my true goal is to put things on here that can be discussed with a Biblical foundation (in context). Nicely. If things take a turn to unkind behavior or character defamation, I will just have to send everyone to their rooms:-).

Just so you know where I am coming from on this, I am a Southern Baptist who has from time to time been involved with the Nazarene church. I attended and graduated from Oral Roberts University (charismatic) and taught at Monte Cassino Middle School (a Catholic school) for 2 years and loved it. Never been a snake handler, though...

Thanks for stopping by.