Terry Glaspey (Author of Discovering God Through the Arts)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

Guarantee on this book.

I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why?

Two reasons.

One, this is a different book for me, right. I know this is a very different biography. What is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work, but in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right?

So that's the first reason this is.

A risk and I'm gonna de risk.

This book for you.

Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5meerchristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all the pre order bonuses listed on 5merechristians.com and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode.

Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as bicycle mechanics Archivists and garbage collectors. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Dr. Terry Glaspie. He's a professor at Northwind Seminary and the author of some of the best books I've read in the past few years, including 75 masterpieces every Christian should know. Dr. Glaspie and I recently sat down and talked about how artists like U2 and Van Gogh and Johnny Cash and Mr. Rogers and C.S. lewis used art to point to spiritual truths in a non explicit way.

We talked about why we mere Christians.

Should think about our work as, quote, spiritual time bombs, end quote.

And we talked about how to use.

Mainstream art, like films, to share the gospel in a winsome way. You guys are going to love this terrific episode with Terry Glass. Hey Terry Glaspie, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.

It is great to be with you today.

I am always reading two books. I think I've talked about this in the podcast before. I've always got one book I'm reading for work. Usually that's podcast prep or researching the next book, whatever it is. And then I always have a Sabbath only read. Right. Like something that's just like supremely entertaining and or life giving to me. And one of my favorite Sabbath reads last year was your book, 75 masterpieces. Every Christian Should Know. I am obsessed with this title. Tell our listeners a little bit about this book.

Well, thank you for saying that. I'm so glad to hear that you. Yeah. The book is my attempt to kind of highlight what a great creative and artistic heritage that we have as believers. And So I chose 75 representative works of art, music, literature, architecture, film. I'm not saying these are like the 75 greatest. It's not a ranking system. But I wanted to show the diversity through throughout the creative arts of our message and how faith has made a difference in the unfolding of history. So each chapter in the book highlights one particular artist or writer or musician or architect and then one of their works, which I specifically focus on. But then I tell the story of their lives because I think it's really interesting to see how they, these believers from the past, how much their struggles are kind of just like some of the struggles you and I have and how their creativity emerged out of their own lives.

Yeah, I love it.

It's one of. I like a book where you can read an entire unit easily in one sitting. I mean, these chapters are like, I don't know, five, six, seven minutes to read. So you could sit down and crush 3, 5, 10, of them in a sitting. I can't recommend it highly enough to listeners. I got a lot of questions based on that book. But first, I want to get to know you a little bit. Like, your journey as a writer is really interesting to me. I was going back through some of your earlier books, which were fairly broad Christian living books. You had a book on prayer, another on Bible basics.

But in recent years, you've really been.

Writing a lot on this intersection of faith and creativity. Why? What was the impetus here? What made you want to go deep on this topic?

Well, I think it's a calling. Part of my calling is to be what I call a curator, someone who gets to share with other people about great works of art and great writers and great musicians who have meant a lot to me, and therefore I get to introduce them to you. I am a voracious reader. I am somebody who loves music. I have a huge library of everything from classical to jazz to rock and roll, country. I love any kind of music that's done well. And so that's been a part of who I am. I always had a sort of an interest in visual art, but when I was traveling for my former job, which was an acquisitions editor for a publisher, whenever I was in a big city, I would always search out the art museums. And I grew to. To have such a love for visual art as well. And so I just wanted, through the book to share with people the kind of spiritual nourishment that art has given to me.

Yeah. You say in your bio, the quote, you're finding someone who, quote, finds various forms of art to be some of the places where he most deeply connects with God. End quote.

Yeah.

Tell us more about that. What does that look like? How do we deeply connect with God through art?

I believe that just like there are spiritual disciplines like prayer and meditation and reading the scriptures and fasting, there are these disciplines that we use to help ourselves grow. And one of the things I've wanted to suggest to people is that really serious engagement with really great art, and I should say underline that word, great, really great art, really meaningful art, becomes a way in which we can grow deeper. And it's through the insights we gain through the broadening of our understanding that it gives us, through the way it reveals to us something about the God who is himself, the Creator.

Give us an example of this from your own life. And when I'm reading through 75 masterpieces, the most interesting stories are the ones that are not overtly evangelistic art. Right. Not the cathedrals, but man. The Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis, who I know you love and have written about, or at Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash.

Like, give us an example of something.

For you personally, a piece of art that's helped you understand God better.

Well, since you mentioned it, let's talk about the Chronicles of Narnia.

Yeah, let's do it.

I was a person who, during my college years, I went to a Bible college. And within even my first year, I really began to really have struggles with my faith. I was asking a lot of questions for which I wasn't getting a lot of answers other than, oh, well, just trust God and believe. And almost the underlying assumption was it was wrong to ask too many questions that showed wasn't being faithful. And so because of that, my faith was not in a very good place. I was really being riddled with doubts and not getting answers. And someone suggested to me, well, you might try reading C.S. lewis. And so I picked up a copy of Mere Christianity. And that book literally changed my life because it helped me understand that faith made sense, that it was a reasonable. A reasonable way to think about my life. But bigger than that, that it gave my life a broader vision, a bigger vision. It showed me who God was and what God had for me as a person. So after reading that book and loving it so much, I began just to explore a lot of the other books by C.S. lewis. And it's interestingly enough, the Chronicles of Narnia is a book I put. Those books were ones I put off, put off and put off because these are just children's books. I'm interested in reading the deeper stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a fool I was. Being a completist, I thought, I want to try to read everything Lewis has written. So finally, two or three years into trying to read everything by Lewis, I finally took some time to read the Chronicles of Narnia. And I was just overwhelmed. I really feel like the Chronicles of Narnia are like the Christian story, the Gospel of Jesus embodied in these wonderful stories. They're made. They take abstract ideas that might feel distant to me and make them very real in the characters of the books, especially in the character of Aslan, who's kind of the. The Christ figure in the books. And so, I mean, the thing that the Chronicles of Narnia did is not only was it thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining, but it actually helped me love Jesus more. It helped me to see. Have a bigger picture of who Jesus was and what he had.

I've heard stories from many people who Read that. Or read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, man. This is Lewis's story. And what happened with him when he read George McDonald's novel Fantasties, where these books planted a seed in their hearts. Absolutely talk about this, even though they're not religious tracks, even though Lewis doesn't come to the end of the book and say, okay, kids, wink, wink, you get that Aslan is Jesus, right? Like, it never mentions Jesus's name explicitly. Talk about the intrinsic good of art that doesn't explicitly mention Jesus name.

Terry Well, I just think it shows how God can use all kinds of unexpected ways of reaching into our minds and reaching into our hearts. I don't know if you've ever had a chance to, or if listeners have ever had a chance to read the book Fantasties by George MacDonald, but it's a very strange adult fairy tale. It's not really designed for kids. It's full of weird and complex and strange occurrences. There's nothing that's clearly theological about it. And yet it was not a book of theology or a book of devotions or a personal testimony got Lewis started on his journey of faith. It was that book, that strange fairy tale that he said baptized his imagination, and it was the first step for him along a long path to faith. And I think that's what we have to sometimes realize, is that every good work of art can help us move a little bit down the road of the journey of faith. It doesn't necessarily have to completely give the whole story or deal with everything. I mean, for example, you mentioned Johnny Cash. I mean, one of the things Johnny Cash does so powerfully is, in a lot of his songs, is talk about the high cost of human sin. If we allow the darkness to be a powerful force in our lives, that it's destructive. And he learned that himself. If you read his story, which I tell in the book, he also told that story imaginatively through the lives of other characters in his songs. And so even, even just that one piece of information, understanding how desperately broken we are and how much we need God, even though that's not the whole gospel message, it's an important piece. And I think sometimes the weakness in some Christian art is that we feel like we have to lay out everything, and yet sometimes all we need to do is lay out a thing or two and let them move in people's hearts, and they will find those to be transformative.

And, oh, by the way, P.S. this is what Jesus did with parables, right? Like, you're getting me up on One of my favorite soapbox.

Yeah. What I sometimes say about Jesus and his parables is I think the parables were designed to be spiritual time bombs. All right? He plants it in the heart of the disciples and anyone else who happens to be listening as he's telling the stories, and they're puzzled. You can tell by the fact that in some of the parables they ask him a lot of questions about it. He doesn't just give them the straight scoop. Instead they take that story, that parable with them. And I think sometimes a day later, two days later, a week later, a month later, maybe years later, suddenly that explodes in their hearts and their minds into a recognition. But that's sometimes what great art does. It moves us at the moment, but sometimes its greatest impact may be later on.

Yeah, I love this idea of thinking about art specifically, and I would argue our work in general, even if you're an accountant, as this time bomb of sorts, right. Like the way we work, the way we treat the people that we work, the excellence in the things that we create, can plant something in the hearts of, of those we're serving in which they want it to grow. Right.

They might try a bunch of different.

Fertilizers to make whatever that seed is grow, but in the end, Christ is the only one who will satisfy that.

Right?

And I think this lie that for art to be quote unquote, Christian art, as if that were even a thing that's got explicitly point to Jesus. I think it's based on this modern desire just to microwave converts. Right.

I love that we want to plant.

The seed of the gospel in someone's heart and watch it blossom to full blown faith in the same instant.

Right?

But like First Corinthians 3, Paul says.

What after all is Apollos? What is Paul only servant through whom you came to believe as the Lord assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow, right.

And like it's good enough just to.

Plant the seed, Right, exactly.

And that is how it's supposed to work. But I think sometimes our egos get in the way. We want immediate, like you say, we want it microwave, we want immediate results. We want to be able to see the good we've done immediately. And yet that's a good parallel with art. I mean, with art it's like you're writing a book, you spend hours and hours working away and then you send it off and you don't actually know all the lives that your book is going to touch. And I mean, one of my favorite things as a writer is getting letters and notes from people and finding out that, like a book I wrote years and years ago, somebody's life is still being touched by it. Well, that works with art. That works with the way we treat people. Just being a good, caring and kind human being can sometimes be just exactly what someone needs to set them on the path to believing that change is possible.

That's exactly right. You're talking about art and a way of working that creates what the Celtic Christians called a thin place of sorts. I've always loved this idea.

Yeah.

Explain this term to our listeners.

Yeah, well, the thin place is that in the Celtic tradition, they believe that there were particular, like, sacred spaces and that those sacred spaces are places where it's like the dividing line between the physical world and the supernatural world was very thin and it tended places where the supernatural world tended to leak into the natural world. And honestly, I think almost any place in our lives can be one of those thin places. That it's actually not the sacred. It's not so much the sacredness of the place, although I won't argue against the fact that there may be places that are particularly sacred, but it's the vulnerability to God. It's that place where we come, where we are listening in an obedient way and just trying to respond in the right way, and God does something powerful.

One of my favorite examples of this, which you wrote about in 75 masterpieces, came from this French composer Messiah.

Yes.

Olivier Messian in this piece, Quartet for the End of Time. Can you share that story with our listeners?

Yeah, it's wonderful. He was a composer who ended up spending time in a Nazi concentration camp. And while in that camp, if you're a creative person, if you have a passion in your life and his passion was writing music, you can't get away from that. So even while locked up at a Nazi camp, they managed to find a few broken down instruments. If I remember right, there were four or five instruments.

Yeah, that sounds right.

Yeah. That they were able to put together none of them in perfect working order, but four, those pieces. Knowing what he had to work with, he wrote a lovely and powerful piece of music, a Quartet for the End of Time, and then that was actually performed there in the camp. Can you imagine the experience of not only the inmates of the of the concentration camp hearing beautiful music in the midst of the harshness and ugliness of their lives, but also think about the impact that that may have begun to make on the hearts of some of the hardened guards who were keeping them in bondage. Here's where beauty and meaning breaks into a place of darkness and ugliness. And that's one of the things, powerful things that beautiful arts can do.

Yeah. And listen, the truth is, we'll never know what the full impact of that. Only God knows the impact that that piece of music had on the guards and everyone else in the camp. But I loved there's another part of the story that's so good. This esteemed concert pianist, Jacqueline Chow, first set out to master a set of difficult piano works composed by Messianne. She was a confirmed atheist at the time. But as she poured over the music and tried to comprehend what Messian was trying to say. Wordless music. Right. Quote. It had a profound effect. Quote. Little by little, she said, I started believing.

Right.

Like, that's the power of great art, of great work that is done with excellence and love and in accordance with God's commands, it can awaken people's senses. It's like smelling salts.

Right.

Like that awakens people's senses to something transcendent and true to which Christ can only satisfy. Amen.

Yep. This is why one of the things Calvin said is that all the work we do should be done to the glory of God. And in fact, on most of the pieces of his music, Bach wrote to the glory of God alone on the page with each piece of music, he was offering it as a gift for the glory of God. And yet oftentimes it was just a lovely instrumental piece. But that instrumental piece was for the glory of God alone. And just like the atheist pianist that you just read about my book, and I love that. I love being reminded from my own book about a story which I had kind of forgotten.

It's, like, so profound, though.

Yeah.

I want to hit on a few more stories from 75 masterpieces because I think this is helpful for our listeners. I think this makes our wordless evangelism throughout work, whether it's art or not, a little bit more concrete. You wrote about Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, and you said that Capra. I didn't know this. Capra was a believer and was intentional about using his films to illustrate specifically the Sermon on the Mount. How does Capra's most famous film, It's a Wonderful Life, illustrate Jesus's famous words in Matthew 5:7.

Well, I think one of the things it does for us is it shows us. I mean, the great thing about art is it operates on a lot of ways and oftentimes you can't reduce it to a single message. There is something about It's a Wonderful life that operates on all kinds of levels for us all at once, and that if we actually try to explain it, we can explain it into deadness. Right. And I don't want to do that, but I would like to say one of the things that I think it does is it shows us that a life lived in integrity, if you stay with that integrity, you will go through trials which may feel like they're going to break you, but in the end, you will find hope. And I think that is one of the powerful messages of that film.

Yeah. Perhaps maybe the craziest story that I didn't know prior to reading your book was about Dostoevsky, the great Russian novelist. Can you share just the Reader's Digest version of the dramatic story of this guy? I'd never known this. It blew my mind.

Oh, boy. Okay. Well, you have to remember this is a book that I wrote a number of years ago.

I know, I know. I'm putting you on the spot.

Yeah, you're putting me on the spot.

I am.

But Dostoevsky was someone who early on began to be an activist against the politics of his time.

Yes.

The very repressive politics of Russia under the Tsar. And he and a number of other students protested against it. And their protest led them to prison and then eventually to a firing squad.

Yeah.

And so they were all lined up ready to be shot and at the very last minute. And most scholars believe this was actually planned this way, that it was just happenstance that at the very last minute in someone rode with a pardon and they were released. But that. That moment of having to look at his life and try to understand what his life was all about made him have to take a complete inventory. I mean, think about that. If you knew that you were just about to be killed, that tends to wake you up. It tends to make you think a little bit about, what does my life mean? That moment transformed his life, and through all of his novels thereafter are in some ways very, very sophisticated parables about the grace and mercy of God and our need for to respond in repentance. Like the book Crime and Punishment, which, the very end of that finds him reading, finds the murderer who has basically gotten to the point where he could get away with his crime. And yet he comes to confess his crime, and as he's reading the New Testament, his life is transformed.

It's a wild story. And so here's what I love. I mean, the drama is Incredible, right? You're like, in front of a firing squad. But you wrote this. You said, quote, after four years in prison, plus another six in exile, Dostoyevsky was finally able to return to his former life. And he did so with great relish, beginning to write in earnest, end quote. In other words, he knew he was redeemed for a purpose. It was after this redemption that he really threw himself into writing these novels that would point to the much greater redemption that is found in Christ. Right. It just reiterates this theme we see all throughout Scripture in the Exodus, in Ephesians 2, 8, 10, that we are not saved just to sit back and wait for Christ's return. We are saved for the good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. And I think Dostoevsky got that at a really deep level.

I think he did. I think he did. And his response was to write novels which were unabashedly Christian, but they were anything but sermons. Okay. One of the problems sometimes is a lot of Christian fiction, it's kind of like there's good guys that are totally good and bad guys that are totally bad. And at the end, everybody gets saved kind of thing.

And prays together in a little prayer huddle.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And instead he feels like his book, the the Brothers Karamazov, he actually allows the dyed in the wool atheist to explain his argument for why he can't believe in God as part of the novel. And it's very convincing in some ways, but then that's overcome by seeing the love of God in action in one of the other characters, one of the brothers, Alyosha.

But isn't this is a broader principle.

That extends beyond those specific novels? But, like, isn't showing darkness in art? Doesn't that make the light so much more beautiful once you get to it?

Right.

Like, this is my issue with the quote, unquote Christian film industry, which, between us and our thousands of listeners, man, just, like, really grinds my gears. Like, it is a refusal to show true darkness, a refusal to honestly display.

Sin, because when you do that, redemption's.

Just not nearly as sweet.

Right, Exactly. Exactly. I often speak at writers conferences, which is something I enjoy doing, and talking to other writers about their craft. And one of the things I always say to novelists is if you have an evil character in your book, you should love him as the writer. You should love him and respect him to the degree that God loves and respects the sinner instead of just using him or her as a chess piece to get to the point of Checkmate, where someone, okay, now I have to be. Now I have to be saved. You know, kind of thing. You look for that nuance, that. That deeper meaning.

Yeah, I love that. Hey, one more story that from the book that I know will be a great encouragement to the mere Christians listening. You too?

Yeah.

In October 1981, I. I didn't know this. You two almost disbanded due to some internal conflict that Bono and the Edge were feeling. If you remember the story, take us inside of it. And what were these guys wrestling with and where did they land as it pertained to their faith and their work?

I think this is particularly interesting and very relevant to what we've been talking about is that they were part of. Just as their band was getting going, they really became firm Christians and they started to go to a church that was a very evangelical church. And a number of people at the church kind of told them, you have no business doing rock and roll music as a Christian. You have no business playing in bars and clubs as a Christian. You should just be doing music for the church or you should just give that all up for God. And I think the two of them in particular had sort of a. Each of them had little different nuances in how to deal with that problem. And they very much struggle with the fact is it. Should we just disband the ban? Would it be the greatest obedience to God simply to give up being YouTube? And of course, as we know, they came to the decision, no, no, we can take our faith into the world of rock and roll. And I recently watched a documentary that was on Netflix, I think it was. No, it was on Disney about the band, which I would highly recommend. And they were talking about how deep their friendship is to this day. But it had to go through that struggling with asking these questions about their calling, about what it meant to be a Christian within this non Christian context, or should they just pull back into a place of safety? They chose the unsafe path. And if you think about how many people over the years have been blessed by hearing messages, oftentimes pretty clear messages about. About grace and faith and God and the darkness of sin that have come from the band U2. Aren't we glad that they were able to work through that issue?

Amen.

I got young kids, three young daughters. We were watching Sing 2 and I'm listening to with or without you for the first time in a while. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so on the nose about Jesus.

Right like.

And praise God for them. Praise God that they didn't take the.

Quote unquote safe path.

Because the unsafe path is the redemptive.

Path of going into the world like Christ did, to enter into the mess.

Of the world and the darkest industries.

Of this world to shine the light that Jesus called us to shine.

Absolutely. That's what I see as one of the great callings of my life is I want to encourage young, especially young creatives. Don't be put off by the fact that your church doesn't maybe fully get you hold fast to your faith, but also be brave about stepping out and creating, doing something really meaningful as your gift back to God. Whether it's a quote unquote religious or Christian piece of art or music or film that you create or, or whether it's something that just tells the truth about life. Because anytime I think we tell the truth about life, we are telling God's truth.

Amen.

All truth is God's truth.

Yeah, period.

Period.

Right.

And so just telling true stories is revealing something true about God. How he made the world, how the world is broken, and how he's redeeming it through Christ. Terry, you've studied so many great creatives and we've been talking a lot about what these creators made. But I'm curious which artists have struck you as the most Christlike in how they did their work? Not necessarily what they made, but how they did their work and how they live their lives.

Okay, that's a great question. I'm going to give you two completely different examples.

Great.

The first example I'm going to give is the Struggler. And the Struggler was Vincent van Gogh. And Van Gogh was not someone who lived a pretty tidy life. He made, I think, a lot of mistakes along the way. But as you read his letters, which one of my projects last year is I read the five volumes of the Complete Letters of Van Gogh and got this really rich insight into his life by this, this in depth study. I, I read just a few letters every day so that over the course of a year I felt like I'd lived that year with him. And though he made some mistakes and made choices that were bad ones at times, he was someone who could never get away from the love of God. I would argue that even a fairly late in his life picture like Starry Night, which is a work of art, we probably most of us, most listeners know, I believe that that was a moment of spiritual vision. I believe he looked up and saw that the universe that God created was something alive and moving and full of energy. That it wasn't just dead materialism, but that it was alive with God's glory, and that. That's what he painted was that kind of. That almost mystical kind of perception.

I've always thought that Starry Night is a painting about Psalm 19 and that the heavens declare the glory of God even though they have no speech.

I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. And then the other thing about him, though, is he was very compassionate and caring person. That was one of the ways that God's love showed forth in his life. He was sometimes socially awkward, but he always cared about people, and he was willing to make sacrifices for other people. So he's one example. Another example of someone who I think maybe lived a somewhat more exemplary is CS Lewis, who I've just recently published a book, Not a Tame lion about.

Which is on my Kindle right now.

Yeah, okay, great. And he is someone who. He was willing to pay the price for faith. And his. The price he paid. He was not martyred, but his career was martyred. For a long time, he was refused. He was universally seen as one of the great, greatest scholars of English literature of his time, but he was never able academically to climb to the top of his career ladder until very, very, very late in his life because other professors felt like, well, he writes books for common folk, and worse than that, he writes books for common folk that are about religion, and that just isn't done. And he paid a price. And yet it's very clear to me, he paid that price very willingly. And he was someone who, as you read and learn more about him, you see, he was a genuinely kind and generous man. He gave away, you know, late in his life, he was making quite a lot of money from the book. From his books. They finally kind of caught on. And he gave most of that money away to various causes or to individuals who just needed help. He was a busy man who was writing more books than I probably ever hoped to be able to write in my life. And yet he took the time to personally respond to the thousands and thousands of letters that he received over the course of his life. And in those letters, when you read those letters, they're full of just kindness and encouragement and giving people attention and answering their questions. It's just. It's wonderful.

I've read, I think, every biography on Lewis's life. Not going to surprise you, given the name of this podcast, that I'm a massive fan.

Yeah.

But I think where I really started to respect him at a deeper level is as I've developed a good friendship with his stepson, Doug Gresham. And I remember we had a, I don't know, three and a half hour dinner in London one time. And just hearing about all these stories that aren't in a lot of the biographies about just how sacrificial and loving Lewis was, it reminded me a lot of Fred Rogers, another one of my heroes, Just incredibly Christlike in so much that he did. Man, those are good examples. I wasn't, I was expecting Lewis. I wasn't expecting Van Gogh. By the way, I know you read my children's book, the Creator in you.

Yes, and I love that.

Did you notice the Starry Night Easter Egg?

I did. I did smile when I came across that. You bet. And I love into the book, let me just say I loved it. One of the things you were talking about in the book is, and I loved this insight, the very fact that from the scripture, the very first thing, the first thing that we learn about God is that he was a creator, that he was creative. And you know, when we talk about what does it mean to be created in the image of God? Well, certainly one of the things about God that's primary is that God is a creator. And he has, I think, made us to be sub creators. I like to put it this way. The Creator has created us to be creative. That is, in a nutshell, one of the messages I want to share with people. And that doesn't mean that you have to write a novel or you have to paint a painting or have any musical talent whatsoever. Your creativity might be exercised in finding a fresh way to care about someone, to find a new and creative way to express to someone that you love them. It might be being a teacher and taking the extra step of really making sure that your lesson plan deliver something meaningful and beautiful for your people. Creativity works on all kinds of ways. And sometimes I think we limit creativity just to the arts. So as someone who has written a lot about the arts, I want to give a shout out to the other side of creativity. Yeah, yeah.

Amen. Jen Wilkin, who I love, says we are not creational optional beings. We're not creation optional beings. Right. If we believe we're made in the image of God and that's the first thing he tells us about himself. All of us are called to create in some way, shape or form. All right, Terry, three questions we wrap up every show with. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?

It's probably going to have to be C.S. lewis's mere Christianity I guess I give that so often to other people in the hope that they will have the same kind of response to it that I had. And it depends on what I think their need is. I often also. The other. The two other authors oftentimes give their books away are Philip Gansey's books who Bent. They've meant a lot to me. And Henry Nouwen's books also have meant a lot to me, depending on kind of the need of people I love for books make such great gifts.

Oh, they're the best gifts because. Because they're, in my opinion, the most life changing product we can find. By the way, speaking of Nouwen, I'm assuming you're a big fan of the Return of the Prodigal Son, about Rembrandt's piece of art.

I love that book. Yes, absolutely.

I've actually never read it. It's been on my list for a long, long time. So I gotta get to it.

Yeah, it's really worth reading. I give kind of a thumbnail overview of it in my 75 masterpieces. Every Christian Should Know.

That's right.

That's right.

I read that.

Yeah, yeah. But it's great to hear his whole story about how this one painting just helped him for the first time in his life, to fully comprehend how much God loved him. I love it.

This is coming from a priest, right? That's a big deal. That's a big statement. Hey, Terry, who would you like to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith influences the work of creativity specifically, or just the work more generally that mere Christians are doing in the world?

Well, I would love it if you could somehow. And he's very reclusive, so it'd probably be difficult, but I would love to hear from Terrence Malick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's on our list.

Fabulous filmmaker.

Yeah, he's on our list. We're trying to get to Terrence.

Yeah. And I suppose Mako Fujimura. Have you had Mako?

I have had Mako. We. We need to get Mako back. I've had Mako. I've had his incredible bride Hedgin. Two of my favorite episodes we've ever had on the show. They're really, really good. All right, Terry, before we sign off, what's one thing you want to leave this audience of mere Christians with?

I want to say, and I know that I am preaching to the choir, probably for many of your listeners, but I just think it bears repeating. Use the gift of creativity that God has given you. Focus. Find ways in which you can exercise that. And one of the ways might be even thinking about your evangelism. How can you figure out more creative ways to share the love of Jesus with people than just preaching at them or giving them four spiritual laws? How can you actually use stories from your life or maybe stories from art or literature or film to point them to things that will creatively change their lives?

Oh, man, I love that. I'm going to force you to another question though.

Okay.

What's a good example of that in practice that you've seen be effective of some creative form of evangelism?

Yeah, interesting enough, it's kind of an expensive giveaway, but old fashioned enough that I still love the physical form of the DVDs and Blu Rays. And I've given away several Blu Rays of the film the Tree of Life.

Interesting.

Directed by Terrence Malick.

Yeah.

And oftentimes I give it to him. I say, this is kind of a slow, quiet, meditative kind of film, but watch it. And then I'd love to get together and talk about it. And it has opened up so many interesting conversations with people. I think that's what we can have. One of the ways that we use the arts. We share a book that meant something to us or a film or something, a piece of music, maybe a U2 album. And then say, now let's get together and let's talk about that. I'd love to hear what you got out of it and I'd like to share with you kind of what I got out of it. And that create the kind of conversations that can literally change people's lives.

Man, that's so good. Terry, I. I want to commend you for the extraordinary work you do for the glory of God and the good of others. For reminding us of how art specifically and work in general could be a vehicle for communing with and learning more about the source of all creativity. And for reminding us just how much the work that mere Christians do matters in the world. And planting seeds of the kingdom in people's hearts through what we make and how we make it. Guys, if you can't sell, I'm a huge Terry Glaspie fan, go go pick up his books, Discovering God through the arts, 75 masterpieces every Christian should know. His latest, which is a C.S. lewis biography called Not a Tame lion, which is on my Kindle right now. Terry, thank you for spending some time with us today.

I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for the great conversation.

Man, I thought that episode was fire. If you did and you're enjoying the Mere Curse this podcast. Do me a favor, go leave a review of the show on Apple Podcasts on Spotify wherever you listen. Those reviews have a surprising impact on helping other people find this show. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.

Foreign.

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