Redeeming the Broken

Read a handful of cultural commentators and you’ll learn that America is going down the tubes: we’re obsessed with the acquisition and possession of things at the expense of meaningful existence. Our lifestyles have overcome our lives. Look no further than the streets of Los Angeles, the fashion district of New York City, or the opulence of Tysons Galleria in McLean, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, DC). Even in the midst of economic depression, the masses are still out buying, acquiring, imbibing. Walmart, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds are the trademarks of Western Civilization. Just go to Beijing, China if you don’t believe it. Western society is exporting its entertainment driven, quick access, simple answers culture to the rest of the world. Meanwhile; we’re obsessed with the power of possession; we’ve become a nation defined by what we own instead of who we are, and to our detriment. We’ve lost our real identities in the process and let someone else define them: the people designing the products, the cultural elites. And now, we’re exporting this product-defined identity to the rest of the world; one milkshake, pizza slice, or Hannah Montana CD at a time.

This sounds depressing, doesn’t it? Why even continue reading? With such a grim outlook painted by the cultural critics, what is one to do?... Cover oneself in thrift store options, sell the tv, boycott magazines and entertainment, and decry the woes of culture? Or soak it up for all its worth, losing oneself in the process, losing the sense of the individual, unique, beautiful? There has got to be a better way.

If you think things are messed up, give me a break! The problem is not that things are getting worse, although it may be true; things have been bad since the day Eve took a bite of an apple from a tree in the Garden of Eden. No joke.

Let's preface with a position statement: things like fashion design, art, and music are not, as some might argue, inherently bad things. In fact, much the contrary, these things are expressions of mankind’s ability to create and to express. However, when creation and expression becomes an enterprise for human destruction and social degradation, then we’ve lost our way. But, do not lose hope! The answer to such degradation lies in redeeming the broken things. It lies in taking bad design and making it good; in taking ugly cities and imagining a better sense of place, a better source of community and human interaction; in creating clothing that esteems men and women’s natural beauty, instead of explicitly defining beautiful as skinny, tan, and long-legged. The answer does not lie in criticizing, lamenting, or indulging. It lies instead in creating.

As artist Michaelangelo once said “I criticize by creating something beautiful.” When we see something ugly, the gut reaction is often despair. The answer to the ugliness and brokenness, though, is not despair; it is thoughtful action-action that recognizes the realities in which we live and strives to speak truth and project hope into creation at large. This is what it means to create something beautiful: taking the shattered pieces and making something worthwhile or lovely and reflecting hope.

What do Handel’s Messiah, Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” or Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov do for us? They enlarge us, they let us see glimmers of hope and real beauty in the midst of an often dark and sub-par existence. Make no mistake, there is a reason that these cultural greats are still remembered today; and it is not because their works reaped huge profits in their lifetimes. Instead, it is because these creators had something meaningful to say with their work. And they weren’t afraid to put themselves out there, often at their own expense, for the sake of the better good.

We, too, can live in a way similar to that of Handel, Van Gogh, or Dostoevsky; although perhaps our medium is not music, painting, or written word. Being an artist, an innovator, or an imaginer is no small thing; just as being human is no small thing. As creators, we have an ability to project something good, noble, and true into the world.

This quest is not an easy one, and it requires a sense of faith and perseverance, a trust in good things to come. In contrast to the quick, cheap solutions for the human predicament-offered via most mainstream culture-we have to make things that speak to the hidden realities, refracting beauty into a broken world (to steal a line from Mako Fujimura). In discussing the power of French novelist Emile Zola's work in his Letters to Theo Vincent Van Gogh captures this idea well:

"Zola creates but does not hold up a mirror to things, he creates wonderfully, but creates, poetises, that is why it is so beautiful."

What Van Gogh is saying here-essentially a portion of his response to the realist and naturalist movements within painting- is that true beauty speaks from the heart. It speaks to things we are unable to see visibly. In fact, he later says something to this effect: "I believe that the best pictures are more or less freely painted by the heart." In order to redeem the broken, we must speak from the heart, not merely creating a public good, but exposing hidden truths for others to see.