If this worked, there would be no unhappy Christians!

began to expect the

Bible to be more like a textbook than an expression of the

art and mystery of God. Mystery has been so banished

from Protestant churches that most of them have adopted

theologies that more or less leave the mystical completely

out of their practices. Today the Protestant Church is by

and large disengaged from any true artistic or mystical

expression of the faith.

Oh, we use the arts, especially music and drama, as

vehicles to communicate our beliefs, but we use them to

argue a point rather than tell a story. We tell the facts as

though they were the whole truth. We reason rather than

point to the mystery. We speak to the mind rather than

to the heart. We use artistic tools in mathematical ways,

which is why so much of our church-based “art” is hollow

and thin. It’s not even art. It’s an ad campaign. It’s

logic masquerading as mystery.