Reframing the Sacred

I was a child at the time, still constructing my imagination of God.

For much of my life, well into adulthood, Jesus was that distant, solemn-faced man in a fading living-room picture. I trusted him for salvation, but every time my church sang, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” I couldn’t help but feel that while it was great to have a friend who’d died for my sin, it would be nice to have that friend look at me sometimes.

John La Farge, The Resurrection of Christ, 1902, watercolor and gouache.

I didn’t know then the power of art to affect our understanding of Scripture and who God is.

For centuries, the arts have helped Christians form their imaginations of God’s Word. But because art has such power, we should consider the ways it affects our biblical understanding.

Biblical Art—A Meditation

Scripture is the foundation of Christian thought. We are told to meditate on it day and night (Psalm 119:15) and delight in it (Psalm 119:16; Romans 7:22). It should dwell in us (Colossians 3:16), guide our steps (Psalm 119:105), and teach us (2 Timothy 3:16). We’re told to teach it to all nations and defend it (Matthew 28:19; 1 Peter 3:15).

Many believers have obeyed these commands in part through art. In fact, creating literature and other arts is one of the ways we obey God’s command to “fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). For centuries, countless artists have used media such as words, marble, music, and paint to meditate on Scripture, defend its historicity, and declare salvation. Consider Michelangelo’s sculpture The Pietà, Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned painting The Last Supper, George Frederic Handel’s Messiah oratorio, and John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, to name just a few.

As image bearers of God, humans are drawn to art.

Today, we have Christian radio stations, live-action and animated films, stage productions, and streaming series retelling biblical accounts. We have Christian tourist attractions like the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, and Answers in Genesis’ Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in Northern Kentucky. As image bearers of God, humans are drawn to art.

Paradise—and Accuracy—Lost

The Bible is the preeminent work of literary art, breathed out by the preeminent Artist. In an essay on the Christian imagination, English professor and writer Clyde S. Kilby asks us to consider Psalm 23 as summary rather than poetry: God cares for his children as a good shepherd cares for his sheep. “Do the poetry and the prose summary amount to the same thing?” he asks. “If so, why the poetry in the first place?”1 In other words, why did God use poetry rather than prose?

The answer lies in the nature of who God is—the greatest Artist of all. The Bible is not merely art, of course, but God used artistry to convey truth.

No human art can replace or tell the whole truth of Scripture, but good art points to the truth, though it is not inspired and inerrant.

In the seventeenth century, English Puritan poet John Milton wrote one of the most important literary religious works, Paradise Lost, a poetic retelling of creation and the fall in the style of an epic. It’s a meditation on redemption, free will, and grace, and it has inspired generations of artists and imaginations, including mine, but not without error.

As he crafted his seminal epic, Milton wrestled with the seeming paradoxes of free will and God’s foreknowledge. In the opening, he prays, “I thence / Invoke thy aid . . . What in me is dark / Illumin, what is low raise and support.” He was pleading for God’s help to accomplish his apologetic goal to “justifie the wayes of God to men.”2

The epic then portrays much of what Answers in Genesis teaches in its wealth of materials. But Milton lacked the understanding of Genesis needed to truly justify the ways of God. In the beginning of Milton’s epic, Satan leads a rebellion against God, loses, and is thrown out of heaven with his followers. God then creates the world in six days.

But Satan could not have fallen until after creation, or God could not have called his finished work “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Milton’s depiction also casts Eve as the instigator of Adam’s sin. Alone with the serpent, she eats and wrestles with whether to share the fruit with Adam, thinking that if she alone eats, she would be the smarter and better of the two.

But Adam was with Eve when she first took the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6), and his presence during Eve’s sin is significant. It was Adam’s responsibility to lead Eve and their eventual family. By neglecting to do so, Adam assumed responsibility not only of his own sin, but also for his wife’s (Genesis 3:9; Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22).

Sunday School Songs, Flannelgraphs, and Storybooks

It’s quite possible that Milton’s literary Genesis so easily affected my biblical imagination because of my history with artistic depictions of biblical accounts.

For many of us who grew up in church, our imaginations were greatly influenced by Sunday school songs, flannelgraphs, and illustrations. I’d often seen Eve alone at the tree and watched her find Adam elsewhere in the garden—or witnessed his showing up too late.

These and other Bible storybooks painted the canvas of my young mind. I grew up singing, “Only a boy named David / Only a little sling” and seeing illustrations of a young boy with a slingshot. Only in adulthood did I learn that David was a youth, a Hebrew word that can refer to a range of ages. Since he’d shepherded sheep and defended them from lions and bears, he was most likely in his late teens or early twenties (1 Samuel 17:36).

And then, after I spent years seeing storybook arks, imagine my surprise when I learned that Noah’s ark had no modern giraffes or elephants. Answers in Genesis showed me that Noah had pairs of each kind (family) of animal, and this ministry’s artwork and fabrications at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter corrected my imagination (Genesis 7:13–14).

The animated series Superbook had me believing that Saul changed his name to Paul after his conversion on the road to Damascus. Saul and Paul are the same name, but one is Hebrew and the other Greek—just as Peter and Pedro are the same name in different languages. Paul used his Roman name in his ministry to the Gentiles.

At Christmas, I still erroneously think of Mary and Joseph meeting an innkeeper and delivering baby Jesus in a stable—a misconception based on a tricky translation of the word kataluma in Luke 2:7. Many versions translate this Greek word as “inn” when it more accurately means “guest room.” As a native of Bethlehem, Joseph was likely looking for a spare room with family. No spare room was available, so Joseph and Mary occupied the lower part of the house, which was often used for animals.

Adjusting my imagination takes constant work.

Discerning Art, Adjusting Imaginations

During COVID–19 lockdowns in 2020, I watched the 2016 movie Risen, which chronicles a fictional Roman soldier’s mission to disprove the resurrection of Jesus—though he ultimately believes in Christ.

The New Zealand actor who portrayed Jesus in the film appeared authentically Jewish, with medium-brown skin, dark-brown eyes, and dark hair. In one scene, the Roman soldier catches a glimpse of the risen Jesus, who looks right at him and smiles.

My breath caught in my throat. This man, so unlike the Jesus on my great-aunt’s wall, looked people in the eye and smiled! This is how art should depict Jesus, I thought.

But that depiction of Jesus on my great-aunt’s wall has colored imaginations for decades and also speaks truth. Painted by Warner Sallman in the mid-twentieth century, the Head of Christ recalls Renaissance artists’ European interpretations of ancient Jewish people, but it also captures the Renaissance’s emphasis on Jesus’ holiness and Godhood. These are truths to hold in our imaginations.

Whenever we experience art, we should consider the artists’ historical contexts, how their cultures colored their understanding, and their stated motives. And we must remember that they are all fallible.

We could easily lean into an extreme view, banning art from the Christian arena.

We could easily lean into an extreme view, banning art from the Christian arena. What if someone gets it wrong? What if someone is misled? But such would be a grave detriment to ourselves and future generations.

Our duty as believers is to teach, meditate on, and discern truth, knowing that nothing but Scripture is inerrant and infallible, from the art on our walls to the sermons in our pulpits (Acts 17:11; 1 Corinthians 1:21).

Answers in Genesis has artfully affected and corrected my biblical imagination of Genesis, but the ministry’s own fabrications of original kinds are not infallible. They are highly educated approximations. Yet they still challenge misconceptions, proclaim the truth of God’s Word, and provide a foundation for understanding the adaptations of kinds into different species and breeds.

The exhibit artists at the Creation Museum seek to depict biblical scenes in a historically accurate way, such as this shepherding scene from the Borderland exhibit.

Everything Speaks

Occasionally, Answers magazine readers ask why we fill pages with design and white space. Why not fill the pages with written content? The answer is that everything speaks.

In Answers magazine, the design, illustrations, and white space speak as much as the text itself. The visuals aid readers’ understanding of possibly difficult topics, lighten densely scientific articles, and lift our minds to the Creator and his marvelous universe.

Artistically rendered images of the ark settled in the mountains of Ararat help us imagine the world as Noah might have seen it following the flood (Answers, July–September 2022). Stunningly rendered portraits of Pilate, Herod Antipas, and Caiaphas help us imagine the historical rulers who sought Jesus’ crucifixion (Answers, April–June 2025). A reimagined earth helps us consider environmentalism from a biblical perspective (Answers, October–December 2020).

Biblical arts call us to look closer at Scripture to better understand it, see it in a new way, and bring it to life—but not to take the arts as Scripture. As you enjoy a song, painting, or show, praise God for the ways other believers are using their talents for his glory, while keeping your imagination in check.

In art, everything truly speaks. Learn to listen to what the arts are saying, ask discerning questions, and shape your biblical imagination. You might find things in the arts that you’d like to change—even things that should be changed. But most importantly, the arts will change you.