Presenting Truth in Art

This is the last of the confusing stuff we discussed at Ignition, with Grant Wildman from Tabor.

An important issue with regards to 'Christian' art is censorship. Should Christians portray evil things in their art, or only good things? Christians have been struggling with this question for centuries.

At one stage in church history, when theatre was used a lot in churches, to teach people stories from the Bible (most of them couldn't read), there was a lot of concern about whether villainous characters (like Herod or Judas Iscariot) should be represented in these plays.
They decided that clergy could only play the parts of good characters, and that villains would have to be portrayed by the laity. Eventually theatre was completely rejected by the church for a long time, because it came to be considered profane.

Historians have found writings by an 10th Century, German nun, Hroswitha, who was trying to write a play to communicate what it meant to be a virtuous woman. She eventually decided that in order to show what a virtuous woman was like, she'd have to contrast it with the exact opposite.

...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Philippians 4:8

It seems that a lot of the time we focus on 'whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,' and forget about 'whatever is true'. As a result, 'Christian' art can end up making evil look less bad than it really is, or avoiding portraying evil at all. As well as portraying the world untruthfully, this does a lot of damage to the credibility of 'Christian' art.