Artists at a Shift in Time
~ Excerpt from Artists at a Shift in Time: Courage in a Time of Conflict and Change by Christ John Otto.
“Leonardo da Vinci was ahead of his time.
So was Vincent Van Gogh.
And so was Pablo Picasso.
And so is Ricky Raccoon, an artist on Tumblr,
and about a thousand
other people I found
when I did a quick search online for the words
“Ahead of his time.”
For hundreds of years,
artists have been described as
being “ahead of their time.”
Usually this cliché
is applied after the artist has died,
and after
they were misunderstood
by the conventional thinkers around them.
And as we all well know,
after their death,
the works they produced
sell for millions of dollars.
Lesser men
and weaker minds
benefit
from the ones who appear to be ahead of their time.
Picasso once said
that every act of creation is first an act of destruction.
He was talking about his mission as a “modernist”
to tear down the culture he inherited
and release his particular vision on the world.
Thinker Paul Kingsnorth
describes this process as the “great uprooting.”
It seems that the job of an artist
in the past one hundred years or so
was not the building
and establishing of something,
but rather,
the destroying
of everything that came before.
The best way for us to understand this
person who is ahead of their time
is to go on a journey into the wilderness.
There are trees,
mountains,
rocks and rivers,
and unknown things we are going to discover.
History and culture
are like a road being cut through the wilderness.
Most of the people walking
on this road find it to be well worn and smooth.
And most of them look for the easiest way to walk.
We call this the “path of least resistance.”
And in school, and in society,
most people learn to take this path,
and to avoid taking risks
or upsetting the way things are.
This easy place is “how the world works.”
These are established systems,
and by the time the majority of people—
the conventional thinkers—
come to that place in the road,
the system is well established,
and often
there are well known short cuts
that everyone has begun to take,
and those short cuts become
what we know as
corruption
in the system.
Many conventional people mistakenly think
that these roads just happen,
and ignore the price,
the risk-taking,
and the personal sacrifices brave individuals make
to establish a civilization.
Because of this mistaken view,
the vast majority of the people
on the path
have been taught
that to go off the path
is too dangerous to try.
“Stay in line.”
“Keep your head down.”
“Get a real job.”
“Don’t make waves.”
“Go along to get along.”
This is the way to a reasonably successful life.
And of course,
the worst thing a person can do is go off the path—
because there might be dragons in the woods.
At the front of this pack of people
in the woods
is a small band
of courageous souls.
These are the ones who, at
the same moment as the mass of people
are walking far behind them,
are surveying the terrain
and paying attention to the situation.
These folks are following
a narrow pathway
in the woods.
They are looking for ways to cross rivers,
and ways to get over rocks.
They have come upon grizzly bears and rattlesnakes,
and they are coming up with solutions.
These are the creative men and women who understand
that the world is a sea of problems,
and they have to first identify the problem
and then create a solution.
Although the mass of followers see them ahead,
they have no interest or understanding
in what they are doing.
In fact,
the great pack of people
are yelling to those up ahead.
“Hey you, get back in line!”
“Who do you think you are?”
“You think you can leave the pack and run ahead!”
“What you are doing is really irresponsible
and making us all look bad.”
Now let’s think about time again.
These two groups of people are on the same road,
and they see one another.
Look at your watch.
Notice,
they are living at the same time.
That group of artists and creative people is not
running ahead of their time;
they are running ahead of the pack.
They are living at the same time as the conventional crowd.
They are accurately seeing the problems and issues
of the times they are living in,
and they know that there is danger all around.
They know there are cliffs ahead that the whole crowd will fall off.
They know there is a rotten log that
someone once used to cross a river,
but that the mass of followers
behind them
is heavy and slow.
Those folks
will need
a bridge.
They know that the workarounds in the system
are now so corrupt that they are no longer helpful.
These folks are accurately understanding the times they live in.
They are, as the Bible describes,
like the sons of Issachar, who rightly understood the times they lived in.
The sons of Issachar were not prophetic;
they were observant.
These folks are not ahead of the time,
but are rather living keenly aware of the moment.
And most of the people in the pack are
either not thinking for themselves,
trying to get by day to day,
or simply are not interested.
Because the pack dwellers are the majority
they create the illusion that they represent the times.
They do not.
The pack is behind the times.
They are using roads someone else built,
and systems someone else created.
They are behind the times, not in them.
This perspective is the largest audience,
and so, mass media,
mass marketing,
and mass communication
puts the focus on them.
And this reinforces the perspective
that these are the times we live in.
It is an illusion.
Now look at this from another point of view.
Let’s take an aerial view of the situation.
Deep in the woods,
way ahead of the group of creative people
is another group.
Some of them are alone,
and some of them run in little groups.
They are listening to God for themselves.
And God is leading them into deep and dangerous places.
These are the scouts and the pioneers.
These are the prophets and the apostles.
These are the ones
who are cutting a little path through the brush,
so someone can follow.
And as they walk into the unknown,
they discover an ancient pathway,
and learn that there is One who has been here before,
and that the ancient pathways never get old.
To the creative men and women
these forerunners are interesting and intriguing.
But to the pack of conventional thinkers,
they are wild-eyed crazies.
These are the ones who,
if you listen to them
will destroy everything you have come to know.
The creative people know
that the little path they found,
and the makeshift solutions along the way
were left for them
by the prophets and apostles.
The forerunners give direction
and show the way for everyone else to follow.”
Christ (rhymes with "wrist") John Otto is the leader of Belonging House, a relationship-based community of Christian artists called to raise up an army of artists who will build Jesus a throne in the earth. You can receive his Friday email at https://belonginghouse.org
