The Bridge
Art as a portal to eternity
Like my previous piece, this is a response to another writer’s work. B.C. Wallin’s essay appeared in Broad Sound Vol. 2, Part 1 along with my essay about my days as a folk musician.
Before I became a Christian, I had a former life as an amateur folk musician. I made my way in and out of local coffeehouses, attending open mic nights and playing shows where I aspired to give shape to a deep longing that burned within me. Through cryptic words and elementary chord progressions, I sought to step out of my life into something beyond—something other—that always seemed just outside my grasp.
Such longing wasn't mine alone; it reflected the profound hunger of every human heart. Each of us desires to access a deeper reality, something we know must exist on the other side of daily life. For musicians, writers, and other creatives, this desire manifests in desperate attempts to uncover and articulate that deeper reality and, if only for a moment, transcend an existence that feels wholly inadequate.
In his essay, "Aspired Cathedrals," writer B.C. Wallin makes the case that a grasping for the other, a reaching beyond reality, has been a fixture of art for centuries. He points to examples like Michelangelo, who believed that the stone he carved already held the form of a statue that it was his job to bring out; and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a German architect and artist who used his art to depict beautiful cathedrals that were impossible to build within the constraints of the physical world.
Art, says Wallin, punches a hole in our mundane reality and reveals something more. He suggests that art may actually create something real, deepen the reality we know, or connect us to something beyond our lived experience.
But what if art is a tangible dream of an existing reality? A dream in words, music, or paint that depicts, not something we long for and can never attain, but the eternal, transcendent reality that prompts our insatiable inner groaning?
This groaning of the soul is no mystery. Humanity's history as laid out in the Bible tells us that, as a result of the Fall, all creation, not just humans, groans in anticipation of future renewal (Rom. 8:20-23). The sin that entered the world through Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden (Gen. 3:1-19) affected man, beast, and planet. From that moment on, humanity—and the creation we were charged with stewarding—has groaned under sin's curse.
God promises that a time of renewal will come, a time when the present heavens and earth will pass away (Isa. 51:6, Heb. 1:10-12) and be made completely new (Rev. 21:5). But, like the prophets of old, Christians must look forward to the promise of a future not yet realized and rest in the sure hope of God's promise (Rom. 5:5, Heb. 11:39-40, 1 Peter 1:10-12).
As we look forward, we dream through our art. Our creative works pull back the curtain of the mortal and temporal to expose the real and eternal. We strip away the dullness of the sin-cursed world and open, in a sense, a portal to that ultimate restoration. We don't create anything new—only God can do that—but our art can express greater realities and draw hearts and minds into the Christian hope of eternal glory.
No earthy form of art can fully capture the beauty and perfection of the renewed creation that the Old Testament prophets spoke of and the Apostle John called the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 21:1). This portrait of heaven, far removed from the common fantasy of wings, halos, and endless harp music, speaks of God's ultimate plan to restore the harmony that creation enjoyed when Adam and Eve walked with Him in the Garden of Eden.
It was a time of perfection with no illness, pain, or death; a time when the lion and the lamb laid down together without fear; a length of days when mankind dwelt in God's presence with no interference from sin or shame. And ever since the entrance of sin, humanity has longed to return to that perfection. We've spent millennia grasping for ways to escape the bondage of this world and free ourselves from the effects of the Fall.
Yet for all our imaginations and attempts, we remain bound to our daily reality. Every bridge we attempt to build crumbles before it can carry us into the beyond, and we're left stranded and empty at the edge of our longing.
The challenge for the Christian creative, then, is not only to draw the future reality of perfection into the daily reality of life but to present a solid, unfailing bridge that transforms art from a portal to a path. For the answer to our groaning lies not in perfection itself but in the avenue by which we enter into that perfection: the cross of Christ.
Only the cross can bridge the gap and carry us from the ache of seeking meaning in this life to the peace of a glorious new creation. Unlike imperfect human art, Christ's sacrifice for sin was wholly perfect(Heb. 9:11-14;10:10-14), and those who confess it will find the only bride that can carry them beyond this life and finally satisfy their heart's deepest hunger.
Wallin's essay ends with the aspiration of bringing about something real through words, yet art, no matter the form, can't help us attain the reality for which we long. No amount of songwriting or performing ever built a bridge across the yawning emptiness that haunted my brief music career. Art can attest to the groaning in every heart, but only when it invites every eye to see God as the One Who transforms the unfinished stone through the cross can it truly build a bridge into eternity.