Bob Kilpatrick - The Art of Being You: How to Live as Gods Masterpiece

H OW TO L IVE AS
G ODS M ASTERPIECE

BOB KILPATRICK
JOEL KILPATRICK

For Cindy and Ana Maria

Art is the triumph over chaos.
John Cheever, novelist

W e laid my dad to rest in Arlington National cemetery. A wagon carried his remains behind a riderless horse. Twenty-one guns cracked their salute; the chief of Air Force chaplains delivered a homily; and it was finished. Thats when I really began to think about eternity. I had always talked of heaven and eternity, but now I had experienced something close and unexpected and painful.

My dad no longer had a mortgage, a marriage, a pain in his body, or a single worry about this life. The file marked August christian Kilpatrick was closed forever. The finality hit me again and again. I saw all around me, and particularly in my own body, the signs of time passing. I was walking the same path my dad had just left, and it would end the same way. I would die, and my mortgage, marriage, pains, and worries would all be behind me. The file with my name on it would close.

In the meantime, why was I here? What was life for? What was God doing in me, and why?

I asked these questions, and many more. I read a lot of books and talked to my wife, children, and closest friends. Through these conversationsespecially with my friend Rick Enloemy understanding of God and his purposes was profoundly changed. Rick and I have been friends for twenty-five years, and our relationship lacks artifice. Friends like this talk differently than accountability partners, cell group members, fellow churchgoers, or minister buddies. We wouldnt know how to hide from each other even if we wanted to.

Rick and I spent many late nights talking on his deck in Gig Harbor, by the fire in my living room, under Shakespeares Head on carnaby Street in London, and looking out across the blue-green Mediterranean Sea in Vernazza, Italy. We talked especially about Dorothy L. Sayers book The Mind of the Maker, and over time we came to a liberating and delightful conclusion:

God is not trying to solve the problems we call ourselves.

He is not attempting to repair us. God is more than a mathematician or mechanic.

God is an artist. He is preparing the greatest art show ever staged, and we are the materials of his art, the grandest expression of his creativity. The art show he is preparing transcends canvas, clay, chords, or cinema. He has expressed his creativity in you and me and is making a living display out of the whole human race.

This precious truth, like the pearl of great price, can change our lives forever. Yet in the course of many conversations, it became clear that this way of understanding God goes against what many christians think. I heard a well-known christian musician say in a concert that God is in the business of fixing broken people. I went home and thought about that for a while, and I came to a different conclusion. I cant find anything in the Bible that says God wants to fix broken people. I dont think God wants to be known as the Great Mechanic who replaces faulty parts on otherwise good engines. Hes out not to rebuild us but to remake us. God wants us to die and to be resurrected. He desires to lead us into new life, to make us new creations.

God looks at us as an artist does his favorite work of art.

Our perception of Godwhat we believe about God, what we think he is doing in our lives, and especially why we think hes doing itwill set the course of our lives. Too often, instead of enjoying the beauty our Maker is creating in and through us, we view God through the lens of our personal weakness. Our theology is shaped by what we lack rather than by who God is.

For example, if we see ourselves as a problem needing a solution, we want God to be a mathematician.

If we see ourselves as broken and needing repair, we want God to be a mechanic.

If we see ourselves as lonely, we want God to be a friend.

If we see ourselves as ignorant, we want God to be a teacher.

Its as if we are all lining up to visit the Wizard of Oz, each with our own deep deficiency, and the wizard becomes to each of us what we need.

God does meet our deepest needs in very personal ways, but seeing him through the prism of our own weakness keeps us from knowing and enjoying him in his fullness. It can be dangerous to our faith if our overriding goal is for God to meet our needs. Rather, our highest priority should be knowing who God is and what he is up to in our livesand why.

Jesus illustrated the danger of misperceiving God with a parable about a master who entrusts funds to three of his servants to invest while he is away (Matthew 25:14 - 30). On his return, two of them had risked and won. The third servant, however, is the focus of the parable. He said to his master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where

you have not sown. And I was afraid. This statement

reveals that the servant knew the character of the master, just as the other two servants did, but perceived themaster differently based on his own personal deficiency and fear.

The result was pretty bad. Thats why it is important for us to have a correct perception of Gods character and ultimate purpose for us.

If we focus on God making repairs to our broken lives, we miss what he is really doing in us. Math equates, but art creates. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new! (2 Corinthians 5:17, emphasis added).

Sometime early in my Christian life, I came to believe that I was a problem that needed to be solved. I spent many hours at many altars offering the enigmatic equation of my life to the Master Mathematician, hoping he would solve it and I would be happy. But over time I saw that my entire approach was wrong. Perhaps because I have spent my life as an artist, surrounded by colleagues, friends, and family members who are illustrators, painters, writers, designers, songwriters, musicians, and sculptors, I came to see that the math paradigm is hopelessly inadequate to describe and deal with the human condition or the purposes of God. We need a new paradigm.

Art, not math.

Artist, not mathematician.

What do I mean by these terms math and art? Let me give each a thumbnail description, but let me also say that these things are mysteries. Avant-garde musician Laurie Anderson once said, Talking about art is like dancing about architecture. It can be useless to try to use one to explain the other. But lets dance around the definitions a bit to make them come alive. If I were sitting next to you now, I would ask you to read each item on the following list slowly and pause for a while to consider them. Maybe I should have written Selah after each line.