On Artists, Kings, and Mending The Multiverse

November 6th, 2024.

Today, I'm grieving the fact that we remain as divided as ever—seemingly entirely incapable of sharing the same reality with others. I'm grieving that the leader we have chosen to elevate for another four years is one who thrives on that very unreality and division, and will inevitably continue to escalate it further.

The character and conduct of our leaders matters deeply. It is not simply aesthetic or secondary, capable of being detached when convenient. It ripples into our accepted cultural language and moral imagination in ways that are difficult to untangle and repair without years of healing. This particular leader has proven particularly formidable at mangling and reshaping the culture in his own image, and I watch this gradual national metamorphosis with horror and grief.

The solitary good news to which I cling is that our earthly leaders do not have to dictate our shared reality. Humans have lived for millennia under narcissistic kings and strongmen—who they didn't even get to choose themselves—and somehow, they still found community, survival, and common hope.

This is where artists come in.

Artists are more powerful than kings and strongmen. The strongman influences the narrative through force and fear. Artists cultivate it and speak it into being through imagination. Artists are priests, prophets, and gift-givers from a kingdom with different rules than the one we see now. The art that they create is so powerful because it is a product of a different economy—not of fear and finiteness, but of faith and extravagance.

Our greatest hurdle as a country right now is that we are living in completely different universes from our neighbors. Some of this is due to our algorithmic social media information bubbles, some of it caused by the death of shared societal rituals, and still some by the lack of a coherent narrative about what is good, true, and beautiful.

But art—and especially the shared experience of art, gathered in a room with other people very different from ourselves—has the power to mend the multiverse.

Great art can give us common ground and understanding as we behold the same beauty together. It can generate empathy for experiences that are not our own. It can cultivate a common vision and moral imagination for what a good and righteous world should actually look like. And suddenly, sitting sitting by side with someone else, we can begin to share the same universe again.

I've seen this healing happen firsthand. It's why I make documentaries and show them in-person. It's why my friends write songs and perform them. It's why Jesus spoke parables and discussed them. The stories stirred disparate imaginations back into harmony with each other. They called out from eternity and shouted, "O wanderers from many tribes, listen well: God's reality will surprise you, and it looks and sounds like this!"

To my fellow artists, I urge you: We need you. We need you. We need you to tell us that things are not right. We need you to remind us that there is a day coming when they will be made new. We need you to provoke us to participate in the healing of the world. We need you to help us live in same universe as our neighbors again.

And to everyone: in these upcoming years, as all the hard and practical work of fighting for a righteous world goes on, prioritize as much as you can the experience of sharing physical space with others and beholding the same beauty together. It heals more than you can know.