Art & Worship

The author’s church, the “Cathedral of the Plains,” in Perryton, TX from the choir loft where John and his wife Kris (pictured, foreground) attend services.

When I began my career as a writer, I had never heard the term “worldview” and didn’t even realize that I had one. Or that popular culture has one. Or that our worldviews might be very different.

Mine is Judeo-Christian and traces back to the small town in rural West Texas where I grew up. It contains the values of a group of people who work the soil, tend livestock, and operate small businesses. We believe in thrift, personal honesty, fidelity in marriage, hard work, and the importance of being good parents.

We don’t always live up to our standards of conduct, but at least we think we should.

Our lives center around work, school, family, and church, and our system of values derives from the book that William Tyndale translated into English in the sixteenth century: the Bible.

In the first chapter of that book, we find two extraordinary statements: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” [Genesis 1:1] and “God created man in his own image.” [Genesis 1:27] Those two statements lay the foundation for a Christian worldview and have profound implications for anyone who is involved in an artistic profession.