This is episode 70 of the Renew the Arts Podcast. The little things are the great things.

Welcome to the Renew the Arts Podcast, where we discuss the role of art and creativity in the church and in the world. I’m your host, Michael Minkoff. Our motto at Renew the Arts is liberate Christian creativity.

Our mission is to cultivate Christian communities by inspiring art partnership and supporting artists. If you’d like to join our community of monthly donors and contribute to this podcast, please visit renewthearts.org/donate. If you want to join the Porchlight Network and begin your journey as a partner in the arts, go to app.porchlight.art and sign up as a host or a tender.

In the book The Screwtape Letters, CS. Lewis writes from the demonic perspective of a senior tempter named Screwtape to a junior tempter named Wormwood. In chapter six, Screwtape gives Wormwood advice about how to direct and corrupt both human malice and human benevolence.

Here’s what Screwtape recommends for the English quote unquote patient being tempted in the context of war, and specifically Lewis has World War II in view. Here’s what he says. As regards his more general attitude to the war, you must not rely too much on those feelings of hatred which the humans are so fond of discussing in Christian or anti-Christian periodicals.

In his anguish, the patient can, of course, be encouraged to revenge himself by some vindictive feelings directed towards the German leaders, and that is good so far as it goes. But it is usually a sort of melodramatic or mythical hatred directed against imaginary scapegoats. He has never met these people in real life.

They are lay figures modeled on what he gets from newspapers. The results of such fanciful hatred are often most disappointing. And of all humans, the English are in this respect the most deplorable milk sops.

They are creatures of that miserable sort who loudly proclaim that torture is too good for their enemies and then give tea and cigarettes to the first wounded German pilot who turns up at the back door. Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence as well as some malice in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference to people he does not know.

The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles.

His will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope at once. To exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the enemy.

But you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy and all the desirable qualities inward into the will. It is only insofar as they reach the will and are there, embodied in the habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. I don’t of course mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real center, what the enemy calls the heart.

All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect, or even in some measure loved and admired, will not keep a man from our father’s house. Indeed, they may make him more amusing when he gets there. This wisdom, which Lewis may have derived from Father Zosima’s discussion of active love in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, very much applies to our current culture and present crisis.

The natural and perhaps fleshly response to a huge problem, and let there be no doubt, the current crisis in the United States is a huge problem. And the response to this is often to reach for huge solutions. Huge problem, huge solutions.

So you try to match celebrity for celebrity, power for power, wealth for wealth. This has basically been true of the Church since the Edict of Milan in the 300s. Before that time, we’re the martyrs.

And after that time, to more or less a degree, we have had to grapple with the overwhelming predominance of Christian Empire, and the ideas that are pervasive in it. Christian Empire is very much the dream and ambition of much of the current religious establishment in the US. In fact, the co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and one of the fathers of the religious right, Paul Weyrich, had this to say back in the 70s.

Quote, when political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to recreate this great nation. Many people still agree with this. Centralized political power, not the gospel, is the power we actually trust in to transform our nation, even while we give lip service to the gospel and the Great Commission.

But this is not just the case in politics, although it is. I think that as a nation, we have veered entirely from the way of Jesus and the cross in nearly every area of temptation. And this is in spite of the rotten results that we’re getting. 

But we continue to pursue the more and more obviously vain and futile vices and devices of our forebears. In other words, despite all evidence to the contrary, we still think that the one ring can be used as a weapon against evil, so we refuse to throw it in the fire. But I guess we think we just haven’t found the right power broker to wield it yet.

I hope that if one thing has been clear in this podcast over its history, Renew the Arts has actively and self-consciously chosen a different way. For many years now, people have looked at our organization with almost pity if they even know about us and if they are charitable, or contempt if they are not charitable. They assume that we must not know how to get along in this world, that we just can’t hack it in the public square.

We must not understand even the basics of influence and marketing. Our art isn’t marketable, and we don’t know what people want. We can’t persuade the quote important people.

We have no clout, and we can’t get it because we just don’t know how. Our approach to many seems foolish and stupid and small. And let me be honest, I really have asked myself over and over again if this is true.

Because I know that sometimes people adopt sour grapes strategies when they simply don’t have the wherewithal to compete successfully. In despair even, sometimes we choose dishonorable or less difficult paths to justify our weaknesses and prop up our egos. It reminds me of those lines from the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar.

My teacher tells me real beauties on the inside. That’s just something ugly people say. Nietzsche said something similar about the meekness of Christianity.

He assumed religious people had chosen to valorize victimhood and martyrdom because they were simply too weak to compete for victory and actually win. His analysis and critique, which you can read at length in his book Antichrist, actually does accurately apply to many Christians and other religious people. There are, in fact, myriad people who have tried to relabel and repackage what is actually weakness and resignation as some sort of religious virtue.

But Nietzsche was incorrect about Jesus. Jesus did not die on the cross because he was too weak to save himself. Whatever the gleeful celebrants who surrounded the cross might have crowed in their short-lived triumph, his death on the cross was a divine act of immense and unfathomable power.

Self-control and self-giving on a scale no mere human could ever hope to exercise. No one took Jesus’ life. He gave it.

He had the authority to lay it down. He had the authority to pick it back up again. And as naive as Renew the Arts approach may seem in the face of power, prestige, and wealth, we actually have, may not seem like this, carefully developed and executed it for nearly two decades.

We are not seeking and have never sought the path to power, prestige, and wealth. And I pray earnestly that we never do. But after much soul searching, I can say with confidence that our self-limitation in this is not from weakness or resignation.

It’s a choice. And we hope it is a choice more and more of you will make with us. As we already are facing great crises in this country, and as even greater crises seem to loom in the future, I think honestly, it is the little way that will truly provide the great solution that we’re looking for.

It might not be quick, but with this podcast episode, I want to make a rational biblical case for our little local grassroots approach and explain a little bit about how you can be a part of it. First, let’s talk about the assured failure of the great way, the way of greatness. And then second, we’ll talk about the assured success of the little way and then third, we’re going to talk about how you can join us in the little way that we’re quietly fostering in our communities.

The Renew the Arts Podcast is doing our Mailbag episode a bit differently in 2025. We’re going to start collecting Mailbag questions now from the Mailbag episode coming in December. So if you have any questions, objections, or comments about this episode or about arts and faith in general, go ahead and send them to us. 

Go to renewthearts.org/mailbag to submit your questions or comments.

So, let’s talk first about the folly and assured failure of the way of greatness, the great way, the way that seeks power, pleasure, prestige, and possessions. Seekers in the great way believe that little and ordinary things can just be ignored, that the only difference that will make a difference comes from the influence of celebrity, the leverage of wealth, and the power of politics. But ultimately, this way does not end up granting what it promises.

In this sense, the way of greatness offers a false gospel that it cannot deliver. What we seek in the great way, as if we could even secure it, is some sort of lasting power, lasting pleasure, lasting prestige, and lasting possessions. Yet, and hear me on this, the universal verdict of all human history is that no one seeking these things has ever managed to secure them.

Just think about it. What kingdom or empire has ever secured lasting power? Every empire, no matter its temporary glory, has perished.

The same magnificent stadium where Romans once cheered while Christian martyrs were torn to pieces by beasts, is now a ruin in the middle of one of Christianity’s global religious centers. Those who seek pleasure also find their capacities doled, and their pleasure diminishing, requiring ever more to get ever less in return. And all those who seek pleasure also, in the end, will die anyway.

So what does it benefit you if you gain the whole world of pleasure and lose your soul? And who has ever secured their own celebrity? Solomon talks about this in Ecclesiastes 9, 4-6, where he writes, For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope.

Surely a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die, but the dead do not know anything. Nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten.

Indeed, their love, their hate, and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun. In other words, no one can preserve their own name, memory, or legacy. It’s simply not in your control.

And we should all know also how fleeting riches and possessions are. As Solomon says in Proverbs 23, verses 4-5, Do not weary yourself to gain wealth. Cease from your consideration of it.

When you set your eyes on it, it is gone, for wealth certainly makes itself wings like an eagle that flies toward the heavens. So, all that to say, no one who has ever traveled the great way, the way of greatness in search of doing great things and being great, has ever been able to secure what they were seeking. Those that aspire to greatness, they’re just filled with anxiety, dreadful paranoia, white-knuckle grasping.

It’s something that will eventually be rested from their hands, either in this life or in death, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Thus, the folly of the great way, the way of greatness. This great way will eventually perish altogether, and no one who has traveled it has ever reached any destination but destruction.

Now, on the other hand, the little way, the humble way of Jesus, has assured success. And this is even if you’re talking about power, prestige, pleasure, and possessions, which I don’t think people really think about. But the little way does not seek these things, and yet, somehow, still secures them anyway.

Note the manifold promises of God and Jesus concerning this. For instance, he says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The end of Psalm 16 says, You, God, will make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. In your right hand there are pleasures forever.

And in Isaiah 66 22, God promises, for just as the new heavens and the new earth, which I make, will endure before me, declares Yahweh, so your offspring and your name will endure. So, think about this. Having sought after the kingdom of heaven, we gain also all that we gave up along the way of greatness.

And the great way could never secure those things, but we have secured them in the little way of Jesus. In other words, we have secured an everlasting, enduring kingdom, an enduring name, pleasures forevermore, and an eternal inheritance, an eternal possession. And you might say, well, these are just promises, or they’re just spiritual, or whatever, but they’re really not.

I mean, look at Jesus. As I expressed in the talk I gave at Audio Feed, which you can hear on the podcast episode we released two episodes ago, Jesus’s methods were not the way of greatness. They were the most humble, little, even foolish ways imaginable.

Yet, Jesus has already achieved a lasting kingdom in his people and a lasting name. I mean, he is the most famous person in human history, and even unbelievers would agree with that much. And I think it is safe to believe that he also secured the joy and the pleasure of life set before him for which he endured the cross, and even now, all the earth is becoming more and more subjected to his loving possession.

His little way, his little foolish way, produced astounding and lasting results in history and on earth. And though his kingdom wasn’t of this earth, it certainly is on it, and we are seeing it grow and grow and have more and more success, and it will never end. While the great way, which was seeking those things, has produced nothing but vanity and futility.

So it is wisdom, the wisdom of God, that seems foolish to humankind and astounds the worldly wise. It is that wisdom which drives us here at Renew the Arts to seek this little way. And you might wonder, what does that little way look like for us?

Well, I’m going to tell you, let me tell you a little bit about how we are pursuing this little way. It might seem quite foreign to you, and I hesitate to say this, but there is a great chance, I would say almost a certainty, that your own personal methods and expectations have been thoroughly diseased by our culture’s adoption of the great way, and you may not even realize it. When you think, like, what is success?

If you think, how do I measure success? And your idea of success has anything to do with power, or possession, pleasure, or prestige, then you have been affected by these expectations that have been set by the pursuit of the great way. And I don’t mean to insult you in this.

I’m just seeing that, and so I’m saying it, and if it applies, you know, do what you need to do. So what does the little way look like for us? Well, let me share with you four things, and there’s probably more, but these are some things that I’ve been really thinking about recently.

So first, the little way focuses on the shaping of the affections. Second, the little way prioritizes the real over the virtual. Third, the little way is decentralized, favoring the local over the global.

And fourth, the little way is generous and hospitable. So first, the little way focuses on the shaping of the affections. We have chosen to partner in the arts and beauty when we could have invested in politics or apologetics, right?

This is intentional. When you look at a lot of people’s spending, they think politics and apologetics is the way to go because that’s where you make the real change, right? Well, the little way is more concerned with persuasion than it is coercion or refutation.

Coercion and refutation do seem to be the way to achieve power and change. I mean, the heart and the emotions seem to have little impact compared to the will and the intellect, which seem to drive all the great things of the world. It seems, like Weirich said, that the power politics promises could really make the greatest difference in the world, to recreate this great nation, right?

And silencing your opponents seems like a better idea. It’s at least more efficient than inviting them into a conversation. According to The Way of Greatness, the transformation of the world would depend on the force of argument and the force of arms, apologetics and politics.

Yet, something as weak as love and vulnerable as beauty will ultimately change the world when politics and arguments have failed. As Dostoevsky said, beauty will save the world. And for all the reasons we have already mentioned, the power of death and evil will not be conquered by an equal and opposite power.

Because evil begets evil, as hurt people turn to hurt people, and the cycle of empire continues as evil is repaid in evil. Only love has the power truly to break the wheel of empire, because love endures all things. Love is as strong as death.

Life overcomes death in the resurrection, and evil will be overcome not by evil, but by good. With this in mind, Renew the Arts has chosen to invest in the life and beauty and goodness of Jesus as the antidote for the evil of this world. But even in our pursuit of beauty and winning the heart, we reject the way of greatness.

So secondly, we emphasize the real over the virtual. Though influence does seem most secured in this world as it is by how many followers you have, or how wide you can broadcast your message, we recognize that real relationships and real interactions, slow and inefficient as they may be, are the only way to avoid the celebrity game that has embroiled even the church in this great vanity. In virtual spaces, you can believe anything about yourself, and you can believe anything about your neighbor.

The virtual space encourages and almost ensures the real malevolence and imaginary benevolence that Louis talked about in the quote earlier. Loving your neighbors involves the real neighbors you actually have living with and around you, not the echo chambers or gallery of monsters you can create or have impressed upon you online. We strive to liberate Christian creativity, not exploit it toward an agenda.

This is why we recommend the active love of real relationships shaped by the free in-person sharing of good things. This relates to the third part of Our Little Way, the local over the global. Now, you may say that your local artist is not worthy of your support because he or she is not as talented or celebrated as the quote great artists who have gained widespread recognition.

There are a lot of errors in this. For one, the so-called great artists don’t actually need your support and attention, whereas your local artists and the neighbors in your community actually do. That’s one thing.

Additionally, you don’t know what’s actually good, you really don’t, or what is actually worth your attention. I mean, I don’t either. I’m not saying you, I’m saying anybody doesn’t.

Let me engage you in a thought experiment. Have you ever heard of Joseph Israels, or Yosef, sorry? How about Anton Mov?

Perhaps Hendrik Willem Mesdag? I don’t even know if I pronounced those names right. You don’t know who they are, you’ve ever heard those names?

Even though I butchered them. How about Vincent van Gogh? Have you heard of him?

And I’m sure the answer to that last one is yes, even if the answer to all the others was no. Well, the other three were Dutch painters. They were the leading figures, leading, most popular, best-selling painters in the Hague School painting movement in Holland.

They were contemporaries of van Gogh. In fact, one of them was kind of related to van Gogh, like married his cousin or something. And they were widely recognized and very important in van Gogh’s day.

Van Gogh himself only ever sold one work of art in his lifetime. He was largely unknown until long after he had died. And though you can all now attest that his name has endured, while most of the once famous painters of the Hague School have now fallen into obscurity.

So consider you then are in the neighborhood of van Gogh, like you know him personally. But you think he should get a real job, and that he should not be spending all his time on this hobby, because nobody cares about his work. His work is just not worth supporting.

So you instead invest your money and your attention into the famous Hague School painters, since obviously van Gogh must not be that good or important. And because of this, you give what little you have to give on art to people who don’t need it, while withdrawing your support from someone who does. And then history comes back later and says, you made the wrong decision, even in terms of greatness and fame and an enduring name.

And all the while, van Gogh was tormenting himself to pursue his art, while his soul was just questioning, did he have any value in the world at all? Do you understand what it would be like to live like that? To have to pursue your art and be surrounded by people who are not supporting you and who tell you, you should probably quit.

He killed himself, overwhelmed by the demons of his despair. What a great difference perhaps some little community of the love of Jesus could have made for him. It’s for this reason that we focus on local, unknown artists.

For one, they might be, as they often have been in the past, the best artists alive, and history might eventually confirm that. For another, they need our support in community, whereas the already celebrated simply don’t. They just don’t need your help.

Focusing only on the already celebrated is like giving money to the rich, while the poor are suffering around you. People often do give money to the rich, to curry their favor, to be in their circumference, but it’s the poor who actually need your help. To do our vital work, Renew the Arts depends on voluntary support from dedicated patrons like you.

We would love if you partnered with us financially at renewthearts.org/donate. Another great thing you can do for us right now is leave a rating and review wherever you are listening to this podcast. That helps other people discover our podcast and our work.

Thank you so much for listening and partnering with us. We greatly appreciate it.

Fourth, the little way that we’re pursuing is generous and hospitable. Rather than taking and hoarding and excluding and safeguarding, which is in the way of greatness, the little way approaches local communities with generosity and welcome. So perhaps you think porch light attendance, you know, going to a show or hosting a show is just a little thing.

What would it matter if you didn’t do it? Well, you’re right, it is a very little thing. By welcoming in the stranger and your neighbor and sharing your good things with them, you make a radical proclamation of the life of the gospel that is hard to deny to the people whose lives you could really impact.

This is why the New Testament is filled with commandments to do good to your neighbor. In fact, this is not only how Jesus lived, this is also how Christianity flourished in the first three centuries of his existence, though it was an illegal religion at odds with the empire and the religious establishments mostly populated by the poor and insignificant. Christianity achieved victory by dying rather than killing, by giving rather than taking, by welcoming rather than excluding, by persuading rather than coercing, by exercising little ordinary acts of kindness and generosity that shamed the mighty and astounded the wise.

Jesus tells us, If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in much. But if you are unfaithful in little things, you will be unfaithful in much. Our religion is a humble religion that follows a gentle and lowly Savior.

He will do and has done great things, but he will do those great things through us in the same way he did them while he walked the earth, in the little things. Indeed, he does not call you to great things, but to obedience. Many will come to him in the final judgment and proclaim all the great things they did in his name, miracles, prophecies, casting out demons.

Maybe they were celebrity influencers, and they had a huge platform. Maybe they raised tons of money or sent off many, many, many, many, many, many missionaries. And maybe all those things are actually good.

I have no idea. But if they pursued them for the reason of their greatness, they had their heads turn in the wrong direction, because many of those, he will turn away, because they did not walk the little way. Now, there will be those, however, who did not do great things, who maybe even are surprised to find themselves accepted by this great king.

They clothed the naked. They gave to the poor. They visited the sick and imprisoned.

They welcomed the stranger. They gave a cup of water to the thirsty in the name of Jesus. They did the little things.

They didn’t have a name. They didn’t have great power. They didn’t have great possessions.

Nobody knows who they are. But Jesus does, and he will say to them, as you have done unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done unto me. You may think even after all that, even now, that you don’t have much you can do to deal with what seems like this horrible situation in the country right now.

And I don’t care, I mean, whether you exist on the right or the left side of the isle, you probably think the country is falling apart. And in many ways, perhaps it is. And perhaps you think there’s nothing you can do about it.

And there probably isn’t a huge amount that you can do. But I can tell you this, these huge nationwide institutions, celebrity spokespeople and politicians won’t be able to fix anything, even if they want to, which for the most part I actually doubt. And it doesn’t matter how much money we throw at them to do this.

It also doesn’t matter how loudly we yell on Facebook or X, or how furiously we keyboard warriors wage the good fight over in the comment sections. And I’m not saying any of these things are necessarily wrong, though some of them probably are. But I hope I have made a case well enough that these things, whether or not they’re wrong, are vain.

They just don’t secure what they are attempting to secure. On the other hand, if you will log off from all of this and invite your actual neighbors to come share some good fellowship, food and beauty with you, you have so much greater of a chance to make a real and lasting difference in the world. And you’ll probably find that the things that you think have been happening and maybe some of them are fantasy.

Maybe some of them are not real. Maybe your neighbors aren’t the raging lunatics that you think they must be. And maybe you’ll begin to see the world a little bit more clearly and your place in it with a little bit more humility.

And this may not make you feel all that important. But I hope I’ve convinced you it’s what our Lord actually told us to do. And we think we have a better way, and we don’t.

Because as he proved, his little way actually works.

I want to finish this episode with a song from Porchlight artist Brother James. This is the song Love Everybody, and it is off of Brother James’ new record that just came out, Be Alive, that was just released this month, and honestly very much worth your attention. A lot of grappling, a lot of struggling in the record as a whole, a lot of really beautiful melodies, really beautiful arrangements.

Brother James does a fantastic job on all these things. It’s the moniker of Justin Sinclair, California based artist who this record is totally worth checking out. He was so generous with us to say that we could skip all the sink pod fees on this.

We’re not going to, we’re going to try and give him something anyway. But I just want to mention to you, there’s a lot of open handedness among the artists that we work with, and we try to be just as open handed back to them. And we’re really trying to put our money where our mouth is in terms of generosity and welcome.

So Brother James may not be the most well known. However, he’s fantastic and you should check out this record. It’s worth listening to from front to back.

This song, particularly called Love Everybody, it deals with the same generalized benevolence that Screwtape the Demon was recommending, which I think has become pretty common in American Christianity, where Christians might know the right answers and say the right answers, and they’ll say they love the whole world and want to do great things for Jesus, but they can’t be bothered to do the little thing to show love to the person who happens to be right in front of them or her. And so that’s a serious problem that I think needs to be addressed, and I think this song does a pretty good job of addressing it, or at least of exposing it. So give it a listen.

This is Love Everybody off of Brother James’ just released record, Be Alive, which I highly recommend, and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for listening today. Now go out there and do some little thing.

What a little piece.