Good and true is not enough.

RC Sproul recently reminded me of an essential paradigm in the way Christians think about the arts. He admonished us to promote the good, the true, and the beautiful. Good, of course, means morally good (as opposed to being of high quality). True means doctrinally or evidentially correct. And beautiful means captivating and enchanting.

It reminded me of why I find myself so frustrated with the way Christians tend to evaluate the definitively modern art form: films. In order to approve of a movie, they want it to show morally good behavior, forgetting that the Bible often preaches virtue by contrast. They also want it to teach true ideas, forgetting that error spoken by a villain can be edifying and that truth spoken without love can be destructive.

But beyond both of these, this sort of Christian completely neglects beauty, clamoring instead for cleanness. He mistakenly believes that clean and beautiful are synonyms, an error immediately dispelled by the Cross.

As Christians making and discussing art, we must demand better than merely good, true, and clean, just as we must earnestly warn others against that which is evil and false but beautiful.