The Language of Honesty at Work in Art

Sometimes poetry is the only acceptable way to talk about spirituality in the workplace.

I'm not suggesting we water down our message and start singing kumbaya together. But many times, Christians in the workplace speak so much Jesus lingo that we scare people off. That's where poetry comes in.

You see, Jesus lingo makes for bad poetry. I know, I know, Christians think they are only supposed to encourage each other. But we also need to be careful that we don't encourage each other into a kind of dishonesty.

Poetry is the language of honesty. If you want to know what makes a poem good or bad, just evaluate whether it is honest. Honest poems will not have cliche. They will not be easy. They will grab you by the shirt sleeve or collar or belt loop and swing you around so that you can’t look away.

In contrast, dishonesty makes for really, really bad poetry. It also happens to make for really, really bad Christianity. When we Christians rely too much on our Jesus lingo, our faith becomes dishonest. I'm serious about this. It's not that we start expressing untruths about God or Jesus or ourselves as Christians. It is a matter of beauty and aesthetics. All nature declares the glory of God, like the psalm says.

Beautiful, aesthetically pleasing work declares the glory of God, too. Shoddy work, ugly work, not so much.