utility.

on faith and usefulness...
this is a subject that has been coming up quite frequently these days. i have a friend who recently wanted my opinion on her pursuit of artistic endeavors--muses she felt compelled to explore but, simultaneously, felt guilty for engaging, because in these endeavors the immediate gratification of feeling useful to the LORD was absent. She felt like her artistic vision couldn't be from God, because surely he would have her doing more useful things, like working in a soup kitchen, rebuilding New Orleans, going to Africa, etc.
The following is an edited version of the ideas I sent back to her:

Christians do not function properly for the glory of God when they measure their value along the lines of presumed utility. Conventional wisdom might lead us to believe that the abandonment of creative outlets and the dedication of our time to allegedly practical matters would please God more than the seemingly frivolous creation of art , but who is to say that efficiency according to mortal standards is what God is after? Time belongs to Him; He will give each of us enough time to complete our allotted tasks. Imagine a world where CS Lewis tried to be Mother Theresa. That's not a world in which I want to live.
Actually, the issue of use keeps coming up. You and I just have to remember that neither of us is God. And God knows that every person will not be saved. Either of us might one day be in the position to take a "useful" action and save hundreds of people, whereas we could have contributed to the salvation of thousands, if only we had felt comfortable being a part of something that, on the surface, appeared useless. God is God, and more likely than not, the most "useful" things will not appear very useful. The kingdom is counterintuitive.

So that's all I have to say about that. Well, that's not all I have to say about that, but that's all I feel like writing at the moment.