THE 12 TEKTON PRINCIPLES
Your profession is part of your vocation. How will you live it?
Why We Long To Create
The book of Exodus describes the creative men who God instructed to build the ark of the covenant and all the beautiful items of that His people would use for worship. Scripture describes those men as “.., men whose hearts moved them to come and do the work.” (Ex 36:2). In every creative heart God has placed a longing to make the things that honor and glorify Him. However, in modern times, because of our fragmentary and diluted culture, creative men are not brought up in a way that teaches us who to be as artists.
Why We're Lost
Creative men should naturally learn the discipline and focus necessary for our great tasks from a society of disciplined and focused men. We should have institutions and culture that set us on a path to self mastery like the great artists of Christendom, who often began apprenticeships before the age of fourteen. More importantly, we should grow up in a culture that unquestionably centers on truth, goodness, and beauty. Instead, our culture feeds us distortions, relativism, and spectacles that drain us of life. No wonder creative men are undisciplined, unfocused, isolated, and crumbling under the stress of everyday life.
This Is Our Fight
The troubles that plague creative men in todays world are not an excuse to remain passive and victimized. It’s time for Catholic creatives to make a radical shift in how we approach creative professions. The world paints creativity as something soft, an escape from reality. But we have creative drives because we are made in the image of our Almighty Father, the creator of all. He is not passive or afraid of reality. We must respond to His gift with all our heart, mind, and strength and bring our talents to bear on the work he has laid out for us.
Forging a New Way
Creative Catholic men are given a terrible selection of choices. If we don’t want to compromise on our faith we can either avoid creative professions altogether or attempt to build a creative business on our own, often unsupported and unguided. Many try to make it in Hollywood or other secular institutions but the culture of those places and organizations is already toxic to true, masculine creativity. As St. James warns us, “…where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.” (James 3:16). It’s time to build a new creative culture from the ground up. The tektōn principles are made to do just that.
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