art critic

I’ve had the opportunity to tour two art museums with supposedly great reputations in the last year, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art. At the Art Institute, my buddy Crawdaddy and I walked into the “Modern Art” exhibit and were less than thrilled with what we saw. I was unaware that monotone squares that looked like an empty chalkboard constituted art.  I kid you not, one slab of gray canvas hung on the wall was called “Untitled” that was valued at several hundred thousand dollars. We were very confused and were out of the exhibit within 5 minutes very angry.

At the Cleveland museum of art, I thought it would be more entertaining to pose like naked statues on the floor, much to the chagrin of the curator who gave me the quite the look as I laid down in my “Jeff Goldblum Jurassic Park” pose in front of some ancient civilization statue and for the rest of the night, she seemed to stalk me from exhibit to exhibit.

Anyway, the only art that I can appreciate are paintings that actually look like something. Paintings that look like scenery are a big favorite of mine. Or portraits of historical figures are always fun too, because I know that the picture of George Washington looks like George Washington. Don’t splatter some paint on a canvas and tell me that the spots explain some post-modern relative truth (nothing about that last sentence made sense. See what I did there?) Still, I can’t just gaze into any painting for hours on end and be moved to tears, simply because I don’t know enough about art. I know other artists who can probably do that, but not this guy.

However, merely having knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that one is more capable of appreciating art. You can understand the background and time period of an artist, see the symbolism, understand shadows and color schemes, and a whole bunch of other artistic sounding terms (I don’t know if what I just typed actually means anything. But it sounds cool so just run with it). You can be so caught up in the technical aspects of art, that can you fail to be amazed by the art. Art ceases being art, it just becomes a skill, a trade that can be mastered.

In The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brenen Manning writes, “A Philistine will stand before a Claude Monet painting and pick his nose; a person filled with wonder will stand there fighting back tears”

I often get caught up in the technical aspects of Christianity. This causes me to stop standing in awe of who God is, and instead, I become a critic. This attitude manifests itself in several ways. I judge the quality of a church service by my own standards, whether or not it agrees to my standards of what a church service should look like. I can become a Christian snob if you will, thinking that the teaching is too elementary for my liking, and won’t benefit my personal walk. Somehow, my four years of participation in ministry and the latest hip Christian book I read has somehow qualified me to make judgments on church and the walks of other Christians, as I elevate myself above everyone else around me. (I mean I have my own blog! Not everyone can get their own blog right?)

I make Christianity into a religion that is built and suited to serve only me and my pious expectations. I twist scripture into a formula that goes like this: I do good things to earn God’s blessing and approval. Even though I know full well that my thinking is far from Biblical, and instead that I can’t do anything to earn God’s blessing, that I can’t do enough to impress God and it is only because God chooses to move, independent of what I do, that I can experience his love. But this is how I see God sometimes, not as the almighty king of the universe, but as a lowly servant meant to make my life comfortable. This is how I become an appraiser of God rather than simply, a praiser of God (I’m so clever).

Keeping with this whole “art” theme I got going on here, read Psalm 104, which shows how God is truly the perfect artist as it describes God’s creation. Here, he clearly is not here to act as my personal fairy godmother, but rather this shows God’s true dominion over the universe.

I must constantly be reminded that I am in position to remove myself from God’s landscape and sit in the peanut gallery. Instead, I must recognize that I am a small part of God’s plan, a part of God’s plan not by my own doing, but by His. I must see God for who he really is, great and powerful and perfect, and myself as I really am, as small and sinful.

The true beauty of God’s plan and art is that he uses sinful people to carry out his perfect and holy plan. Think about that for a second. And I mean really think about that. It might be a truth you hear every week in church, but the paradox of Christianity is that a perfect God uses imperfect people. That kind of logic transcends human logic because 

“…my thoughts are not your thoughts and neither are our ways my ways, declares the Lord. Far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thought than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

If God’s thoughts are on an entirely different plain than our own, are we really fit to sit back and criticize God, or even just sit back and pick our noses, not seeing the contrast between ourselves and God? Or should we instead be in constant amazement, wanting to know more about this God we serve, and why he thought it best to send Christ to save us from ourselves?