What Looking at a Painting Can Do

Many years ago, shortly after becoming a Christian, I came across a remarkable painting by Michelangelo Caravaggio entitled The Supper at Emmaus. I was at my school's library in downtown Chicago—Grant Park was right outside the window from where I sat. I was flipping through a bunch of books that I had grabbed off the shelves. I was just wasting time, waiting for a class to begin. That day when I caught sight of this painting, it began for me a new way of seeing Jesus. Immediately, the painting caught my eye, because it wasn’t your typical “religious” work. In fact, it was almost too non-descript, and at first, I didn’t realize that it was a painting depicting anything sacred or religious— it just looked like a painting of a few guys eating together. I’ve only seen this painting in art books, and one day, I hope to venture to the National Gallery in London and see it up close. I am sure it will then be even more significant then when I see it up-close.

Something was special about this painting, made up of nothing more than some oils placed with some thought on the canvas. As I stood staring at it, I realized why it held my attention and I recognized its uniqueness. It was how the characters looked. You know what caught my eye? Jesus looks real. Gone is the blond hair and blue eyes. He looks like a real Hebrew guy, olive skin and all. You see, the painter Caravaggio did something earth shattering in his time as an artist—he painted Jesus like a real person; amazingly, he looked human and real-to-life. In fact, very uncommon for his time, most of Caravaggio’s models were peasants from local villages. Instead of painting the noble and the wealthy as his models for John the Baptist or Jesus or any other biblical character, he was painting the cobblers, fishermen and maidens of his day, and therefore his paintings took on a look that was authentic. 

With this, in this painting of Caravaggio’s, Jesus looks like a person; someone you could know, the guy next door. He seems approachable. This is the operative word—Jesus in this painting comes off as a person. Before this, in the art world—for the artist, Jesus was never a person—He was just “God.” Most of the artists in this period were painting the “majestic Christ”—the unapproachable Jesus, the one on the throne, the one you needed to schedule by appointment. But this is only half the story because Jesus really is a person, a friend, a confidant. In contrast, with Caravaggio’s painting, you see this “friend” aspect come out onto the canvas. Jesus is just hanging out, eating a meal and shootin’ the breeze. When I saw this painting, this was in my early years in being a Christian and this was the Jesus I wanted to get to know. You could get close to him. This is what I wanted. Unlike other religious art I had seen up to that point, it captured Jesus as someone you would want to get to know. As a contrast, go look at some of the art work from this period and you will notice that the characters are oblong and uncomfortable. Let me illustrate some examples; you might have seen some art depicting Jesus like this:

•    Painting No. 1: Baby Jesus is white and his face looks like he’s 59 years old—wrinkled and balding. He wears a smirk, a baptismal gown and a bratty look.

•    Painting No. 2: Jesus has his kingly pose, no smile, wearied look and it looks as if he might want to think about getting a prescription for some Prozac.

Again, these portrayals of Jesus’ just don’t seem real. They don’t really tell the story. These painting are depicting Jesus as he is not. Caravaggio was getting into it, painting as if he was there, sitting at the very table, and showing you something sacred and important. 

For us, this is important, because how we see Jesus can be an important step in actually knowing him. If you imagine Jesus to be unapproachable or dour or aloof, this will obviously impact how you relate to him. The Bible calls this idolatry; when we attribute to God something that he is not. This is precisely why reading the Bible can be so important, because in essence, the Bible is over and over attempting to show us who God really is. Because of our culture, our upbringing, and what others tell us (be that our friends or the media), these aspects offer an "image" of God and this often does not line up to what the Scriptures say about him. The more and more we can imagine (i.e., to simply form a mental picture) the real Jesus, the better we can know him and how he relates to us in our daily lives. When that occurs, things can open up for us in knowing who God really is.

Here are a couple of verses from the Bible that you can read that perhaps can help you "re-imagine" who God really is:

He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;  he rescued me because he delighted in me.

Psalm 18:16-19

I'll make a list of God's gracious dealings, all the things God has done that need praising, All the generous bounties of God, his great goodness to the family of Israel— Compassion lavished, love extravagant.
 
He said, "Without question these are my people, children who would never betray me."So he became their Savior. In all their troubles, he was troubled, too. He didn't send someone else to help them. He did it himself, in person. Out of his own love and pity he redeemed them. He rescued them and carried them along for a long, long time.

Isaiah 63: 7-9 (The Message)

The Messy Journey to Simply Believe

Our critical day is the not the very day of our death; but the whole course of our life. I thank him that prays for me when my bell tolls, but I thank him much more who instructs me how to live. John Donne

In any journey, you have to start somewhere. Believing in Jesus also has a beginning. Whatever you want to call it -- giving your life to God, becoming born-again, following Jesus, being saved—the Christian journey starts off by believing. A believer is someone, well…who believes. What’s a dictionary say about that word, “belief?” It defines believing as simply the mental act, condition or habit of placing trust or confidence in a person or thing. Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? I like to think of it as a change of mind. I once thought this; now I see it this way. This is what believing is—it’s little more than changing your mind.  

As an example, a case in point of this occurred in our home some years ago. By far the food that Julie and I enjoy the most is Thai. Up to that point, the most risqué thing our boys ate was something called the Ultradog; it’s a unique and messy hot dog from a place here in Grand Rapids called Yesterdog; it’s coated with onions, chili, cucumber shavings, ketchup and mustard (yeah, I know it sounds disgusting, but you’ve got to try one). So one Saturday evening we decided to introduce this southeast Asian cuisine to our sons. Micah, at the time was probably five, and immediately and emphatically expressed his disapproval. “Yuck, no way! Gross!” After finally getting him to the restaurant (yanking and pulling and bribing) and then finally making him take a bite, he bellowed, “Hmmm…This Thai food doesn’t taste half bad!” His mind and taste buds had been transformed. He changed his mind about how tasty Thai food actually was. Put simply, he began to believe in the goodness of Thai food.

Believing in God on one level is similar and is a pretty simple process if you think about it. Whether you are a ten year old at a Bible Camp or the member of some long-lost tribe in Kenya who’s never even seen a book, let alone a Bible, the process is no different:

• You hear and understand that God exists.
• Your life is confronted about who you are through the story of the cross.
• You acknowledge who you are as a sinner and who God is as a Redeemer.
• You begin to believe in God and begin to believe that He can take away your sins.

God made it easy and straight forward in starting a relationship with him. For some of us, it happened when mom came in our room when we were six and prayed for us at our bedtime and then asked us if we wanted “Jesus to come into our heart.” For some others, it happened in high school or college, an arduous intellectual process in which we needed all the facts lined up, and all the apologetics made straight in our mind, and we then made a mental transformation in our belief system. And then for some of us, we were deep in our own broken world, had made a total mess of our lives, maybe we were going from bed to bed or from drink to drink, and saw only one way out and that was the way of Jesus. Believers come in all different shapes and sizes; perhaps they have been Christians for 40 days or as long as 40 years.

There are many ways in which God reaches out to each of us. Often, he is quite imaginative in his approach. Jesus is so in love with us that he will do whatever it takes to be near us, close to us, in relationship with us. There are many ways in which he captivates us and I have heard countless stories and the many different ways in which people come to faith. 1) A guy hands you a tract on the subway. 2) It's late at night, you can’t sleep because of that stupid nasal congestion, and you’re flipping through the channels and you come upon some television preacher. 3) You are all alone in another town on a business trip for three days and on the second day you open up the bedstand table and begin flipping through the book that lies in there. 4) A friend opens up their life to you about Someone who has made a dramatic difference in their life. Many years ago when I was living in Chicago, I heard Joseph Stowell comment during a sermon, “God is like the Canadian Mounty Police…He always get his man.” And in doing so, he comes up with some of the most normal and most odd ways in bridging that gap.

Next time, I will tell you a fairly remarkable story on how one person began to "believe" in Jesus, and overtime God began to bridge this gap from not believing to at least believing just a little bit.