Enemies at the Gate: Christian Intolerance

Your Jelly Fish version of Chrissianity (sic) is well documented…great job “coverting”(sic) souls to Christ with you gummy bear Jelly bean Jesus version of the Gospel! You guys are well defined by this little piece appropriately called “Back Rubs 4 Jesus” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=mohixsVRNdc ) Ha! That suits your sweet, sweet, candy cane Chrissianity (sic) just fine! What a farce! Chocolate Soldiers every one of you!

www.officialstreetpreachers.com

This was a recent comment on an article I wrote about the largely negative consequences of extolling a gospel of hell and damnation; http://sharpiron.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/intimacy-not-intimidation/#comment-1209

There were other more reasoned responses, some of them even suggesting that my position may be exaggerated, but I think the digestion of this one particular remark is the proof of the pudding. Although this fellow’s ‘ministry’ is a little over the top and would garner little sympathy among many of us, his wording is not really that outrageous. I find it to be similar to what has been expressed by many conservative Christians.

There seems to be a lot of resistance to the idea of remembering Jesus primarily as he has been portrayed in the Gospels. Many of the arguments I hear say that the image of Jesus found in the Gospels, the patient, loving, peaceful and tolerant peasant, fond of little children and the lame as well as lepers, prostitutes and thieves, represents only one aspect of God. There is also God the punisher, the wrathful, the one who hates sin to such a degree that he cannot tolerate sinners. It is said that this picture of God can be found throughout the Old Testament as well as in John’s Revelation. I personally don’t see this vision in scriptures, but nevertheless, I don’t believe that this is the real reason why so many are fond of this stern and vengeful depiction of God.

I think this attraction stems from an ingrained need for people to identify with a group and the accompanying urge to keep those who do not conform outside of the tribe. A sense of insecurity pervades many churches, a fear that the flock will be corrupted by the sin of others. In practice this makes it easier for us to ignore some of the deeper meanings of Jesus’ teachings; those about unconditional forgiveness, love, mercy and tolerance. We often find it easier to accept Levitical exhortations against homosexuality rather than Jesus’ command not to judge others. (Matt 7: 1-2) [For more thoughts on why we have this tendency towards conformity check out this thread on 'Suddenly Christian' ; http://johnshore.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/why-must-others-be-like-us/]

We pay lip service to our slogans welcoming everyone to our churches, becoming gate keepers instead. When we forget that our churches are made up of nothing but sinners we find ourselves taking pleasure in our own salvation, even cultivating a sense of pride in our privileged position with God. We learn to notice those characteristics of the ‘saved’ versus the ‘unsaved’ and find ourselves, perhaps unconsciously, avoiding those who do not meet what we believe are God’s standards. We forget that God loves the sinner, the pagan, just as much as he loves each of us within the church. If he can find value in our lives, working through us and with us, what makes us think that he is not doing the same with them?

Though told to go out into the world and feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the imprisoned, we tend to restrict these activities to our fellow church members. Perhaps just the idea of membership is the problem. Our churches take on the character of Coast Guard rescue vessels, our pastors at the helm while the rest of us serve as crew. We gallantly ply the treacherous seas of this world, searching for souls that need saving and hauling them on board. Not a bad analogy, perhaps, until the ‘saved’ realize that unless they agree with the captain’s theology or the crew’s uniform standards he may find himself tossed into the drink once again. It is easy to find yourself shunning the sinner when your theology tells you that God considers them fuel for the fires of hell.

How did we get to this point where we have “captains’ manning the helms and steering us into waters that appear to be Biblical yet turn out to be dangerously shallow? Why do those of us who claim to have met the risen Jesus feel the need for the guidance of generation upon generation of authoritarian pastors, vicars, priests and bishops? Could it be that a man-made hierarchy within the church contributes to the “common sense” that there is also another hierarchy; that of the churched versus the un-churched, the saved versus the un-saved?

In the second century, Irenaeus, Bishop of Gaul and student of Polycarp became alarmed at the lack of cohesiveness within the early church’s theology. He took it upon himself to identify those teachings that were false (heresies) and had a tremendous amount of influence over what became today’s canon as well as much of today’s church doctrines and dogmas. Although not everything he taught has been included in common church doctrine, much of it was first enunciated by him, including the idea that scripture was divinely inspired. Some of what we find most controversial to this day is grounded in his personal theology. http://www.lessonsonline.info/IRENAEUS%20OF%20LYONS.htm

One of the greatest challenges that he faced was how to go about establishing the authority that he (and other church leaders) needed to mandate what was truth and what was not. With this in mind he was able to find biblical and historical justification for “apostolic succession”; the idea, for example, that John the Apostle (allegedly) taught Polycarp who taught Irenaeus and so on and so forth. Once his authority was established those that disagreed with him were labeled as heretics and expelled from the congregation. No dissent, no compromise, no question was tolerated. Unfortunately, this is the model that the church chose to adopt. Elaine Pagels, in Beyond Belief notes that, like our clergy of today ” Irenaeus promises that he will explain for them what the scripture really means and insists that only what he teaches is true”. This stands in stark contrast to the type of discourse that can be found in most synagogues, where the rabbi and congregants remember how Abraham and Moses would question God, even getting him to change his mind on occasion.

Jesus challenged the religious authorities of his time; with their policies of excluding those who did not meet their standards of righteousness. He did not seem to be interested in establishing a new religion in his name but instead on shaking things up for the religious status quo. When asked, he tells people to follow his way, to be like him. He says that all of the law hangs on the commandment to love God and love each other. He tells us to love our enemies. He says that those who feel hate for anyone at all are at great risk. He says that the world will know that we are his followers by our love. He says all these things and then he hangs out with hookers and thieves. He tells one thief that he will take him to paradise, no strings attached. He embraced and healed lepers, who were thought to be guilty of terrible sexual sins.

This new religion, Christianity, soon became something that was rarely identifiable with the example of Christ. When weak they were persecuted by the Romans and displayed the strength one finds with God’s grace and mercy. Upon becoming strong, the church took on the role of persecutor and those dissidents that suffered at their hands now took on the role of Christ crucified, dying for what they held to be the truth. Today there are those who seek God but because their sin is seen so differently from many others they now stand outside the gate. If Jesus would invite them in, who are we to keep them out? Perhaps more importantly, what human has the authority to demand such inhospitality?

What’s In God’s Name?

 I thought this was interesting: (from Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

 Let’s call God Allah

by Mohammed Abdelrahman & Nicolien den Boer*

14-08-2007

The Bishop of Breda, Tiny Muskens, wants people to start calling God Allah. He says the Netherlands should look to Indonesia, where the Christian churches already pray to Allah. It is also common in the Arab world: Christian and Muslim Arabs use the words God and Allah interchangeably.

Speaking on the Dutch TV programme Network on Monday evening, Bishop Muskens says it could take another 100 years but eventually the name Allah will be used by Dutch churches. And that will promote rapprochement between the two religions.

Muskens doesn’t expect his idea to be greeted with much enthusiasm. The 71-year-old bishop, who will soon be retiring due to ill health, says God doesn’t mind what he is called. God is above such “discussion and bickering”. Human beings invented this discussion themselves, he believes, in order to argue about it.

More than 30 years ago Bishop Muskens worked in Indonesia and, there, God was called Allah, even in Catholic churches. The Dutch should learn to get on spontaneously with different cultures, religions and behaviour patterns:

“Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years. In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can’t we start doing that together?”

In the Arab world God is called Allah. The long history of Christianity in the Arab world led to the development of a rich Christian-Islamic theological vocabulary, which makes God a normal equivalent to Allah. Both Muslims and Christians use the word in the Middle East.

ar-Rabb
Apart from Allah, the term ar-Rabb (the Lord) is also widely used, although this appears far more often in the Arabic version of the Bible than in the Qur’an. In the Islamic context, references to ar-Rabb are normally found in the possessive form, such as Rabbi (My Lord). Interestingly, the word Allah was already in use by Christians in the pre-Islamic period.

Bishop Muskens proposal will undoubtedly receive a warm welcome from the Islamic community in the Netherlands. Particularly as it follows last week’s remarks by Geert Wilders about banning the Qur’an and, shortly before that, former Muslim Ehsan Jami’s comparison of Muhammad with Osama bin Laden.

Attention
Perhaps this is the reason Bishop Muskens’ remarks have received so much attention in the Dutch press. The bishop actually said exactly the same several years ago. He also suggested abolishing Whit Monday as a national holiday in favour of an Islamic religious day.

In the past, Bishop Muskens has offended many Muslims. In 2005 he said Islam was a religion without a future because it had too many violent aspects. The bishop is also responsible for a number of controversial remarks. He caused uproar in the Netherlands when he said the poor had a right to steal bread if they were hungry. And he put the Vatican’s back up with an appeal for the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/ned070814mc

 Well? What do you think?

Just War: A Theological Cop Out?

Over on the Sojourner’s blog they have posted an interview with one Father George Zabelka who was a Roman Catholic chaplain stationed with the Army Air Force on Tinian near the end of the war in the Pacific. Over the years he has come to seriously reconsider his position at that time, his complicity in the atomic bomb attacks on Japan as well as his own faith. Here are just some of the things he shared in the interview::

“The whole structure of the secular, religious, and military society told me clearly that it was all right to “let the Japs have it.” God was on the side of my country. The Japanese were the enemy, and I was absolutely certain of my country’s and Church’s teaching about enemies; no erudite theological text was necessary to tell me. The day-in-day-out operation of the state and the Church between 1940 and 1945 spoke more clearly about Christian attitudes toward enemies and war than St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas ever could….”

“…. seventeen hundred years of Christian terror and slaughter should arrive at August 9, 1945, when Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t.”

“…as I see it, until the various churches within Christianity repent and begin to proclaim by word and deed what Jesus proclaimed in relation to violence and enemies, there is no hope for anything other than ever-escalating violence and destruction.”

Father Zabelka has much more to say on this subject, and unlike most of us, he has the first hand experience to back up his position. I highly recommend reading this moving interview. You can find it here :

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=advanced_search.article&issue=soj8008&article=800812

Working Off the Books or Extra Credit Towards Salvation?

It would seem that, among the many Christian denominations , there is a nearly uniform consensus that belief in Jesus as God is essential for eternal salvation. Since the beginning of the Church many learned men and women have formulated different theologies but almost all of them would have at least this much as a foundation.

But is it reasonable to assume that this is so? And if this happens to be the case, is this the only requirement for salvation or are there further steps that need to be taken?

Not everyone can even seem to agree on what ’salvation’ is. There are those, probably in the majority, who see salvation as an eternal existence with God, in Heaven. The alternative to this salvation is generally thought of as being consigned to eternal suffering in a place called Hell. (My thoughts on the validity of Heaven and Hell are written elsewhere on this blog so there is no need to pursue that line at this time.)

Other Christians see salvation as being a divine release from the emotional and psychological pain of human bondage, often coupled with a heavenly reward as well. But a reward for what?

If we hail from one of the more works-driven traditions, such as Roman Catholicism, then we are rewarded for a life well lived, engaging in acts of charity and mercy as well as adhering to religious laws and traditions. Protestants on the other hand feel that no amount of work or action on the part of the believer can ever earn God’s approval, as God is perfectly holy. In this case it is only the good graces of God who spare the believer from a punishment that he deserves only too well.

But in neither case does it seem that only God’s grace is the means of salvation. Just the personal decision to accept God as lord is an action in itself. Our salvation would seem to require at least some effort on our part.

(The Calvinists get around this by saying that we are not allowed this choice, that God has determined before time began who would be saved and who would not. The doctrine of election is point that divides the church, if only on academic grounds. But is it really necessary to craft these tortuous explanations, when we may be only addressing the problems inherent to other equally artificial explanations?)

Our salvation apparently required an effort on God’s part as well, resulting in the sacrifice of his son as an atonement for our sins. And scripture is clear on how important our individual actions actually are. “Faith without works is dead” (James 2: 14-17) and the disciple of Christ will grow “fruit of the spirit”(Galatians 5: 22-24), attitudes and actions that would identify the true believer as such.

When Peter asks Jesus what he should do to prove his love for him, Jesus repeatedly tells him to ‘feed my sheep’ (John 21: 15-17) Even with this and other clear cut instructions from Jesus, the idea that God requires more from us than a mere profession of faith is not something that Protestants tend to emphasize. In fact, it is often stressed that no matter what a person does, he can not lose his salvation – “once saved always saved”.

I wonder where we find the biblical basis for this unambiguous doctrine. It is possible for someone to exhibit mean spirited, even evil behavior throughout their lives and stay confident that once they said the sinner’s prayer their salvation was assured. Of course an intentional lifestyle along these lines would likely be hypocritical so perhaps all bets are off. But what of the deluded person who does not see the error of their ways? (this may describe most of us)

I would hesitate to suggest what God may do with anyone, whether they appear good, or bad (by my standards). Yet many Christians do not hesitate to make assumptions about the fate of those whom they call the ‘unsaved’.

I know personally (and you probably do as well) people of other faiths or even of no faith, who seem to more closely follow the ways of Jesus than quite a few of our pew-mates. I have heard many people say that it doesn’t matter how good a person you are, if you have not professed acceptance of Jesus as God and King, then you are hell bound. Of course, the converse of that would be that no matter what you say or do, publicly or privately, if you are one of those ’saved’ by your profession of faith, then you will be with him in eternity.

Does anyone else see a problem with this? Oh, I expect to hear from people who will say that I am denying God’s word, but when I read the Bible I don’t see this doctrine (even in John 3:18 – this conversation with Nicodemus can be interpreted differently). I speak regularly with a number of atheists, mostly on the net. They seem to be fairly riled up over a lot of things that religious people say and do, but in my experience this particular doctrine of the elect seems to antagonize them the most. One of my concerns is that if this doctrine is not even biblical then what damage is it doing to our ability to share the Gospel with skeptics?

St. Paul says this in his letter to the Romans:

When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman. The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ takes into account all these differences. Romans 2:14-16

Jesus himself once said this of a pagan, a man who professed Caesar as god incarnate and messiah:

Taken aback, Jesus said, “I’ve yet to come across this kind of simple trust in Israel, the very people who are supposed to know all about God and how he works. This man is the vanguard of many outsiders who will soon be coming from all directions—streaming in from the east, pouring in from the west, sitting down at God’s kingdom banquet alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then those who grew up ‘in the faith’ but had no faith will find themselves out in the cold, outsiders to grace and wondering what happened.” Matthew 8:10-12

So what is it that God requires of us? Is it the belief in God that is important or is it our faith in his Way, a faith that some non-believers seem to hold as well? Is an atheist who holds faithfully to the ‘golden rule’ somehow less in God’s eyes than a believer who has trouble keeping it? I would suggest that none of us, even though we may believe, have the right to pronounce death sentences on those who do not.

Is it Time to Reconsider Luther?

The following article was written by our friend and contributor, Abrosia De Milano:

Maybe protestants have followed the wrong Reformer. Was it truly Martin Luther whom God called out of the malaise of the Renaissance to correct His church and lead a new movement back to the true church? Can an argument be made that it was Erasmus, one who never left the Roman Catholic Church, who was the true torch-bearer of reform?

Erasmus can be called the Renaissance Man, par excellence. He embodied
the time in that he was at once scholar, humanist, monk; he was a humorist, linguist; a genius, if any ever existed, and an advocate of peace between people—even of peace towards his enemies.

Erasmus’ work The Complaint of Peace reminds the reader that Jesus had spoken the
imperative “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” He did not hide behind the excuse that the state had a right of self-defense, and that Christians ought to support war. Erasmus writes, “No greater enemy of goodness or of religion can be found.”

Humanism—not the secular humanism that rejects God—was the mark of Erasmus’ intellectual endeavors. It was not that man was the measure, but that God had endowed humanity with great gifts. These gifts had to be recognized, and drawn out to see the full glory of God that dwells in humanity. He followed the great tradition of the Dutch humanists. This led his work to be marked by an irenic spirit, one that seeks peace and reconciliation, in contrast with Luther’s fury.

It can be said that Erasmus would be one to whom Kant might say “Understanding is sublime, wit is beautiful” (From Kant’s Of the Beautiful and the Sublime). This could not be said of Luther.

Luther was seeking to overwhelm the perceived ignorance of his opponents with scalding critique. He sought to maintain enmity, rather than find common ground with which to carry on intellectual conversation. Calvinist scholar R. C. Sproul writes this of Luther, “The first key to Luther’s profile is found in his tempestuous outbursts of anger and his intemperate language. He was fond of calling his critics ‘dogs’. . . . his language was at times earthy, salted with scatological references” (The Holiness of God, p. 75).

Is this intemperate one, this man who used insult and invective to blast his intellectual and theological opponents, the Chosen One of the Reformation? Perhaps this title was given too easily to such a one as Luther. Maybe it is time Protestants (and Baptists, and other evangelicals) rethought Luther. Maybe it is time to transfer the reins of our faith to a man of peace, one of those opponents whom Luther engaged as one engages a hated enemy. Maybe it is time to consider Erasmus as the True Reformer—or to look elsewhere altogether—as to the one whom God truly called to speak out the abuses and sins of the established church of the 16th century.

Shoot the Messengers (Why Fire and Brimstone Preaching is Evil)

In what is often seen as the most famous sermon in American history, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741) Jonathan Edwards paints this vivid portrait of our Father in Heaven;

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

Jesus told us to spread the Good News. He told us that people would know us by our love for one another. Jesus was a man of forgiveness, peace, compassion, non-violence – love. When asked what God the Father was like, he told his disciples that because they knew him they would know the Father, that they could see the Father by seeing him. He called our Father abba, or daddy.

Of course, God the Father is not a man in flowing robes with long curly blond hair, light complected and with blue eyes. (Neither was Jesus) But you get my point. And we should get Jesus’ point as well. The only part of the Father that Jesus could reveal to us was that of God’s nature, his ‘personality’. He did this through what he said and more importantly what he did, especially what he did for us on the cross.

So why have we had to endure the terrifying and vile language of those such as Edwards and his spawn? Of course, Edwards was not alone. Many, perhaps most, leaders in the Christian (and Muslim) church have preached of hell and damnation. The medieval Roman Catholic church was so obsessed with God the torturer and inquisitor that they nobly and piously followed his ‘example’. At the First Great Awakening (1730-1740) there was a great upsurge in Protestant fire and brimstone rhetoric which has lasted to this day, though there have been those who have long stood apart from this philosophy, such as the Quakers.

Rabbis Michael Shevack and Jack Bemporad, in a book called “Stupid Ways, Smart Ways, to Think About God”, have coined the phrase “Marquis de God”. They suggest that he’s regarded by many as the ‘proverbial God of wrath, ready to show how much he cares by punishing you, the Marquis de God, despising sinners so much he exterminates them”.

(Not very long ago there was a church convention being advertised on the radio, a convention devoted to discussing the qualities of hell. Somehow their researchers had determined that the fires of hell burned at more than 2,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit! Yet no one would die in those flames, they would merely burn like candlewicks for all eternity. What type of monster is their God?)

But where do we get these crazy ideas? Even more importantly, why do we embrace them?

I don’t believe it is because of anything that is expressly stated within the Bible. Many of these hellish concepts are not biblical in the least, having been tacked on throughout the ages. I have heard many say that this is the result of a natural tendency on our part to project ourselves onto the nature of the deity, subconsciously endowing him with all the malevolent characteristics that we naturally abhor in ourselves and others. But, I think it is more sinister than that.

Throughout history there have been leaders – pharoahs, kings, queens, presidents, dictators- who have been more than willing to stretch the truth beyond any rational breaking point merely to maintain their rule of authority. This is a natural tendency of man and we know that power will almost always corrupt the powerful. Jesus’ message always stressed the strength in our weaknesses, our brokenness above the whole and strong. Yet the Church has always had a way of forgetting that particular thread that runs through the Gospels and even the Bible as a whole. The Church becomes strong and rules the rulers of the western world. Even after splintering into 10,000 limbs that live apart from each other, each individual denomination strives for dominance over the others. Our leaders become popular, powerful, rich and famous, bending the ears of millions as well as those who rule those millions.

Like all leaders who begin to doubt their abilities to govern based upon the merits of their philosophies, they inevitably resort to fear as the primary incentive for loyalty. In the past the Church has used the threat of horrifying torture, both in this world and in the next, to keep people in line. Protestants generally have relied solely upon the threat of eternal torment in the after-life(although they have been known to burn a heretic or two themselves).

“As the souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the divine vengeance by burning them on earth.”

~ “Bloody” Mary, Queen of England, 1553-1558

Today the stick is still used more often than the carrot. Sure Joel Osteen and friends preach the Gospel of prosperity, but they are only using reverse psychology. If you don’t do things their way you will not only miss out on prosperity but you will very likely remain mired in the trap of poverty. Even some elements of the liberal wing of the Church have found success in using scare tactics to meet their agenda, using the threat of global warming to frighten people into embracing a socially active Gospel.

To what good is it to preach the Gospel if we are not at least trying to live the Gospel? And how are we living the Gospel, how are we emulating Jesus, when we bully and scare people into turning towards God? How many of us, because of this style of ‘evangelizing’ know the message with our heads but not by heart?

When it comes to spreading the Good (or the Bad) News it would appear that the messenger may actually be the message.

*If God Is In The Details Why Does Genesis Offer So Few?

All things are possible with God. So it could very well be that the universe was created precisely as it has been laid out in the book of Genesis. Science certainly has not been able to prove otherwise, but for many of us the culmination of the evidence does paint a slightly different picture.

It is often said that God is in the details. The closer we scrutinize nature and observe its intricate workings the more God reveals himself to us. We often come upon paradoxes that would only seem to be explicable as long as there is some benevolent intellect at work behind the scenes. (For example: proteins are manufactured in cells yet cells need proteins to exist).

But if God is in the details, Genesis surely does not present us with too many of them. Perhaps the creation account is correct but the picture it paints has been made with broad, flowing strokes of the author’s brush. Perhaps there was no felt need at the time to be very detailed and precise in describing the process of God’s creativity. We should remember that the Bible was originally an oral history. How much detail could be retained and then passed on from generation to generation? How much detail was even necessary to convey God’s message of love and beauty? We need only to look around and it is all there for us to behold.

As creation surrounds us, it bedazzles us, inspires us and nurtures us. It also intrigues us. Being creatures in his image we are obsessed with the rest of God’s creation. The longing for God’s nature drives us to uncover more of his mysteries. How and why do things happen? To what purpose is there to the observable world, if any at all? The more we study our universe the more we learn about ourselves as well as the artist who first imagined us.

There are some very concise (yet hypothetical) explanations by various highly accredited scientists, theologians and philosophers that bring Genesis and science together with little trouble. The problem seems to be that many good people on both sides of this debate feel that the wall of separation is too high to be able to see over.

Maybe both arguments are correct. Before I am accused of relativism here let me try to explain by analogy:

Statement #1) In 1863 Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.
Statement #2) In 1865 the Union finally defeated rebel forces thereby ensuring the emancipation of the slaves held by the Confederate states.

Although both the above statements are true, neither one is complete. Some people may even think that these statements are virtually at odds with each other.

Is it possible that Genesis says all that is necessary but is deliberately lacking the detail to fully explain God’s artistic process, that it describes the picture without identifying the medium or the technique? Isn’t it also possible that secularized science does a good job of identifying the palettes, pixels and mediums involved in the painting yet fails to see the hand of the artist, the passion that the artist has for his work? Every work of art denotes an artist and every artwork is the culmination of an intricate combination of materials and processes used by the artist. It is often hoped by the artist that his work be studied, pondered and examined and that truth may be revealed to the observer in the process. With all good art there are usually more questions raised than answers given but the truth will shine through.

How else could it be in the hands of the Maestro?