From Jim McGuiggan... Calvinist artist and his demands

Calvinist artist and his demands

So this profoundly great painter paints a portrait of a human. He creates a portrait with eyes that can't see and ears that can't hear; a painting with no capacity to understand; one that is incapable of obeying or disobeying unless the artist works a miracle and enables it to obey and he deliberately refuses to do that.

He then steps back and orders the portrait to step out of the frame and thank him for bringing it into existence. Of course the portrait can't hear or understand or choose because the artist deliberately created it that way—it's oblivious to the demands and even if it weren't, it's incapable of doing what's asked of it.

The artist repeats his demands again and again and then takes a knife and slashes the portrait to pieces, scatters the pieces around his feet so he can continue to walk on them and tells himself that what he is doing is sane and morally righteous—even holy, and he's delighted as he slashes and mutilates and walks on the pieces.

Of course the mutilated portrait has been created with no sense of righteousness or moral uprightness so even if it knew what the artist was doing it could feel no true guilt for that would imply a true confession of wrong (of which it was incapable) and it certainly could not experience repentance for it was made incapable of anything like that. So the mutilation serves no moral purpose relative to the mutilated portrait though the artist is enamoured with what he calls his righteous wrath which he says is in response to the portrait's refusal to obey him.

A friend of the artist remarked that none of this made any sense and the artist promptly told the friend that he had no right to question him; after all he was the creator of what he was mutilating, it was his right to do what he wanted. The friend conceded that might have some truth in it but for the artist to pretend that the mutilation was what the portrait deserved was an altogether different matter. The artist insisted he was glorifying himself in the mutilation of the painting and punishing it for not being grateful and giving honour to its creator. The friend said he couldn't see how punishing a painting for not doing what it was ordained to be incapable of doing made sense much less brought glory to the artist. The artist told him that his wisdom and justice was so far above his friend's capacity that there was no point in his friend trying to figure it out—it was inscrutable.

The friend gave up the dialogue but not before telling the artist: You ordained this painting to be incapable of obedience and gratitude so that its lack of obedience is what you ordained independent of the portrait and then when you get what you ordained and wanted from the portrait you mutilate it and call it holy wrath. You say it glorifies you to ordain its mutilation independent of its nature and then you say you mutilate it because of its refusal to thank you. In addition to which, it didn't refuse to obey you—it was incapable of obeying you because you created it that way. The truth is: you chose for it that it would have no choice and then mutilated it for not choosing to obey your demands.

"You're using alien logic" the artist replied as he began to create another painting and another and another for no other reason that to mutilate them and tread them under his feet to demonstrate his glory.

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.