Instead, let me set the pace, let's live together in the tension of unknowing, where trust surprises and delights. Perhaps if Moses was writing today he could have re-worded things a little, something a bit like this: "If I'd wanted you to know everything I would have shown it all to you up front, so don't limit me to what you know. Auto Pilot? Yes, that's the idol we choose, predictable, known, safe, limiting, dumb, fixed, dead. ![]() Showing us that Moses understood the danger of our desire to live on spiritual auto pilot instead of in relationship, with all it's attendant wild, unpredictable beauty. Our tendency to resort to the comfort of dogma at the expense of imagination and meaning, perhaps reveals the motive behind the second commandment. The debate today for a historical or scientifically verifiable narrative has at times clouded the purpose and meaning of the sacred text. Thus the Protestant movement was birthed and with it once again, a turning away from, proscribed, literal tenets towards more abstract, creative thinking.ĭespite the advances of the Reformers, and several theological and cultural cycles since, a new kind of graven image has again become enshrined in our culture: The story itself. These new images seemed freer, bigger, more hopeful than those trapped in statues and stained glass. The official Church ruled supreme and was able to dictate to the populace at will with little to no resistance.īut as new translations of the Bible began to become available, people started forming their own interpretations again, their own mental pictures. By the Middle Ages, with a mostly illiterate population, the church was again using images to tell it's story, keeping the words away from the common people and in a language they could neither read or understand. This was a revelation, it was refreshing, it made sense and it worked - for a time.ĭespite the new clarity that Christ brought, the struggle for meaning continued over centuries. Pictures had failed, words had failed, now there was a new story, a living one. Meaning had once again been sacrificed in favor of literal dogma.Ĭhrist moved things even further ahead. It was brilliant and it worked - for a time.īy the time Jesus came on the scene, the cycle was repeating itself, only this time, the beautiful words were being hacked and re hacked into rigid formulas that were imposed and enforced without imagination. You had to supply your own mental images. This dramatically more abstract system, encouraged imagination and greater intellectual creativity, because the stories were no longer illustrated. So the Ten commandments outlawed pictures, enshrining the heroes and patriarchs in stories and words alone. People were being led astray from the meaning of the symbols to the symbols themselves, they were no longer “getting it”. In other words the pictures were telling the stories too well and little was being left to the imagination. The problem was that images had a tendency of telling the stories of life and eternity too literally. Egypt was a particularly artistic place, there were pictures everywhere. The first order of the day was to disassociate themselves from Egypt. Its like they have had their war of independence, but now have to put together their constitution and start nation building. Well, let’s go back to the story in Exodus 20, Moses has led the people out of Egypt and is laying the foundation for a new nation. His caution against being painted was due to his understanding and response to the second commandment which is not just in the Bible it’s in the top ten of the Bible’s most important statements - right? Yes, it is, and it's not just in the top ten, it's in the top two! it comes in very near the top of the charts. Happy in the knowledge that if there was any trouble, someone else was going to be getting it, not him. This offer was accepted and the gardener duly sat for his portrait. She responded by offering to accept any negative consequences from above on his behalf in the event that all heaven should break loose in anger against him for having his picture painted. He refused at first, saying that God would be angry with him if someone were to depict his likeness. Many years ago when I was on a painting expedition in the Himalayan Foothills of Pakistan, I asked the daughter of the family I was staying with if she would mind asking the Wizened old gardener who worked for them to sit for his portrait. ![]() The second commandment, seems on the surface to be bad news for artists, it sounds like "Don't paint any pictures", "No sculpture allowed." “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:” Exodus 20:4.
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