God,
the Artist
By
Stephen Terry
Sabbath
School Lesson Commentary for March 10 – 16, 2012
“Then
the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7,
NIV
Many artists and sculptors have given their best efforts
to attempts to reproduce the beauty of the human form. Names which immediately
spring to mind are Donatello, Michelangelo, and Rodin. However, at best, their
creations can only pay homage to the beauty of the creative power of the One
who sculpted the original. This is rightly so, for which is greater, the
original Artist or the one who attempts to recreate the original work.
Whether, as Christians, we are among those who believe the
earth has been around for only a few thousand years or we are among those who believe
that the earth’s age is measured in eons, we cannot deny that the Bible writers
wrote from a premise that all that we see came from the hands of a Divine
Creator. The Artist who fashioned our universe, our world, and our beings
exhibited unfathomable attention to detail. I once encountered an artist who
shared with me a charcoal drawing he had done of an old house. Every shingle,
every texture was unique and distinct. Even though it was an inanimate object,
it evoked admiration for the incredible detail he had brought to his work. I
doubted I could ever come close to reproducing such an image. I realized my
limitations. If this is true for a house, how much more would it be for a
living creature? How many magnitudes of complexity beyond that would a human
be?
No wonder, Shakespeare, through the character Hamlet,
pronounced “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in
faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an
angel, in apprehension how like a god!” Hamlet Act 2, scene 2. The Bible also
waxes eloquent with praise over this act of creation. “What is man, that thou
art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast
made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and
honour.” Psalm 8:4-5, KJV
There is a magnificent depth to God’s artistry. When we
read the account of man’s creation in Genesis, we discover that the name Adam
is derived from the Hebrew word הָֽאָדָ֗ם
(Haadam – the ground). It is also the Hebrew word for “red.’ In my youth I was
assigned to an army post near Augusta, Georgia. One of the things I remember
about that assignment was the abundance of red, Georgia clay that I saw while
in Georgia. To this day, I fancifully imagine that God might have used some
ancient predecessor to that rich, red clay to fashion our forebears. No doubt,
those Georgians who take pride in their home state would eagerly agree with the
vitality to be found in the red earth under their feet. However, it is not just
the materials the Artist used that glorify the Artist.
Since the first artists, the human form has been a focus
of constant study. Even the ancient Greeks had a formula, the golden ratio, for
determining the exact ratios for the perfect human form. Later, Leonardo da
Vinci’s Vitruvian Man exemplified this
relationship between mathematical ratios and perfection in the human form.
Others, such as Francis Galton, have attempted to demonstrate that the average
of the measurements from all human beings gives us the exact proportions of
beauty. Yet, no matter how beauty is defined, the artist is hard put to
approach the sublime artistry of the original.
In spite of this, we seem to be endowed with creative
attributes that at least encourage us to try to emulate our Creator in His
creativity. Our opposable thumbs have given us the ability to fashion and shape
in incredible ways. We have used this to heavenly purposes in fashioning art
that calls forth the most beautiful impulses from the human heart. But we have
also used these abilities to bring forth some of the most hellish images and
weapons imaginable. To add to the complexity of the wonder of our creation, we
even have the ability to fashion tools that we can use to fashion other tools
that will assist us in our creative endeavors.
As if this were not enough, God has endowed us with one
of the most intrinsic aspects of art as we define it. He gave us the ability to
use and appreciate color. Granted, He has not given us the ability to see
directly the entire spectrum of colors, such as infrared, but even there, we
have the ability to fashion tools to overcome this obstacle. This sets man
uniquely apart from those creatures that may be able to see other spectrums but
cannot manufacture aids to enhance their visual perception.
Perhaps even more astounding is man’s ability to turn his
artistic ability loose on himself. Are one’s proportions due to age or genetics
not close enough to the norm for beautification? No fear. That can easily be
adjusted invasively through surgery or non-invasively with cosmetics and artificial
supports and enhancements. Is that not enough? Then one’s image can be enhanced
digitally to achieve perfection. Sadly, the end result of all of this is not
happiness because of all the options available. Instead it is often a heavy
burden of trying to achieve the perfection seen as a result of all of this wizardry
by normal means in the belief that the images advanced are attainable bin this
way. Just as no boy can hope to achieve the results of today’s Olympian body
builders with simply working out with the weights but must also have chemical
helpers, so the artificial beauty created and advanced by society is also not
realistic.
So what is God’s plan in all of this? What does the Artist
say? He states, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you
with unfailing kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3, NIV God has not fashioned us to carry
the burdens of unrealistic expectations of what we should or should not look
like. He fashioned us according to His unique purposes. We are as individually
unique as the snowflakes He gently showers us with from the winter skies. In
that frozen artistry is a lesson for us. Just as those snowflakes glorify God
with their uniqueness, we glorify Him through ours. It seems significant that
when God had the opportunity to create a companion for Adam, He did not create
a double. Instead of likeness, he created beauty through difference.
God is a Creator who founded our world in diversity. He is
likely just as pleased by mankind’s discovery of the interplay of light and
color so personified by Impressionism as by the artistic principles revealed in
the precise compositional elements of the Renaissance. When great artistic
movements arise based on certain elements, they are only revealing in a small measure
the depth of the artistry that has infused creation since the beginning.
Students will study for decades under a master painter or sculptor in an
attempt to achieve some special spark of understanding and inspiration that
will propel them to personal success and recognition. However, there is no
greater mentor than God. The depths of His artistry have never been plumbed.
The student who applies themselves to seek to discover and understand His
artisanship will never exhaust the well of knowledge of such a Mentor.
In the presence of God as Mentor, one can only be
humbled. It was God who asked Job, “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can
you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their
seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the
heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?” Job 38:31-33, NIV We
can see from this that the depth of understanding God is able to bring to His
artistry we cannot reproduce even with today’s technology. We may be able to
produce video displays that can reproduce scores of millions of colors, but the
infinite hues available with the color spectrum tell us that in between every
two colors we can produce, there are an infinite number of hues that we cannot but
are nonetheless present in Creation. When we couple this with an infinite
saturation range, we find that the complexity and richness even of the subject
of color is mind boggling.
If this is the case with our ability to understand such
fundamental aspects of the artistry of Creation, then every flower, every bird,
even every human being should bring us to an acknowledgment of God’s superior
artistry. We should desire to reflect on the beauty of His artwork and to
immerse ourselves in the depth of the layers of complexity to be found there. Even
the concept found in the vast diversity of God’s artistic whole based on unique
individuality is inspirational. Bringing together disparate elements, God
nonetheless creates from them a beauty that transcends all expectations of the
individual. Each is important in His overall composition. Without their
uniqueness, the entire work would be diminished.
This Commentary is a Service of Still
Waters Ministry
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