A common enemy of the Gospel is the belief that I am good enough on my own, and therefore don’t really need God.  It’s a misconception of reality, not taking into account the deep ways that we have wounded others.  John & Charles Wesley typically fought against this in their preaching, and were very good at helping others see the error in this “I”m ok, you’re ok” philosophy.  The reality is that none of us really knows how to love God, love others, even love ourselves.  So Jesus is the pure love of God, revealing to us how to love as God loves.  But more than showing how God loves, Jesus’ atonement sets us free to actually love like that.  And it starts with repentance, a shift from false reality to the real deal.  In his sermon, “On Working Out Your Own Salvation,” John Wesley explained, “because God works, I can work.  Because God works, I must work.”  This means that God’s love is designed to unlock our own love, and set us free to creatively and truly love God, others, even ourselves with the pure love that our own creator has for us.

Rene Magritte was a surrealist painter throughout the early/mid 20th century.  His paintings were simplistic, straightforward, and yet evoked a sense of unsettling mystery.  Each panel in my comic today is a take on a different Magritte painting, so let’s look at them in order.  “The Human Condition,” (see it here) leads you to believe that what’s in the painting must perfectly represent what is hidden behind the canvas through the window.  “The Treachery of Images,” (see it here) leads you to doubt what you see, for a picture of a pipe is not actually a pipe.  “Not to be Reproduced,” (see it here) shows a book correctly reflected in a mirror, but not the man…the book is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, a tale in which the fiction narrator Mr. Pym is constantly alleging that he is real and that Mr. Poe did not actually write his story.  “Clairvoyance,” (see it here) shows a man painting a bird, but looking at an egg, revealing that he sees the full potential of the still life object. My next to last panel comes from a series “The Son of Man,” “Man in a Bowler Hat,” and “The Pilgrim,” each revealing things as hidden but also as they really are, with the final image showing someone who is on a journey towards fulfillment.  The last panel is from “The Unexpected Answer,” (see it here) showing an unusual way to get through a door, but also the wonder of stepping into the unknown.

I am not trying to force religious meaning onto Magritte’s work, his paintings stand on their own.  However, I think the mystery behind his brand of surrealism can help us understand the mystery of the Christian faith.