One of my favorite artists of all time is René Magritte. Some of you may already know of him. Others of you may not. But almost everyone would recognize his work. His 1964 portrait entitled The Son of Man, for example, features a man in a top hat with a suspended apple covering his face. The closing scene in the 1999 film starring Pierce Brosnan and René Russo, The Thomas Crown Affair, was undoubtedly inspired by Magritte. What I love about Magritte's work is that it is intellectually stimulating. He challenges viewers to consider their presuppositions and the lenses through which they view reality. And I think this is a good thing. Take his Treachery of Images (below) as an example.
This painting features what appears to be a pipe. But underneath the image are the words "this is not a pipe" written in French. "What do you mean this is not a pipe!?!," you might say, "Just look at it!!! Of course it is a pipe!!!" But in actuality, Magritte is correct. It is not a pipe. It is a picture of a pipe. And that distinction is very important. We often assume that we are looking at something objectively, but in fact, we can't escape the reality that we always look at things through our own particular lens or perspective. And as a result, we all have our own unique way of interpreting the reality that we see. Everything we see, every bit of reality, is processed and interpreted through our own particular perspective or frame of reference. And this, of course, has huge consequences if our frame or reference is ill-informed. So long as your way of seeing things is ill-informed, so will your way of living and relating. Here is another way to think about it: the map is not the territory. We all know this. When you look at a map, you are not actually looking at the physical features that the map is representing. You are looking at representations of those physical features on the map. Now, what if you are trying to find a place and the map is wrong? No matter how hard you try, you simply won't be able to find the place your are looking for.
Where am I going with all of this? Good question.
One of my concerns about how we approach discipleship in the church today is that we tend to focus almost exclusively on modifying a person's outward behavior. So a person becomes a follower of Jesus, and almost immediately, they go to work on adjusting the way they behave externally. They quickly learn how to modify their external behavior so that they fit in with their newfound community. They learn how to say and do the right things, and of course, avoid saying and doing the wrong things. Then we act surprised when this same person confesses down the road that they have a pornography problem, a drinking problem, or some other moral problem. We act surprised because it looked like this person was progressing in the way of Jesus quite nicely. But was he or she actually progressing? Or have we unknowingly mistaken the map for the territory?
You see, a person's external behavior is not always indicative of what is really happening on the inside. A person can act happy but really be sad, act cheerful but really be depressed, act loving but really be filled with hatred, and so on. If we are not careful, we can become a community of professional pretenders. If we want to see people really grow and become more like Jesus Christ in their everyday living, we must go beyond the map, beyond the picture, beyond external behaviors. We must go beyond mere behavioral modification. And instead, we must learn how to talk about and address what is happening on the inside. We need to learn how to stop faking, stop pretending, and invite people to be open and transparent. We need to strive for congruency between the inside and outside and avoid discrepancy between the two. For everything we do flows from what is happening there anyways. And if what is happening there looks like Jesus Christ, then what happens on the outside will naturally follow suit.
No comments:
Post a Comment