A few weeks ago, Pam and I went down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Now, admittedly, we’re not particularly artsy. I’m much more likely to get my picture taken in front of the iconic Rocky Statue and then run up the exterior steps to the art museum while loudly singing the Rocky theme… dun, nun, da… dun, nun, da….  But we like to broaden our perspective of the world and love being in each other’s company, and the art museum was certainly a good place for that.

As we wandered from hall to hall, I noticed that the overwhelming subject of most Medieval and Renaissance art was religious.  Countless pictures from the life of Christ, the Madonna and child, the prophets, creation, the 12 apostles, the crucifixion.  Some of it I liked and others I found to be very odd, but there was no mistake that God and the story of redemption was clearly on the mind of artists of this period. Even the Asian and Middle Eastern sections focused on the transcendent, with deities and religious iconography adorning their pictures and sculptures.

Then we wandered into a section from a more recent time period- the neoclassical, romantics, and impressionists of the 1700’s to late 1800’s.  The art was no longer religious but often reflected the glory of creation- nature scenes, portraits, beautiful landscapes, flowers, gardens, and pictures of peaceful urban and rural life.  Again, some of it I found beautiful and some quite… unusual, but most everything celebrated or at least corresponded to the majesty of the world we see around us. God may not have been acknowledged by the artists, but his beauty, order and purpose were clearly evident.

THEN, we got to the modern/contemporary wing.  Pam said quite directly, “I’m not wasting my time in there.” I always know where I stand with my wife!

“Let me take a peek,” I said.  “I’ll just breeze through.”

Wow. I knew what I would find. Talk about depressing. Everything looked harsh, random, abstract, and coarse.  If they were trying to capture the emptiness of modern life or trying to provoke feelings of hopelessness and dreariness, the artists were immanently successful.  I know I’m showing my lack of culture and sophistication, but a lot of the stuff left me saying, “How is that art?  I could do that!”

Case in point, was a large rectangle of gray paint displayed prominently on a wall.  There was no apparent variation in the color or texture, nor was there any caption or title that I could see.  Was this an area of the museum that was being remodeled?  But no, it was mounted on a canvass and intentionally placed with the artist’s name beside it. They should have titled it, “Painted Gray Wall” or “I suckered a rich guy and a museum curator out of $10,000.”

I took a photo of another drawing and texted it to my friend John Beiler.  He has a six-year-old granddaughter named Cassie.  “I didn’t know Cassie submitted one of her Sunday school coloring pages to the art museum!” I texted. He replied, “Except no one pays to see her “art”! Ouch. Touché.

Some of the modern art was intentionally provocative. One room had a recreation of an abandoned urban alley, complete with old shoes, rotten bananas, and condom wrappers.

I mean no disrespect to modern artists, but I walked away sad.  Sad that they had nothing better to say or focus on.  Sad that in a world full of God’s beauty and magnificent glory, they chose to represent emptiness, meaninglessness, and futility. Sad that this was the best that our society (or at least this museum) has to offer in contemporary art. (For the record, I do believe there’s a place for art that causes us to reflect on the human condition and the complexity of modern life.)  But I’ve got to hand it to them, these artists were honest in presenting their world view. They consistently represented a world without God, hope and purpose.

My trip to the art museum was a visual representation of the truth of Paul’s teaching in Romans 1.  In it he describes in words an intentional process of a journey away from God.

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Romans 1:18-25

If you reject God and walk away from truth, light and beauty, what does it leave you? Well, you can go to the modern art section of any major metropolitan museum and see.

Take the world, but give me Jesus,
all its joys are but a name;
but his love abides forever,
through eternal years the same.

Oh, the height and depth of mercy!
Oh, the length and breadth of love!
Oh, the fullness of redemption,
pledge of endless life above!

~Fanny Crosby, 1820-1915