Of Bob and Michelangelo, all joking aside (maybe)

Over my spring break this past week I had the opportunity to spend time with one of my good friends from Kalamazoo, Bob Stewart. We hung out on two occasions, the first time at Fourth Coast Café, and the second at Rocket Star Café.

While Bob and I sat at Fourth Coast, we discussed how quirky and unamusing it would be to recount to others what took place there that night. So, for the sake of insignificance, this pretty much sums it up:

We got there, Bob ordered coffee, and I lemonade (which Bob kindly bought me—thank you, Bob). After going upstairs to avoid second-hand smoke, we took our seats at a table cornered into a brick wall (i.e., two sides of the table were set against the wall, and there were only two chairs facing the other sides; so Bob and I sat not across from one another, but adjacent to each other). We then discussed the ordeal of my wisdom teeth extraction. Next we talked a little bit about what each of us was planning for school in coming terms. After that we read a few poems by Seamus Heaney, an Irish poet. Since he is Catholic, and some of his poems have religious overtones, we began to discuss baptism, and soon infant baptism. After that we began to talk about our cell phones, and we played with them for a while. Then we put lotion on our hands. Yes, we did.

Afterward I told Bob, “You know, I feel pretty good about putting on lotion here. Not in a haughty or prideful way, or in a physical way, as though it was sensually pleasing. Nope, it just didn’t feel that awkward, and I didn’t let any thoughts about the fact that it might have been out of place enter my mind. I pretty much just feel good—not prideful, not guilty, and not metrosexual—about putting lotion on my hands just now, sitting here in the coffee shop.”

A few days later, when we were at Rocket Star, we discussed, as my father would say, “the weightier matters of life”—like God and the universe, and our different views of such things. We found ourselves discussing varying concepts of God, and Bob was saying how he could not appreciate the thought of God as a bearded face outside of the universe, looking upon it. By some twist of fate (but it was not a far stretch from where we were) a certain section of Michelangelo’s ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel came up, “The Creation of Adam.” Intending insult neither to God nor Michelangelo’s art, Bob captured the ridiculous nature of the artist’s depiction of such a monumental moment of beginnings with this comment: “It’s like, what are you pointing at, jack***?”

Now, as I said, Bob meant neither to blaspheme the Christian God, nor to insult the matchless artwork of a master painter. Nevertheless, I thought his comment was telling of the kind of anthropomorphic image for God this piece of artwork has perpetuated in the minds of many Christians since its first revealing. Indeed, as Christians we do not believe God the Father to have any body; he is both invisible and incorporeal. It is one thing to portray our Lord Jesus in religious art, for he was and is flesh and blood like the rest of the human race. But to what extent is it actually beneficial for us to depict God our Father, who truly is unseen?

What do you think ?