Pondering a No Year's Resolution

Here's an excerpt from a piece that just appeared on our Science for the Church website.

An enthusiastic admirer once rushed up to the Renaissance artist Michelangelo. What was his secret? How did he sculpt The David, the epic 17-foot statue of the biblical king and hero that now stands in the Accademia Gallery in Florence? 

Michelangelo’s answer was simple and profound: He looked at the unformed block of marble and “chipped away all that wasn’t David.” His indeed was the work of negation—the art of No. And through this Michelangelo found the deeper beauty, the more profound yes. That’s why on this December 31, I’m pondering my “No” Year’s Resolution.

This New Year’s Eve I’m looking to Scripture and science to tell me where my life is a block of unformed marble that needs some chipping away.

It all begins for us with the power of no in God’s gift of Sabbath—whether that’s for a day or something much shorter. In these times, Scripture tells us that God gives us a new vision and energy: 

“For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa 30:15, NRSV).

Honestly, the brain science behind this is easy to grasp. When we take breaks and reduce stress, we think better. Herbert Benson at Harvard Medical School suggests that this comes from the release of nitric oxide that fires up feel-good neurotransmitters and slows down stress hormones. 

“It’s a matter of learning to shift our internal biology at will so that we increase production of nitric oxide and the neurotransmitters associated with well-being and increased creativity” Bronwyn Fryer, Harvard Business Review

Will you join me in making a No Year's Resolution? 

Chiseling: The Creation of the Universe and The Art of Negation

Chipping away represents God’s vision. Michelangelo believed that his creative power reflect divine inspiration. Late in life he received the moniker il divino (“the divine one”), though he was more modest than his fans: 

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection." Michelangelo

I’m convinced the Creator knows what art--and especially the art of negation, of saying creative Nos--can look like. God, the supreme Artist, sees our lives as works of art. And this is true artistry since we’re not simply blocks of marble for God to sculpt. 

To shift artists, the nineteenth century master painter, Vincent Van Gogh once wrote his brother, Theo, about God’s amazing skill. 

“Christ… is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh; he makes human beings instead of statues.” Van Gogh 

It’s definitely more difficult to work with living beings—and to use us in the process of chipping away. We resist the chisel. And yet, you might even say that God’s chipping away becomes part of the healing of lives.

            

Saying No through chiseling away at possibilities appears to be God’s method. Scientific discoveries have confirmed that this is the way God has created the masterpiece we call our universe. In forming the world, God also chiseled away. The entire universe has come into existence through a gigantic quantity of No’s. 

Since the 1960s, an astounding set of discoveries reveal that the universe has certain, very specific conditions, which allow for the emergence of conscious, moral creatures. Using anthropos, the Greek word for “human being” (as in anthropology), it’s called the Anthropic Principle, which states that the cosmos is fitted from the beginning for the emergence of life in general and intelligent life in particular. In fact, about thirty discrete, precisely calibrated parameters—such as the expansion rate of the universe, the mass of the universe, the strength of the strong nuclear force, and the ratio of antiprotons to protons—all were needed to produce the universe. Otherwise, it simply would not exist. (Watch this video for a related discovery.) Oxford physicist Roger Penrose has described just one such parameter, the “phase-space volume,” with a number almost impossible to write—a “1” followed by 10¹²³  “0s.” That’s amazingly precise and signifies an almost innumerably amount of No’s.

In other words, the Creator chipped away at an enormous number of possibilities to create this world. God said No many times to create the Yes’s of life. It looks like the creation of beauty, intelligence, goodness depends on what is rejected even more than what is selected. 

And here’s what I figure: if chipping away through the art of negation is good enough for God and the universe, it’s good enough for you and for me, and our lives.

(A Bit More) On the Way to Heaven and Hell

The Last Judgment

Michelangelo's Last Judgement

Michelangelo Buanorroti began painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the age of thirty-five. It was 1510 and it would be seven years until Martin Luther’s nailed his Ninety-Five Theses nailed to the Wittenburg Cathedral door to initiate the Protestant Reformation. But from 1536 to 1541, as he labored on the fresco of The Last Judgment, Rome was feeling the impact of the Protestant revolt against its religious authority. In Michelangelo’s enduring artistic image of the Christ’s judging the world, Christ pronounces the fate of all humankind with awesome finality. The 314 figures clearly divide into two groups. One is raised into the glories of heaven with the Apostles and the Patriarchs. The other, the damned, cower in abject despair. In light of the religious controversies of the day, significantly one man is barely saved by hanging onto the rosary, a symbol of medieval Catholic devotion to the Virgin Mary. 


In addition, as the Princeton theologian, Daniel Migliore, comments, 

The martyrs of the faith who surround Christ seem to take satisfaction in the torment of the damned.

And there Michelangelo—surely one of the world’s greatest artists and intellectuals—reveals a base flaw. His view of the final judgment—and often ours as well—conflates a sincere devotion to God’s sovereignty with a touch of hate for our foes.

            

Jesus Christ is the antidote to these unhelpful notions. In him, we certainly meet our Judge. Yes, Christ will judge all people.  Yes, he will root out evil. But this Judge is also our Savior. I gained a valuable insight from Karl Barth on the nature of Christ’s judgment: the only God we know as Christians is the God who is for us, the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Or as Migliore writes, 

the very same Christ who was crucified and raised for us will also be our judge on the final day.

Snap Shot of Paul taken on my iPhone

Jesus walked on the streets and taught God’s grace. Jesus sat at table with his disciples, saying, “Take and eat. This is my body broken for you.” This judge gave himself for us. Paul says it best in the final verses of Romans 8 as he lifts his rhetoric to truly heavenly heights:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

And to put a coda on this: As I prepare for my class this spring on Rob Bell's Love Wins and the Bible, I realize this is one of Bell's major concerns as well--that somehow we never forget that "God is love" (1 John 4:8). Our vision of our final destiny must always keep in mind that we will meet at loving God. And to be timely, this is the Jesus we also meet at Christmas, "the Word who became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood' (as Eugene Peterson paraphrases John 1:14). 


And that brings me to my usual question, What do you think?


(A postscript: In March, I posted something on "Heaven and Hell" as I took in the controversy over Rob Bell's Love Wins. That post has dwarfed all my others in the number of hits it has received. As I noted, that post, as well as this one, is excerpted from the final chapter of my book, Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Theology and Science--I added the link to Amazon in case my publisher becomes a little uncomfortable with how much I'm putting into my blog.)