Sic Transit Gloria Mundi ("Thus Passeth Worldly Glory")

I'll never forget the tears streaming down my mom's face that morning.

"Notre Dame Cathedral...its burning down," Mom's eyes practically took hold of the screen of her laptop, wishing she could do something.

"How?" I watched my mom tear up further. I don't think she knew. I knew the question was irrelevant. I didn't really matter at all: half of Notre Dame cathedral was burning to the ground, and there was little any of us could do but watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGf8r2JSeuw

I've grown up seeing Cathedrals my whole life. It's funny how as a kid it can either seem like the most magical sight, or it seems neither here nor there. If you were hungry, or you knew something that excited you more was coming or were just tired of walking the cobblestone steps of some of the coolest places you would ever visit, it all didn't matter to you.

Eventually I came to the point of seeing meaning in every sight. By 2017 - our Reformation tour in Europe - everything was starting to make sense, and to become meaningful to me. My Mom's teaching was not in vain!

Notre Dame burning down in 2019 was a tragedy for me as well.

My question really is, why is art so meaningful? And why do I feel it has lost its meaning? Why can't we glorify God, the very way He glorified Himself: by creating beautiful things that show we are made in His image?

Losing the Meaning of Art

I have already been profoundly impacted by my classes this Spring, one of them being Arts and Ideas, a higher-level art appreciation course which allows us to explore not only art and their artists, but the ideas behind each piece. My professor, an inspiration in and of himself, has shown his passion for art and his desire for the glory of God in it all.

Most impactful for me so far, have been the devotionals he has assigned twice a week to engage us with art in Scripture. Overwhelmed with the outstanding collection of art that features in the Bible, including both the tabernacle and the temple, the perversion that comes of art has been moving, to say the least.

Idolatry was forbidden from the beginning of Exodus 20. Nations of the Ancient Near East had been perverting the worship of God by worshipping foreign idols for years. They believed that each statue they would carve could be the god itself, especially if rituals were performed to bring them to life. Israelites were to stay far away from such practices.

I have considered how idolizing creation over the creator is a truly sinful thing. Mankind has almost rejected their own dominion and superiority over what they worship, for God has made man in his image. Man, made in the image of God, should not be worshipping that which is not. How wicked towards God, how patronizing towards ourselves!

But I do not throw a pity party for what we have done, for we do love ourselves quite enough. One might consider the Lament for Tyre from Ezekiel 28:11-19, which is thought to be a symbolic lament for the fall of Lucifer. From someone once thought of as the "signet of perfection" (vs.11), he is now a "profane thing" (vs.16). God's very creation making himself an idol who was "proud because of [his] beauty" (vs.17).

Enamored with the beauty of the world, we diminish the beauty of the world. We deflate the lovely, and fill it with lust and greed, and deceit and sin.

There must be balance

Perhaps you may remember King Hezekiah and the reforms he conducted. This was one I had to read about for my Arts and Ideas devotional:

"He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan)." (2 Kings 18:4)

Israel had struggled for many years with idolatry. I needn't mention the Golden Calf Story from Exodus 32 or their worship of Baal or Asherah, gods of the Canaanites. The Israelites had fallen into idolatry many a time. But more than creating something completely wicked, they had perverted something God had made for good. Nehushtan was the bronze snake the Lord had told Moses to lift up for healing. God was the healer in the situation, the bronze serpent merely an object to remind them to have faith in the Lord.

But they fell into worshipping the bronze snake for healing in their temples. It had to be destroyed.

And I considered this story, when I read of Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497. I am hardly a learned historian on the figure - My Mom would certainly know more than I do, so I will not make judgments on his character. However, a Dominican preacher, Savonarola did take to extremes the destruction of what he labelled "vanities" for the sake of morality. Any item deemed materialistic was simply a stumbling block to the worship of God. Though even the Pope spoke up, Savonarola continued preaching, soon labelled a heretic and was burned at the stake in 1498.

You might all see the difference between these two situations. One was clearly fit, for the abominations that were occurring in the very temple of God. The other was an extreme to which someone went, exiling beauty using the Lord's name. Destroying true beauty does not honor God. In fact, we already did that by destroying the very gift he gave us right at the beginning: his perfect creation.

As with anything, there must be tension for there to be balance, at least in the world composed of both fractured good and reigning evil. I often wonder if the world, with the common grace the Lord supplies, is in a more dangerous spot with subdued and hidden evil. Under the surface, it feels the flames are merely simmering our pot, but one single turn of the dial, and we could come to full boil.

Reading from A.H Gombrich's The Story of Art and William Flemings Arts and Ideas, I have examined so many of the ways artists became obsessed with fame and making a name for themselves. This is the evil of art: that we believe ourselves to deserve any acclaim to our creation. And art encompasses a variety of mediums, it could even be in the ways we serve others as Christians.

Could art become worse still? Could our pride in our artwork decline our own worship of the Lord? Will it surmount to an ego that will only ever grow, like the spires of the greatest Cathedrals? Notre Dame, Westminster, Tintern, Cambridge, will all gothic architecture merely represent the pride of the artist rather than the pride in their God?

Regaining the Meaning of Art

It is hard to stop thinking about cultural apologetics: renewing beauty in a world full of the mundane. Christians have a time to show how beautiful God is, the splendor of his designs, the majesty of His architecture. We have time to reawaken this world to the beauty of the Lord, as the world is caught up in each and every lonesome and futile and meaningless endeavor.

When we read the accounts of every art piece placed within the temple or within the tabernacle we notice, the Lord did not create them without meaning. Some were symbolic and representational than what we would deem "practical". But the worship of God is a practice worth pursuing. It is not meaningless to see a portrait of our Bible stories and remember the ends which God achieved. It is not a waste of time to walk into a beautiful auditorium or sanctuary and be reminded that Heaven will be so much greater than this.

I entitled this post Sic Transit Gloria Mundi because it talks about how all worldly glory will pass away. This painting below was to be somewhat representation of this idea. Many of the symbols are mere representations of the fading of this earth in the light of Heaven's glory.

May I encourage everyone here, after watching Notre Dame burn, or artists pass from our midst, or art losing meaning in our culture, that the glory of Heaven is so much greater than this. We have no right to pervert the beauty God has instilled into this world. But His name will forever stand. He is the great I AM. And His beauty will never fade.

Even as Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.