inthepinesinthepiness

the idea of christ calling you like a dog out into the wilderness is an image novel to me, i must say

pyrrhiccomedy

okay my new medication has given me insomnia so I’ve been awake for 40 hours, so bear that in mind but

legitimately this is a provocative reframing of sin and the call to virtue

sinners are almost universally portrayed as being ‘lost in the wilderness’ (dark, wild, lawless), and the call to virtue is just as universally portrayed as being beckoned out of that darkness and into God’s house (a place of light, sanctuary, harmony, and order)

reversing the imagery completely changes the connotations: now your sinful condition is a well-lit house (familiar, comfortable, a place of habit and willing self-confinement), and heeding the call to virtue is to strike out into the dark unknown (a place of mystery, exploration, fear and wonder)

this reframing is fundamentally mystical in its outlook in a way that western christianity rarely endorses. the modern christianity that we are familiar with, as well as the dominant forms of western christianity going back to the early middle ages, are foundationally religions of logic and rhetoric, which lionize as their greatest theologians those thinkers who argue most successfully from a place of reason 

(which obviously contributes to a standard characterization of spiritual life as ‘the house of God’, e.g. a place of order, security, and harmony)

Christian mysticism has always existed, but on the fringes of the mainstream, when it was not being outright persecuted. while in the eastern church it was (and remains) a core component of one’s experience of god, the western church has always looked askance at the mystical understanding of the supernal, and it was mostly experienced by esoteric groups (mainly gnostics of various flavors) or women (some of whom were also gnostics): either as followers of some charismatic visionary (hildegard von bingen being one famous example) or as movements among the laity which were easily suppressed when their power began to challenge that of the church (such as the baguines).

the protestant reformation really did not change the landscape in this respect, as the vast majority of protestant religions remained fundamentally faiths-based-in-reason, with protestant mysticism only really emerging a century later during the counter-calvinist movement. (that’s when you got, like, quakers.)

to imagine that the familiar state is one of complacent sin, and that to depart from sin is to enter into a dark wilderness where one will often stumble blindly among the trees after a faintly heard “come!” is the mystical experience of faith. where mainstream western christianity offers answers and the security of certainty - in other words, its selling point is that it will tell you what’s right and you may thereafter be confident of your rectitude - the pursuit of God via mysticism only offers questions. the mystic hears christ’s voice calling “come!” through a darkened doorway, and ventures out into a strange country full of frustration, wonder, and terror.

do I think the guy who drew this comic was thinking about any of this? probably not. the title makes me think this is more of a “kids these days would rather play jacks and skip rope than live decent god-fearing lives” thing

but if you crop out the title this is pretty good stuff

wizzard890

I’ve been awake for a normal amount of time so I have no excuse, but if we wanted to, we could see this comic as an unintentional engagement with the Manus Dei motif. 

In Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Jewish and Christian artists struggled to depict God while still complying with the Second Commandment’s prohibition of “graven images”. The iconographic compromise was Manus Dei, or the Hand of God. The 11th century image above comes from Sant Climent de Taüll, a Catholic church in Spain. The subsequent image comes from the Paris Psalter, a 9th century Byzantine manuscript. That should give you an idea of how widespread the visual concept was.

On the surface it’s a simple substitution, leaning on the Hebrew scriptures’ frequent anthropomorphism of God’s power as “a strong hand and outstretched arm.” You can’t depict God, so have his hand come out of a cloud, we have cleverly avoided idolatry!

And yet, there’s something deeper at work here, an implied mysticism that exists at the edge of our field of vision, artistically speaking. Medieval art was good at that, in its own little corners and byways. So let’s not take it literally. Let’s depart into the dark wilderness of wonder. Where does the hand of God go? To what body is it attached? Who could measure it, or even comprehend its geometry? It works upon our world, but look at the mandala it vanishes into, the same void that the sinner in OPs comic turns his back on. We aren’t allowed to see it, but we’re drawn towards it, into a Beyond that literally encompasses the manifestation of the Divine. Maybe that Beyond is the Divine. 

Mandus Dei beckons beyond the corner of the paper, of the image, of the illumination or fresco. It’s anchored in a further place, a sort of locus of truth, which, if you go by the comic, you can follow into the exploring dark. All you need to do is step over the threshold of God’s will and begin your search.