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Color My
World
By
Doug Jackson
It’s enough to make you see red – literally; last
Wednesday, Marco Evaristti, a Chilean-born
artist now living in Denmark, took a notion
to tag an iceberg. With two score henchmen
and 780 gallons of dye splattered from three
fire hoses, he painted an unsuspecting chunk
of ice crimson. It took him two hours, not
counting the thirty minutes he occupied in
finding just the right target for his
vandalism. Anyway, even as we speak, this
red menace bobs along the Kangia fjord,
freaking out penguins and perhaps motivating
passing fishermen to swear off the bottle.
It’s hard to say what motivated such an action; perhaps
it was the same artistic impulse which
guided Evaristti four years ago, when he
displayed ten working blenders full of
goldfish and invited art-lovers to flip the
switches. (The "artistic impulse"
in question would, of course, be an almost
complete lack of any actual talent.) Still,
one might manage to find a meaningful
message even in silliness such as this.
Perhaps we Christians can seize this reminder to color our
world crimson, coating all that we see in
the blood that buys our salvation. When
tempted, we can see the contemplated action
through the bright red filter of Jesus’
sufferings, asking ourselves if we really
want to spend his sorrows on our sinful
indulgence. When repulsed by the behavior of
a fellow believer, we can view him or her
blood-dyed with the price paid on Calvary,
and ask if that is not sufficient to
purchase our love and acceptance. When
prodded by our own comfort and convenience
to ignore the needs of the unsaved, putting
our desires for safety or sameness above
Christ’s call to share the gospel, we can
see the ruby reservoir provided at the cost
of Our Lord’s own life, and feel the true
smallness of our supposed sacrifice.
Ocean-going graffiti is a poor substitute for real art, and
fortunately the forces of nature will melt
Evaristti’s monstrosity long before any of
us has to see it. But even such a temporary
obscenity can become, for us, a reminder of
the unfathomable divinity by which a bloody
cross became and continues to become the
ultimate force of true creation.
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