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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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