Godliness

"For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hands. O Lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep. A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this" (Psalm 92:4-6)

In 1911, Wassily Kandinsky published a treatise titled Concerning the Spiritual in Art, a landmark work that not only set forth a theory for abstract composition, but also indicted his contemporary world for its godlessness, hypocrisy and materialism. In the chapter titled "Spiritual Revolution," he remarks: "The spiritual triangle moves slowly onwards and upwards. Today one of the largest of the lowest segments has reached the point of using the first battle cry of the materialist creed. The dwellers in this segment group themselves round various banners in religion. They call themselves Jews, Catholics, Protestants, etc. But they are really atheists, and this a few either of the boldest or the narrowest openly avow. 'Heaven is empty,' 'God is dead.' In politics these people are democrats and republicans. The fear, horror, and hatred which yesterday they felt for these political creeds they now direct against anarchism, of which they know nothing but its much dreaded name...Because the inhabitants of this great segment of the triangle have never solved any problem independently, but are dragged as it were in a cart by those the noblest of their fellowmen who have sacrificed themselves, they know nothing of the vital impulse of life which they regard always vaguely from a great distance. They rate this impulse lightly, putting their trust in purposeless theory and in the working of some logical method...The higher segments are not only blind atheists but can justify their godlessness with strange words; for example, those of Virchow--so unworthy of a learned man--'I have dissected many corpses, but never yet discovered a soul in any of them.' " (Trans. M.T.H. Sadler. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1977. 10-11). Kandinsky hints at an idea which would be very unpopular today--that godliness and belief in God are virtues, and that without these virtues, our artistic endeavors, our social and practical endeavours, are all empty. Without the spiritual, we are nothing, and denying the spiritual is unworthy of learned people. Moreover, without God, a person cannot taste life and know what life means.

I believe Wassily Kandinsky was right, and I believe that he himself was one of the solitary, unheeded artists he describes (6-9). In a godless generation, the godly person can only look like a madman, whereas the Scripture says that it is the godless man or woman who lacks wisdom: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good" (Psalm 14:1).

Godliness, on some level, means being like God. In other words, imitating God. And how can we know God that we may follow Him and strive to be like Him? The answer is found in the Gospels: "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him." (John 14:6-7).