![\"eye-exam-1\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/eye-exam-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDavid Morgan, in his book The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice,<\/em> attempts to help us gain clarity, as he traces through the significance of visual representations across many faith practices. While the ideal of trying to equate relevance to Hindu representation, Buddhists idols and Christian art and artifacts, (among others) is noble, there seemed to be something missing from his presentation.<\/p>\n (Now, I must confess that I likely have a bias, having grown up in a Hindu home and having participated in several religious observances, including Islam and Sikhism)<\/p>\n Morgan\u2019s own definition of religion is helpful in understanding his premise:<\/p>\n \u201cBy religion, I understand configurations of social relatedness and cultural ordering that appeal to powers that assist humans in organizing their collective and individual lives. These \u201cpowers\u201d may be supernatural or entirely circumscribed within the domain of natural phenomena. In either case, religion is a way of controlling events or experience for the purpose of living better, longer, more meaningfully, or with less hazard.\u201d (p. 52)<\/p>\n \u00a0Establishing his view of religion is important to appreciating the consistency of how Morgan goes on to address the role of artistic representations across the lines of many faiths. He makes a clarifying statement regarding this position: \u201cImages make the god or saint or spirit available for petition, praise, offering, and negotiation.\u201d (p.59) Though consistent throughout the book, this premise appears to miss the mark as it relates to understanding faith from the perspective God gives to us, in the Bible.<\/p>\n A religious perspective can rightly determine that art attempts to define, direct and even determine what the worshiper should think or feel. The representations, as Morgan notes in the quote above, are like messages from the one being worshipped to the worshipper. It would be like optometrist just handing you a pair of glasses without determining what prescription you need. Your capacity to see would likely change, but it wouldn\u2019t necessarily be for the better. In fact you may feel disoriented as a result.<\/p>\n In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus points his listeners (Matthew 6:25-34) to \u201clook\u201d and \u201csee\u201d through nature so that they may consider the sovereign, timely and provisional care of Our Heavenly Father. Jesus, the Great Optometrist, invites us to consider who God is, via the eyes of our spiritual minds, through the natural art that abundantly surrounds. The birds, the flowers they point out toward God. It is as though; through our living faith (not static religion) Jesus fits us with the lens we need to see him clearly. The solution isn\u2019t merely having glasses. The solution is in learning how to see through a new pair of lenses.<\/p>\n