The latest case of Christ-bashing concerns a Mitch Mitchell – who calls himself an artist – and a life-size cross with a naked young woman hanging on it. The work is displayed at a Melbourne gallery. We are informed that it is "meant to portray women's suffering". Oh really?
But this nonsense gets worse when the "artist" informs us of this: "It is the duty of an artist to question society's beliefs in religion and to test people about those beliefs, which this sculpture will do."
Oh yeah? Says who? Since when are artists obligated to attack deeply-held religious beliefs and do so on holy days? Where does it say this is the artist's job? I must have missed this when I took art classes in my youth.
Is there some contract which every budding artist must sign which says something like this: "I promise I will use my craft to attack religion, and especially bash Christianity. I will especially endeavour to use holy days to make my assaults more visible, controversial and profitable. I will push my anti-Christian bigotry and wrap it up in the flag of "artistic expression" and being the "social conscience" of society. And I recognise that artistic talent is of course an optional extra."
I don't recall hearing about artists having to sign such a contract. But this guy seems to think it is his obligation to the world to tell us how to believe, and to challenge us in our beliefs. Seems to me that he is just another Christophobe who wants to make a quick buck and gain a bit of notoriety in doing what so many others have done before him.
We are actually growing a bit tired of all this. Andre Serrano's "Piss Christ" was of course one of the more infamous of such examples. And there have been plenty more. And as always, I await the day when we see Muhammad decked out as a naked female, all in the name of art.
Or perhaps we will see some trendy Melbourne art gallery featuring a really bold bit of social commentary: a Koran immersed in a jar of urine. Somehow I don't think so. Christians are always such soft targets. Mr Mitchell knows they will not fly an airplane into the gallery.
He knows they will not surround his house with noisy protests, demanding his scalp. There will be no fatwas issued against him, and no suicide bombers will target his gallery.
At the end of the day we can pray for the likes of this artist. But as believers we have every right to raise our voices and express our concern and disgust at yet more anti-Christian bigotry, all done in the name of art.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25305705-2862,00.html
There is, for the short-term, a voteline on this: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/poll/1,,661-5039028,00.html