I love collecting and researching coins and old currency. There is a story—a history—behind every single one. Some coins are valuable for their metal content, and some are ‘numismatic’; they’re valuable because of a mistake in the strike (Some coins’ images are ‘struck’ onto the round metal ‘blank’.), or because of the date on the coin, the number of coins struck, or other reasons.
Coins are mentioned in the bible. There’s a curious statement about value:
‘He saw through their trickery and said, “Show me a Roman coin. Whose picture and title are stamped on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
“Well then,” he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” – Luke 20:23-25
The exchange was between Jesus and these men sent by the Pharisees disguised as regular men. They tried to get him to say that he taught people not to pay taxes so they could have him arrested, or to pay taxes so He had to admit He wasn’t there to rescue Israel from Rome (He wasn’t).
But something I learned years after I heard that scripture, after I had focused on the earthly ‘currency’ value of the coin was that He was saying that the coin—the politics, the world’s ways, belonged to the world. In ‘rendering to God what is God’s’, He was telling them that God wanted—and wants—people’s hearts. Most importantly, Jesus said that Caesar’s image was on what was his.
By inference, that means God’s image is on what belongs to God: us.
People talk a lot about identity. Most of it spirals away from what we were created to be.
Artists also have identities, which are shown in our work. We work our whole lives on art that defines where we are at any given time. I used to think I needed to create art and settle on that art (whatever the body of work looked like) be ‘it’ for me. That was who I was as an artist. I loved what I made… for about a week. And then I needed to make something else.
If you’re an artist, you know what I’m talking about.
What I have learned is that making art is a road more than a destination. ‘Life is a journey, not a destination’ I wrote for a design contest in high school. It’s all a journey. Whether it is art or just life, we’re not supposed to do it perfectly and then stop and live there. We were designed to move, and move upward to the calling we have.
