How to Handle Your Emotions (Counseling Through the Bible Series) (15 page)

The Painter, the Razor, the Snuffed-out Candle
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His boyhood dream was to become a pastor—to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.
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Once describing his life mission as “preaching the gospel to the poor,” he immersed himself in studying the Scriptures. At age 23, the spiritually zealous assistant minister delivered his first sermon. Focusing on the theme “our life is a pilgrim’s progress”…and he stated on numerous occasions that our lives should be led as an imitation of Christ’s.
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Who was this Dutchman born in 1853—the one who hoped to carry on his family’s spiritual legacy? He was the world-renowned artist Vincent van Gogh. Unfortunately, this highly emotional young man lacked self-confidence and experienced major problems during his life.

Following a brief stint as a missionary in a mining district in Belgium, van Gogh’s spiritual fervor spiraled downward into depression. Just six months after his appointment, he was dismissed. Though “poor speaking” was cited as the cause, in actuality he encountered huge disagreements over how to conduct “real” ministry.

Van Gogh had a heart for the impoverished—the materially and spiritually poor to whom he had been assigned. He lived with them and like them—even sleeping on a straw mat night after night. He perceived the religious leaders of his day as distant and removed, caught up in stuffy propriety and protocol, disengaged from the grittiness of real-life ministry.

Following the time he was fired, van Gogh remained in the mining community and began sketching pictures…and the course of his life changed forever. He once said, “An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.”
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As van Gogh became immersed in the tumultuous world of artists, his life became more tortuous. Originally fixated on the muddy-colored paintings of the poor, he moved to Paris in 1886 to live with his devoted brother, Theo, an art dealer. At one point, van Gogh advised his brother to take up pipe smoking, calling it “a remedy for the blues, which I happen to have now and then lately.”
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Theo introduced van Gogh to artists such as Gaugin, with whom he had a volatile relationship. Van Gogh delved into more vivid colors in Paris and there acquired the distinctive brushstrokes that now signify his work.

Then after moving to the south of France in 1888, van Gogh incorporated the yellows and hot reds of the Mediterranean into his paintings. This was said to represent his moods. Here he and Gaugin painted together—and argued together. Their deteriorating friendship culminated in van Gogh chasing Gaugin with a razor…but that infamous episode ended with van Gogh cutting off part of his own left ear lobe. The very next year, the unstable artist voluntarily committed himself into a mental asylum.

Diagnoses are diverse in regard to what may have caused the eccentric and unstable behavior in this post-Impressionist painter. Psychiatrists report that as an adult, van Gogh suffered two distinct episodes of reactive depression along with “bipolar aspects.” And that the last two years of van Gogh’s life were characterized by recurring psychotic episodes.
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The French physicians who attended van Gogh in the asylum diagnosed his condition as epilepsy caused by consuming absinthe—a liqueur with high alcoholic content and toxic herbs. Well over 150 physicians have since ventured diagnoses, but there is limited information upon which to draw a definitive conclusion.
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Van Gogh’s life was a continual pattern of suffering and setbacks, and isolation and ill will from those around him. But his brother Theo gave him constant support and encouragement. One day as the two surveyed van Gogh’s vast collection of painted canvasses, Theo commented, “When your heart
shall cease to beat within your bosom, it will throb in your pictures.”
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And on July 29, 1890, at the young age of 37, van Gogh’s heart did cease beating. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Vincent van Gogh died having sold only one of his paintings, for about $100. (By contrast, in recent years his painting
Irises
sold for $53.9 million.)

The life of van Gogh does indeed throb in his pictures, but further tragedy rests in the fact that his focus on the Bible—so beloved to him in the first chapter of his life—weakened as he grew older…when he so desperately needed spiritual help and healing.

However, one sign of his spiritual heritage did appear in his art near the end of his life. Shortly after his father’s death, and four years before his own, van Gogh painted
Still Life with Bible,
which depicts his father’s Bible, atop a table, worn and opened.

However, van Gogh painted the Bible as sitting in the darkness beside a snuffed-out candle. Had he returned to his former passion—to be an imitator of Christ—and turned to his own Bible, he might have painted a brighter picture of the Lord’s life-changing hope amidst the darkness of depression.