Religion I

What's the Story?

I have always struggled with religion. My grandparents spend all of their time with the church, my Dad led the church choir and taught Sunday School, a lot of my friends work in the church, and I don’t have a clue. I’ve always been around it, but I have never been able to grab a 'hold of it, and honestly, I wish I could…Don’t those people seem happy as can be all of the time?

This painting illustrates the fight between Heaven and Hell, God and the devil, Good and Evil…and me. I have always tried to make my religion a priority, but for some reason, I couldn’t and can't. It always seemed to be too much fun doing the stuff that God definitely wouldn’t approve of. In the painting, I am being tossed closer to the dove (or Christianity), and if I'm lucky, a piece of me will get caught. These are the times that I try. Most of the time, though, the dove misses, or I just don’t catch on, and I fall back down to the ground. Or, I fall closer to evil.

I really believe that many people have fallen into the same trap where they try to have this relationship with God, but the priorities shift. In the big picture, I am just a pebble in this fight between good and evil, but you’ll notice that the devil is using me as a meaningless object to throw, and the dove is actually trying to catch me. That’s really how it works I think: God is trying, I’m not trying enough, and the devil doesn’t give a crap about me.

View all paintings