Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

The only sculpture Michelangelo ever signed was the Pietà, his statue of Mary holding her crucified son. Installed in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 1500, the Pietà remained there, mostly undisturbed, until 1972, when a vandal broke past security and smashed it repeatedly with a hammer. The attack shattered Mary’s left arm and also resulted in severe damage to her nose, veil, and left eye. This treasure of Renaissance art became a marred masterpiece. Over the next year, a team of experts gathered up the shards and slivers of damaged marble and painstakingly pieced them back together. 13 As with the Pietà, an enemy has entered into our world and savagely attacked human beings, leaving us damaged and defaced. The image of God in us has not been completely lost or erased, but it has been marred and disfigured. Our enemy is not only outside of us. There is also an enemy within that threatens to undo us. George Saunders calls it “built-in confusions … somehow Darwinian.” The Bible refers to it by a simpler name: “sin.”