Beauty From Pain

“And though I can’t understand why this happened,

I know that I will when I look back some day,

And see how you’ve brought beauty from ashes

And made me as gold purified by these flames.

After all this has passed, I still will remain.

After I’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain.

Though it won’t be today, some day I’ll hope again,

And there’ll be beauty from pain.”

Superchick, ‘Beauty From Pain’, Beauty From Pain (2005)¹

 

Almond Blossoms, oil on canvas, 1890.

You know how sometimes, on the BBC, when the credits to the episode that just finished are rolling and we’re about to find out what’s coming up next, the continuity announcer slots in a little, “If you’ve been affected by any of the issues dealt with in this programme, you can call such-and-such a number for support”? To be honest, I’m not really sure whether they still do it, given that I watch most of my TV on catch-up now – except, like, University Challenge, which for some reason isn’t considered to warrant a helpline for traumatised viewers – but I remember it from when I was a kid. I remember in particular one instance when the announcement was made after an episode of Doctor Who finished. And I thought, what, this is the number to call if you’ve been affected by the issue of having your local neighbourhood terrorised by an invisible extra-terrestrial creature going round killing people? Nice to know the BBC have made provision for such scenarios, I’m sure.

The reason the announcement was in fact made was presumably because the episode in question, ‘Vincent and the Doctor’, in which our heroes were joined in their battle against the neighbourhood-terrorising extra-terrestrial creature by Vincent van Gogh, focussed quite heavily on van Gogh’s struggles with his mental health and the social stigmatisation he faced as a consequence, including the looming shadow of his suicide less than a year after the episode was set. It’s a really sad episode – with a few really happy bits in it. Spoilers ahead.

After the conclusion of the whole business with the invisible alien – and that was sad too, tragedy rather than triumph – the Doctor and Amy take van Gogh on a TARDIS trip to the same art gallery the two of them had been hanging out in at the start of the episode, where a great many of his paintings are displayed. The Doctor catches the attention of the art expert he met earlier, who, those of us watching at home note, bears a suspiciously close resemblance to Bill Nighy: “Dr. Black – we met a few days ago. I asked you about The Church at Auvers.”

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Black remembers. “Glad to be of help. You were nice about my tie.”

“Yes, and today is another cracker, if I may say so,” says the Doctor. “But I just wondered, between you and me, in a hundred words, where do you think van Gogh rates in the history of art?”

“Well,” muses Dr. Black. “Big question, but to me, van Gogh is the finest painter of them all – certainly the most popular great painter of all time, the most beloved; his command of colour the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ectasy and joy and magnificence of our world – no one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.”

At which point van Gogh bursts into tears. And you can bet a reasonable number of the viewers at home were sniffling a bit as well.²

 

The Church at Auvers, oil on canvas, 1890.

Here’s the point: the justification that Dr. Black gives for ascribing such greatness to van Gogh is that he took pain and turned it into beauty. The raw materials his life gave him by way of artistic inspiration were hardship and torment and hostility and isolation, and somehow from that he wrought beauty – ecstasy and joy and magnificence, these bursts and blocks of brilliant colour forming scenes of peace and delight and beauty that lift the heart as much as the corners of the mouth.³ Any painter could have taken the pain of a life like that and transplanted it directly onto the canvas all grim and despairing as it was; van Gogh did something altogether more impressive. Anyone can turn pain into more pain; it takes real greatness to turn pain into beauty.

Thus goes Dr. Black’s argument, anyway. And I for my part reckon he’s on to something, because the Bible is absolutely choc-a-bloc with occasions when God has done exactly that: brought beauty from pain, dancing from mourning, blessing from curse. Think of Joseph reassuring his brothers that though their intent had been for evil when they sold him into slavery all those years ago, God had intended the same thing for good and the saving of many lives. Think of the curse Jacob pronounced against his son Levi, that in recompense for the blood on in hands he would be scattered in Israel – and indeed, the Levites ended up being distributed throughout the portions of land belonging to the other tribes instead of being allotted their own, but that under the premise that they were specially consecrated to God for service in the sanctuary of his presence: a uniquely close and honoured relationship with him. Think, indeed, of the entire Babylonian exile: that loss of homeland and sovereignty and freedom and, worst of all, ability to relate to God by the methods ordained by him, which galvanised the exiles to return to the LORD with their whole heart and find their identity as his people in a way they never had before.⁴

And think of the cross. Think of the death of God in his perfection at the hands of those who were his to judge guilty, the most damnable crime in human history, and how it was purposed by the Father before a word of Genesis 1’s creation process was spoken as the means by which every guilt including that very greatest one would be lifted from us and paid for. Blessing from curse; beauty from pain.

God shows his greatness like this. Check out the following little chunk of Isaiah:

For the sake of my name I defer my anger, and (for the sake of) my name I restrain it for you, lest I cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, and not into silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction. For my sake, for my sake, I do (it), for how shall it be profaned? and my glory to another I will not give.⁵

God uses affliction to refine – beauty from pain – not to cut off, because this is how he glorifies his name. I haven’t got room to quote Ezekiel 20 and 36 here as well, but they make this same point in that beautifully Ezekiel-ian way of repeating again and again until the reader can be left in no doubt unless it be wilful.⁶ God could have simply brought an end to his sinful people in the desert after they fled Egypt; or equally, he could have left them in Babylon; he could have left the deserved curse as curse and never brought blessing from it. But he never would have done, and the reason for that is that his name would have been profaned by it. There would have been cause to suppose that God wasn’t capable of bringing about what he had promised, or wasn’t as good as he said he was. There would have been cause to doubt that he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness. And God won’t have that. He will not have his glory – his manifest excellence – diminished.

What Dr. Black recognised as how van Gogh proved his greatness, is also how God demonstrates his greatness: beauty from pain. There is no raw material in life that he cannot refine into something wonderful, no agony or burden that he cannot transform into joy and magnificence and ecstatic beauty. That doesn’t, I hasten to add, mean the pain goes away: Joseph was still in slavery and prison all that time, and the Babylonian exile was still a horrible traumatic thing to live through, and the punishment for human sin was still exacted, though from our Lord rather than ourselves. It doesn’t mean that we’re not allowed to acknowledge suffering for what it is. But it does mean that whatever evil the world may chuck at us, or equally, whatever evil we may bring upon ourselves, God has already intended it for good. It does mean that all things work together for the good of those on whom God has set his grace and favour.⁷ That’s not for our sake; it’s for the sake of his name. God refuses to be anything less than maximally good and glorious, and that means he refuses to leave any pain not transformed into beauty for those called by his name.

Anyone can turn pain into more pain. Anyone can allow herself to become embittered by her suffering, or take revenge for a wrong and so add another wrong to the top of the pile. If we’re to reflect our Father’s likeness, and avoid profaning his name, we have to be part of something more impressive than that. He is bringing beauty from pain and invites us to join him in that. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, said Jesus. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, he told us to pray.⁸

Anyone can turn pain into more pain; it takes real greatness to turn pain into beauty. And so God shows his greatness in that, for those he has chosen, he turns every pain into beauty; in that he turned the greatest pain ever endured, Jesus’ bearing of his Father’s righteous anger, into the greatest beauty ever designed, the ransoming of sinners from every tribe, tongue, and nation, so that by grace through faith we might inherit his righteousness and go on to live forever and ever in the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of a whole new creation. If his name is on us, he will not have it profaned by leaving our pain as pain. Take comfort, sister or brother of mine; weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.⁹

Footnotes

¹ I sort of felt obliged to quote Superchick given that I nicked the name of their album as a title for this post, but I’m not sure how heartily I recommend them. It’s all a bit noughties and teenage-girl-ish – so I was quite a fan when I was a teenage girl in the noughties, and still get a kick out of the nostalgia trip, but I’m not sure I can call many of those lyrics artistically excellent. Regardless, here’s the least objectionable lyric video I could find for ‘Beauty From Pain’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsS46SjvXU.

² Thanks as usual to Chrissie’s Transcripts Site and NowMyWingsFit: http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/index.html.

³ They really are a bright, uplifting kind of beautiful. Check it out: https://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/gallery.html.

⁴ You’re looking at Genesis 50; Genesis 49 (with reference to Genesis 34) together with, ooh, let me see, most of the first eight chapters of Numbers, really (with reference to Exodus 32); and for that last one I’ll take you to Jeremiah 24, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+24&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+48&version=ESVUK. Of the many references I could have quoted here, I picked this one mainly because it packed the whole idea into not very many words.

⁶ I’ll start you off in chapter 20: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ezek+20&version=ESVUK. This jazz is epic. Give it some proper attention, will you? It’s way more worthy of your time than my ramblings.

⁷ Romans 8. Duh.

⁸ Matthew 5-6. I’ve cited it often enough, haven’t I?

⁹ And that’s from Psalm 30, which was originally going to feature quite heavily in this post and then sort of didn’t. Still, it’s very much on topic and worth your checking out: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+30&version=ESVUK.