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Reflection for October 17th

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To reveal means to unveil

Dorian Gray kept a veil in front of the portrait of himself done by the artist Basil Hallward. It had been painted when Dorian was in the prime of his youth, possessed of a unique beauty. Now while the artist was still in the process of completing it, he allowed the debonair Lord Henry Wotton to view it. "Basil," he said, "this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray." This made Basil uneasy. He knew Lord Henry to be a cynic, a nihilist, a man with no regard for traditional moral standards and beliefs, and so he pleaded, "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend . . . He has a simple and beautiful nature . . . Don't spoil him . . . Your influence would be bad." But influence him he did!

Over time he advised Dorian not to become "the echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. . People are afraid of themselves nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself . . . The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us. And yet . . . I believe that if one man . . . were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream . . . we would forget all the maladies of medievalism . . . The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."

You know the story. Dorian succumbed to Lord Henry's Byronically romantic notion of "do your thing and to hell with what people think". He became self-indulgent, fatally insincere in his relationships. All of which (according to Oscar Wilde) began to tarnish his soul, of which Dorian became aware when one evening upon returning to his bedroom his eyes fell on his portrait. "He started back in surprise . . . In the dim arrested light . . . the face appeared . . . changed . . . One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth . . . He rubbed his eyes, and came close . . . There was no doubt that the whole expression had altered . . . The thing was horribly apparent." He decided to veil the portrait from view, for somehow it had begun to mirror his soul.

Thereafter, while Dorian, despite the passage of time, remained as youthfully handsome as ever, the painting deteriorated day be day so that in the end, unable to bear the sight of it, he stabbed it. Summoned by Dorian's servants, the police broke into his room to find a hideous Dorian lying on the floor lifeless from a stab wound, while on the wall they beheld his portrait, its features restored to their original "youth and beauty".

A gripping if melodramatic tale which Hollywood has capitalized on several times! But I dwell on it here because I find in it a reverse analogy to some of St. Paul's imagery in 2nd Corinthians. In chapter three he tells of how Moses kept a veil over his face even as Dorian kept one over his portrait. But the veil in Moses' case was not meant to hide something monstrous but to spare his people the radiance his face derived from looking upon God on Mt. Sinai. The splendor would have been too much for them to bear. But Moses' splendor was a fading splendor to be one day superseded by the unveiled splendor we as Christians are to exhibit to the world - thanks to our inhabitation by Christ and his Spirit. We have become, says Paul, like mirrors reflecting the splendor of God. Nay more, we have been transfigured into his likeness "from splendor to splendor; such is the influence of the Lord who is Spirit." Indeed, we are now a "new creation", for the same God who (way back in Genesis) said, "Out of darkness, let light shine" has caused his light to shine within us; has unveiled "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" by way of our own Christic countenances. So, laying aside such grim stories as that of Dorian Gray, why don't we all begin to greet one another with smiles reflective of that transfiguring Spirit within us, smiles reflective of souls that, whatever our actual age may be, God wills to be forever young and beautiful.

-- Geoff Wood