House of the World

This is an extra credit paper I did for my Book of Mormon class a couple weeks ago. I felt impressed to put it on my blog. The assignment was to pick of painting by Minerva Teichert that was hanging in the Joseph Smith Building on campus and write a paragraph about what impressed us about it. The painting I chose was called "House of the World". Here's a link to the painting.

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The painting I chose was “House of the World”. I liked this painting for many reasons. One reason in particular has to do with how the tree of life looks like. In my opinion, the tree of life in this painting looks brown and wilting, similar to a tree at the autumn that is losing all its leaves. The dying look of the tree, in contrast to the magnificence of the great and spacious building, reminds me of part of Isaiah, in chapter 53, the second verse: “For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” This scripture tells us that Christ had no beauty to attract us to Him. With the tree of life in the painting, there is no reason we would want something from a tree that looks like it is dying, but once we have had the fruit of that tree, it becomes more desirable than anything else. In this same way, there is no physical characteristic that would have us follow Christ, but once we partake of His fruit, the gospel, it becomes the most desirable thing for us. In contrast, in the painting I find the great and spacious building to look like a beautiful, brilliant structure. It reminds of a quote by President Spencer W. Kimball. He said that “[Satan] garnishes evil to make it appear beautiful, pleasing, easy, and even good.” In this way, even though the building looks beautiful and desirable, it is full of evil and darkness. Something I learned from this is that Heavenly Father makes the choice between good and evil simple, but not obvious. The tree of life looks dying and old, but its fruit is the most delicious and desirable ever.