The Treachery of Images is a 1929 French Surrealist painting by Rene Magritte. The painting is of a pipe and underneath it is written “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”, which, translated from French means, “This is not a pipe.” The point that Magritte was trying to make is that the image is not the thing. The painting may resemble a pipe, but you can’t put tobacco in it and smoke it. Too many of us confuse the image with the thing, which can have deadly consequences, the worst being when we confuse the image of ourselves with our actual selves. The second of the ten commandments is about images, and the reason that we have been commanded not to make graven images is because we are so apt and ready to confuse the image with the thing itself. We are to worship a living God, and images can’t be alive. Magritte’s painting of a pipe is a representation of a single pipe from a single angle at a single moment of time. It has no life to it. When we have been counseled to put off the natural man and become a saint, what we are really being invited to do is to dissociate our notion or idea of what we are or are supposed to be from our real and living self, made in the image of God, true, but separate and distinct from God and also separate and distinct from any images or identities that we might conjure up for ourselves. We may have natural inclinations or predilections or instincts or urges, but all of these things are not us. We can put on or put off this or that image but we are still something else beneath and beyond the image. Whatever image we have of ourselves, we have to let it go. Whatever dream we had for our future, we have to submit to the possibility that it might change. Christ said to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s. If we will cling to our image of Caesar, then we must be handed over to Caesar. But if we will put off the natural man, then we can be redeemed and rendered unto God.
