In this second installment of “Jesus and the marketplace” series, Makota Fujimura is a Christian artist who paints Christ-centred arts. He lives and works in New York City, and is an elder in a Presbyterian Church.
There are no crosses in Makoto Fujimura’s paintings. No images of Jesus gazing into the distance, or serene scenes of churches in a snow-cloaked wood.
. . . After the 2001 terrorist strikes on the World Trade Centre, three blocks from Fujimura’s home, his work explored the power of fire to both destroy and purify, themes drawn from the Christian Gospels and Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.”
“I am a Christian,” says Fujimura, 46, who founded the non-profit International Arts Movement to help bridge the gap between the religious and art communities. “I am also an artist and creative, and what I do is driven by my faith experience.
“But I am also a human being living in the 21st century, struggling with a lot of brokenness _ my own, as well as the world’s. I don’t want to use the term ‘Christian’ to shield me away from the suffering or evil that I see, or to escape in some nice ghetto where everyone thinks the same.”
By making a name for himself in the secular art world, Fujimura has become a role model for creatively wired evangelicals. They believe that their churches have forsaken the visual arts for too long – and that a renaissance has begun.
Read the full article here>>>
Andrew: Inside & Insights 
Watch his video here- http://www.reclaim7mountains.com/pages.asp?pageid=71009
Read the book that inspired him? It sounds like the Taoism’s 18 levels of hell at Haw Par Villa. Have you paid a visit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy
Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Dunno abt you but I guess doctrinally there is surely a hell.
I think it doesn’t matter how many levels even if there are 18 or 180. It is the same fate.
That’s my take lar…
Personally many books that I read inspires me too. Authors like Stephen Covey and Paulo Coelho are not the typical Christians with doctrinal accurate content, but their content nevertheless provokes and stimulates one to think about life and living it with purpose.
I guess we need to use a degree of discernment to take the good part and throw the evil part. If we’re not careful, by keeping strictly away from the secular, we might allow an elitist kind of spirit to breed within us and not being able to connect with our world- understanding their struggles, their mindsets, their lives in order to bridge Christ.
Can there be any good part in a poem’s “imaginative” vision of the Christian afterlife and with a sarcastic title called “Divine Comedy”
plus a concept of “Purgatory” which is completely absent in the entire Bible & debunked by the entire Protestant churches as heresy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purgatory
For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. Prov 5.