Dominik Slusarczyk- Creative Nonfiction

An Analysis of Transfiguration

In this painting Jesus is floating near the top, He is surrounded by brightly lit clouds. I think this is a depiction of Jesus rising into Heaven. After he died he was brought back to life but a few days later he rose into Heaven. 

There are a number of other people floating near Jesus. It is almost like the magic pulling Jesus up to Heaven is so strong it is affecting them. But the people at the bottom of the painting are not affected by the magic. In fact, half of them seem to not even have noticed the magic. There are people to the left pointing at Jesus but everyone on the right is more concerned with a nearby topless woman. The topless woman looks like she is choking. She looks like she is suffering in some way. She looks like she is dying. There is a woman dying at the bottom of the painting and Jesus rising into Heaven at the top.

A lot of people think the dying woman is more interesting than Jesus rising into Heaven. See, they know death. They know all about death. They have probably watched a father or a mother or a brother die. They know that when you die, that is it. You don’t come back. Nobody is like Jesus so when you die you are gone. So death is a huge deal. Death is such a big deal that dealing with this dying woman is more important than watching Jesus fly.

They’d seen Jesus before. They’d followed him around. They’d heard him preach. They’d seen him perform miracles. You see one miracle, you've seen them all. Jesus performing magic was so ordinary it had become boring. But this woman dying? If she dies that is it. If she dies she is gone. Watching a woman die is far more interesting than watching Jesus rise into Heaven.

They could change the woman dying. They could affect that. She looks like she might be choking. There are ways you can save someone who is choking. Nowadays, we do the Heimlich maneuver. I doubt they had that when Jesus was around but there must have been something else they did. I know people used to hit each other on the back if they were choking. Maybe they had that when Jesus was around. 

However you helped someone there was surely a way to help people. Medicine has been around since the dawn of humanity. We have always had ways of treating sicknesses. A lot of those treatments were probably very bad. The most famous example of bad medicine is bloodletting when they literally stabbed the patient and let them bleed all over the floor. That was a long time after Jesus-times as well. If bloodletting was a thousand years after Jesus can you imagine how they treated disease in Jesus’ time?

But they did have some medicine. They had some sorts of treatments. And those treatments would have included a way to help people who are choking. So this woman is choking, but they are not powerless. They are not powerless at all. They can help her. They can save her.

They were all powerless in front of God. God could do magic and stuff. They had seen Jesus performing miracles. They saw him change water into wine. They saw him walk on water. They all knew that Jesus was infinitely more powerful than them. And now he is glowing and flying. What’s the point in worrying about that?? They couldn’t do anything in the face of God. Whatever God wanted to happen would be what happened. They couldn’t affect anything if God was involved.

But they could affect this woman. She is choking and they can save her. And if they save her, she will owe them. And she is topless.

It is sex. The topless woman symbolizes sex. Many of the people who are concerned with her are men. So Jesus is performing a miracle over there but they are more interested in the topless woman. They are far more interested in the topless woman. If they play their cards right, she will sleep with them. If they say the right things, she will sleep with them. There is nothing you can say when faced with God. God knows everything. He literally knows everything that has ever happened. He knows what you did and why you did it. When you die you will face him and he will question your sins and what will you say? What will you say when he asks you why you cheated on your wife? What can you say? He knows why you did it. He is all knowing.

There is nothing we can say to change God’s mind. He sees all and he knows all so he has already decided if we will go to Heaven or not before we ever face him. We stand in front of him and there is nothing we can say or do, so why does he ask us to explain ourselves? Why does he embarrass us by showing us everything we did wrong?

It is better to keep your focus here on Earth. And that is what the people in the painting are doing. Jesus is ascending into Heaven but they aren’t really bothered. They are more concerned with the topless woman on Earth. Jesus will ascend into Heaven whatever they do and he will watch them and judge them whatever they do. We have no power over God so God isn’t worth worrying about.

But if God exists shouldn’t we all worry about him? If God exists we should spend our whole life trying to do what he wants because if we do what he wants we get to go to Heaven when we die. We do what God wants and we are happy for eternity but if we don’t do what God wants we suffer for all eternity. Doing what God wants is the absolute most important part of life on Earth. We are only here for a couple of decades but we are dead for the rest of time. So we should spend our whole life trying to do what God wants so we can please God so much he will let us into Heaven when we die.

And that is what is happening to the people close to Jesus. They are close to Jesus. They listen to what he says. They do what he tells them to do. Because they do what he tells them to do they get to ascend to Heaven as well. All you have to do is be like Jesus and you will get eternal happiness when you die.

But those good people are at the top of the painting and all the people looking at the naked woman are at the bottom of the painting. The people at the bottom of the painting are bad people. They are obviously bad people because they are not paying attention to Jesus. They don’t pay attention to what Jesus said. They don’t pay attention to what Jesus wants them to do. Because they don’t pay attention to Jesus they do not do good things they do bad things instead so when they die they go to Hell instead of Heaven.

And they are all concerned with the naked woman. This painting means ‘nudity is sinful’. The naked woman is the example of sin in the painting. She is the example of bad in the painting. All the bad people are paying attention to her instead of paying attention to Jesus. And Christianity does teach that nudity is bad. A lot of religions teach that nudity is bad. Muslims cover their bodies so much they cover their hair. Some Muslims cover their faces as well. Nuns in Christianity cover their hair like the Muslim women do. So the religions teach that nudity is sinful so we must try to cover our body at all times. We must always wear clothes. And we must wear clothes because nudity tempts people.

We wear clothes to help other people rather than to help ourselves. The men in the painting see the naked woman and because they are paying attention to the naked woman they turn away from Jesus, away from God. So we have to wear clothes to help the people around us rather than help ourselves. And that is what being good is. Being good is doing things to help other people.

Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. His fiction and poetry have both been published in a number of literary magazines. His fiction came 1st in The Cranked Anvil Short Story Competition and his poetry won The Letter Review Prize for Poetry. His full-length poetry collection Reaction is out now with Cyberwit.