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On the Meaning Behind the Artwork
When the Lens Changes Everything: Living by Faith, Not by Sight
There is a boy standing in a township. He is poor. His clothes are worn, the streets around him bear all the marks of hardship, and if you judged his life by what your eye could measure - by income, by square footage, by the absence of abundance - you might draw a grim conclusion about his joy.
But he is grinning. And that grin is the entire sermon.
This is the image at the centre of my newest work, "Looking Through the Eyes of Faith." I drew him in black and white pastel - because I wanted his world to be seen honestly. No softening. No romanticism of poverty. This is the real, physical, measurable world that surrounds him.
And yet, on his face, there are sunglasses. And in those sunglasses, captured in full colour against the monochrome backdrop of his life, is a reflection of a different reality entirely. He sees himself clothed in white with a golden crown on his head. He sees Jesus beside him - arms around him, both of them lit up by a sun burning at full strength. That is the world he is actually living in, even if no census will ever record it.
The Reality More Sure Than What We Can See
The apostle Paul wrote from a prison cell words that have confounded the world for two thousand years: "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content" (Philippians 4:11). Not resigned. Not defeated. Content. And earlier, in 2 Corinthians 4:17–18, he described the suffering of his life as "light and momentary troubles" that were achieving for him "an eternal glory that far outweighs them all" - and then added the key: "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
This is not poetry for the comfortable. Paul was writing from experience of shipwreck, flogging, imprisonment, and hunger. He was not a man who had never suffered; he was a man who had learned to look through a different lens altogether. The same lens the boy in my painting wears.
Hebrews 11:1 calls faith "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Substance. Evidence. These are not vague, emotional words - they are the language of certainty. Biblical faith is not wishful thinking or the coping mechanism of the desperate. It is the confident apprehension of a reality that is more solid, more permanent, and more true than the physical world, because it is grounded in the character and promises of God Himself.
A Living Hope - Not Fantasy
There is a criticism sometimes levelled at Christian faith: that it is escapism, that it is a fantasy constructed by those who cannot face reality. This artwork is, in part, a response to that criticism.
The boy in the painting has not disappeared from his township. He is still standing in it. His circumstances have not been airbrushed away - they are rendered in exquisite, honest detail. What has changed is not his situation, but his perspective. He has access, through faith, to a reality that his circumstances cannot reach.
Peter calls this "a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" and "an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade" (1 Peter 1:3–4). The word "living" matters. This hope is not static or passive - it is active, present, and operative right now. Jesus, described in Hebrews 6:19–20 as the "forerunner" who has already entered behind the veil on our behalf, has secured what we are still walking toward. He has gone ahead of us and planted a flag in eternity. The race is not yet finished, but the victory is already guaranteed.
Philippians 1:6 says it simply and beautifully: "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Even in the present moment, even in the township, He is working. The smile on that boy's face is not ignorance of suffering. It is confidence in the One who holds the outcome.
What the Research Quietly Confirms
Faith is often spoken of as a private or spiritual matter, but its effects are not invisible to researchers. The data, for those who look, is striking.
The University of Notre Dame's landmark global study, "Under Caesar's Sword" - the first systematic worldwide investigation into how Christian communities respond to severe persecution - found that the majority of persecuted Christians respond not with collapse but with creative, courageous strategies of survival and resilience. The researchers noted that these responses are characterised by what they described as "creativity, courage and theological conviction."
Dr Harold G. Koenig, Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, published a landmark review of over a century's worth of research on faith and mental health. His conclusion: people who are more religious or spiritual have better mental health and adapt more quickly to health problems than those who are less so. The psychological outcomes positively linked to faith included coping with adversity, hope, optimism, and self-esteem.
A Gallup and Pew Research analysis found that actively religious people are consistently happier and more civically engaged than their non-religious counterparts across 26 countries.
A peer-reviewed scoping review published in 2023 found that Christians - particularly those high in personal religiosity - demonstrate significantly higher dispositional optimism when facing adverse life events than atheists or non-religious individuals.
None of this surprises anyone who has spent time in a township church on a Sunday morning, or sat with a persecuted believer who somehow still radiates peace. The world calls it resilience. The Scriptures call it the peace of God which passes all understanding, guarding hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7).
The Invitation of the Painting
This artwork is for anyone who has ever stood in their own version of the township - whatever form that takes in your life - and wondered whether the story of their circumstances is the final word.
It is for the person sitting in a hospital waiting room. For the parent who cannot see how the ends will meet this month. For the believer in a country where faith is dangerous, who quietly, stubbornly persists. For anyone who has had to choose, as an act of will, to look through a different lens.
The boy in the painting is smiling because he knows what the sunglasses show him is not a lie. He is loved. He is chosen. He is crowned. And the One who told him so has already walked the road ahead of him and come back with the promise: it is finished, and it is glorious.
That is what it means to live by faith and not by sight.
Research Sources Referenced
• University of Notre Dame — "Under Caesar's Sword" global study on Christian persecution and resilience
• Dr Harold G. Koenig, Duke University School of Medicine — comprehensive review of 100+ years of faith and mental health research
• Gallup / Pew Research Center — Religion's Relationship to Happiness and Wellbeing (26-country analysis)
• NIH / PubMed — "Dispositional Optimism in Christian Populations" scoping review (2023)
• Open Doors World Watch List 2026 — 388 million Christians face high-level persecution; Sub-Saharan Africa most affected
