Art Studio · Meaning of Life
Meaning of Life 2
The story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 27: wanting blessing, taking shortcuts, wearing a disguise, and asking where identity really comes from.
Story · Genesis 27:1-30
Jacob wanted the promise, but not God's way
The blessing scene
Jacob did not despise God's promise; he desired it deeply. The problem was that he did not trust God to fulfill the promise in God's own time.
Thinking about Jacob
- Have you ever known the right thing to do but chose a shortcut instead?
- What is something you are hoping for right now?
- How can trusting God help us wait patiently?
- What does Jacob's story teach us about getting good things God's way instead of our way?
Disguise · the question Isaac asks
Why pretend to be someone else?
Jacob felt he had to pretend to be Esau in order to receive the blessing. The story asks a painful question: why do we sometimes believe we must become someone else to be accepted, approved, or loved?
Isaac asks, “Who are you?”
Identity · Cindy Sherman
Am I being myself, or performing?
Cindy Sherman is known for conceptual self-portrait photography. She uses herself as both photographer and model, but not to show “herself” in a simple personal sense. She explores how identity is constructed in society.
Constructed identity
Sherman shows how a pose, costume, camera angle, or social expectation can make identity feel performed.
Costume and expectation
The class connects Sherman back to Jacob: what happens when we wear a role to gain something we fear we cannot receive as ourselves?
Questions for students
- Who am I really?
- Am I being myself, or acting like someone people expect me to be?
- How do TikTok, Instagram, movies, and friends shape the way I act or look?
- Is my identity fixed, or something I perform depending on the situation?
Seen and unseen
Do we really see what we think we see?
The deck frames a philosophical tension between what is seen and unseen. Jacob looks and feels like Esau to Isaac, but the visible surface is hiding the truth.
René Magritte — The Son of Man
The face is hidden, and that hiding makes us ask what is real, what is visible, and who a person truly is.
Reality and identity
What we see can be beautiful and incomplete. Meaning often depends on what we cannot immediately see.
What is reality?
Who are we, really?
What are we pretending to be in order to gain acceptance, approval, or worth?
Identity received
Children of God
“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Jacob's story asks whether we will keep disguising ourselves for blessing, or receive worth from God.
John 1:12
Then we made our own
Our young artists' responses. Tap to look closer.