The Not-Quite Reverend Van Gogh

“I want to go home,” Vincent van Gogh said. And at 37, he died. It was July 27, 1890.

In this centennial year of van Gogh’s death, it is difficult to ponder the summer’s sunflowers without being reminded of this sensitive young artist’s painting of the overflowing vase splashing forth endowed, round blossoms ripe with festivity. Van Gogh yearned to bring to earth the spiritual sunflowers of the Lord. They would be planted in the gardens of the heart, he mused. And he set himself to serve humanity with the love of Jesus.

Aborted Ministry

Vincent’s father, Theodorus, was a minister in a small, Dutch Reformed church. His mother, Anna Cornelia, reared him in a proper parsonage, and the numerous pastors who had preceded them helped build a strong, biblical heritage.

Early in life the red-haired, blueeyed, freckled boy memorized Scripture. In frequent letters to his brother, Theo, he quoted the Bible, particularly when he was sent off to a boarding school in Zevenbergen.

Vincent pored earnestly over biblical passages and hymns, and as a result, he was regarded as a fanatic by many of his peers. Nevertheless, his commitment to Christ was paramount, and eventually he became a Bible teacher and a supply preacher for a local Methodist chapel. His sermons there often focused on mankind’s severe lot, God’s kindnesses, and the bond of love that can tie together the human family. He also set about to translate the Bible into French, German, and English.

Convinced he was to answer the call to ministry, he began theological studies in Amsterdam. After only one year, however, Vincent concluded that academic rigor was not for him—particularly the Greek classes. Then, in August 1878, he enrolled in training for lay preachers in Brussels, following which he hoped for a mission assignment. But the appointment never came. His superiors concluded he was a risk, unable to master even the “lower classes.”

As a result, Vincent appointed himself a pastor to coal miners in southern Belgium. He preached in an old dance hall and started Bible classes. A missions society agreed to pay him $10 a month for a six-month trial period.

Wanting to be obedient to every word of Jesus, Vincent sold all his belongings and even allowed the coal dust to remain on his face. But his “excessive zeal” did not impress the missions society: They discontinued his monthly wage. He stayed alive at the mines by eating crusts of bread.

A Substitute Career

The rebuff from the organized church crushed van Gogh. Having nursed severe hurt, his heart turned to anger. He decided then to love and serve God through painting rather than preaching. Instead of clergy colleagues, he sought a companion painter—someone who “would be as one of God’s angels to me.”

On Christmas 1881 Vincent sealed his separation from the church. In bitterness, he informed his father that he henceforth regarded the institution as “abominable.”

At the same time, Vincent’s hunger for friends was growing. “I want to do drawings which touch … people,” he said. When befriending a prostitute, Sien, he regarded his relationship as his opportunity to “give hope to a poor creature.” She was that indeed: smallpox pitted, addicted to drink, cigars, and foul language, the mother of an illegitimate child, and suffering from gonorrhea.

Wandering in search of his heart, Vincent bedded down in darkness. Early signs of derangement were evident on Christmas Eve in 1888 when, in a fit of despair, he cut off a portion of his left ear. Nevertheless, the intense colors that were brushed on canvas with remarkable rapidity marked the genius of his art.

In and out of normalcy, Vincent voluntarily submitted himself to a mental hospital at Saint-Remy. Through blurred days, he spewed forth mutterings that were obsessed with philosophy and theology. To the nuns watching over him, Vincent testified to religious visions, most of them haunted with frightful portents.

Writing to Theo that he believed life to be ongoing—endless—this troubled painter of 800 oils and 700 drawings took a revolver into a wheat field on July 27, 1890. He stepped behind a manure pile and shot himself in the stomach, then stumbled back to his bed and turned his gaze to the wall.

The 37-year-old genius was in his eternal home.

By J. Grant Swank, Jr.

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