Monk - Void or Vessel?

I began to appreciate art more when I would travel to Chicago annually for a Pastors Conference and would visit the Art Institute of Chicago.  One work that always stayed with me was Monk by Katarina Fritsch shown here.  This image can only be fully appreciated in person in that it is a 3D life size sculpture.  When I viewed it, it was in a room all to itself and it seemed to become a void of negative space.  It created for me both a sense of reverence for the solemn mood that it created, but it also posed an ambiguity of sorts leaving me unsettled regarding the true goodness of the figure.  The artist seemed to be commenting that perhaps spiritual leaders, especially Christian ones, still possess a dark side that ought not be trusted. 

In light of revelations that continue to come out, it is easy to distance oneself from organized religions.  Further still, we may have suffered abuse from someone in a role of spiritual authority. Of course, as problematic as these well publicized hypocrisies or our own personal experience with them, we only need to look inside our own hearts and minds to quickly realize that we too have darkness we’d rather hide, decisions we’d like to have back, attitudes we’d like to have changed, anxieties we’d like to have calmed, depression we’d like to have lifted, hurts we’d like to have healed.  In any case, as this piece reminds us, one must be wise in whom we place our trust, but the reality is we can never know with absolute certainty that those in authority will not fail. But what I can know is that I can trust Christ and am called to follow him.  What this means also, is that I must ask myself will I be a void or a vessel for him?  A question worth pondering for now and probably forever.