Revealed: Seeing the Bible With Grown-Up Eyes
In Revealed, skilled artists use linocut, woodcutting, etching, and other distinctive mediums to shine a spotlight on the intricacies and idiosyncrasies hidden in God’s word.
A Bible-reading (and viewing) experience that is rich, surprising, and deeply unsettling.
Commenting on his linocut of an angel fisherman in Revealed, the artist writes, “Those who embrace God’s wisdom in Jesus are embraced by God,” adding, “Those who insist on their own wisdom are cast away.”
This reflection on Jesus’ words about the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13 neatly sums up my experience reading revealed and taking in its artists’ work. The illustrations reminded me that there is no comfortable way to fully experience the Bible, and that following Jesus means embracing His revealed wisdom in the person of Christ.
To process God’s word takes a posture of openness to whatever the Holy Spirit reveals to you through scripture. The striking illustrations in Revealed don’t make assuming that posture easier, but they do add a distinctive richness to the discipline of seeking God through the Bible.
You Can’t Ignore the Real Bible
Why was reading Revealed so unsettling?
Art reveals the deeply challenging nature of the Old and New Testament. It’s surprisingly easy to, after years practicing the faith, begin picturing neutered, PG versions of the Bible’s most difficult stories. Revealed forces the reader to instead see the Bible with “grown-up eyes.”
To register and digest the visual depictions of these stories takes a renewal of trust in God’s wisdom and a full embrace of the harrowing account of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation found in scripture. There’s no avoiding the weight of these stories when you can see the details depicted in front of you as imagined by a believing artist.
The Bible Defies the World’s “Wisdom”
Reading the Bible in Revealed is an exercise in embracing the upside-down wisdom of a God who uses things the world considers foolish to shame the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27). The Word’s stories are more challenging and upsetting than ever when illustrated. However, in a storybook Bible, they offer a unique invitation to deepened faith in the midst of the discomfort:
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
Seen through this lens, the uncomfortable, upsetting, and even downright ugly stories within the Bible seem right at home within God’s redemptive arc. Each work of art and passage in Revealed points back to this truth in its own way.
Introducing the Revealed Psalter
In Summer 2026, Square Halo is expanding on Revealed with the Revealed Psalter, which features all-new art and a 30-day journey through the entire book of Psalms.
Created as morning and evening devotional, the Revealed Psalter is full of striking artwork that enriches the Psalms and, like its predecessor, Revealed, forces you to see them in a new light.
The book’s artwork is on display at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Charlotte, North Carolina campus, and it’s set to be released in Summer 2026.
This article was written by Joshua Sosin, a writer and recovering cynic living in Lancaster, PA.
