This document summarizes student artwork and essays exploring the question "Where is God?" The artwork and essays address issues like suffering, evil, religious conflict and doubt. One piece depicts two Muslims praying amid 9/11 rubble to symbolize assumptions about Islam. Another shows a figure asking if God is present during personal suffering. A third argues that religious devotion can psychologically imprison people. Overall, the works grapple with reconciling belief in a loving God with the existence of evil and suffering in the world.

1. Tackling Tough Questions

2. This presentation of young people’s work
explores the issue of belief in God in a
world of suffering through art.
Students are invited to think about creating
their own work of art to respond to these
issues for themselves.
The examples here are good models, but
originality is the best approach.

3. God and evil
• This presentation explores some issues and
arguments about God and evil.
• If there is a great God, full of love, why is there
evil? Why so much? Why so apparently
unstoppable?
• Philosophical methods like clarifying terms,
examining different ideas, looking for logical
connections and analysing the consistency of
ideas are introduced
• Careful thinking rather than knee-jerk prejudice
is the learning aim.

4. Art and philosophy
• Language has its limits.
• In this presentation, you will see pupils’ art
work from the ‘Art in Heaven’ competition.
• The works of art were all made in response
to the theme ‘Where is God?’
• Sometimes art can express a response to
the ultimate questions of philosophy that
language can’t quite reach.
• Judge the art works yourself, with a
thoughtful comment and ten marks each for
creative quality and philosophical power.

5. Here are the questions
In the sky?
With the hungry?
With the children?
In the imagination?
In prayer?
In the mosque?
In a mandir?
In the mass graves?
In the earth?
When there is suffering, is it
possible that God is in the
suffering, with the people
who hurt the most? What
does that mean?

6. Georgette: Missing piece of the puzzle
I have always wondered where God is. Is he there when
you first ride your bike, when you cut your knee or in times
of poverty and famine? I know God can be in your
thoughts and prayers. When I was younger I used to think
God was a man who lived in the sky. Now I am older I
have a more moral based opinion of where God actually
is. In my picture there’s the world in the middle: religion
affects everyone even if you don’t believe. Happy and
sad moments in different time periods surround the world:
God was in history and is in the present and future. Martin
Luther King represents change and progress. Children
and babies represent new life. I have put money on my
poster: in the present day all the world thinks about is
money. But I bet that you are asking me why I have left a
space? I have left a space because as you can see all my
pictures fit together like a puzzle: the bit that is missing
represents God: this is because where is he at all these
times of sadness? Does God not care? Did the piece of
the puzzle get lost?

7. Jessica Parry explores the
most evil of human acts –
genocide – in her work of
art on the Holocaust. If
you believe in a good and
powerful God, then this is
a huge problem for your
theology.
Could God have stopped
it? Then what does ‘love’
mean? Could God not
stop it? Then divine power
is limited.

8. Where was God in the Holocaust?
Does the Holocaust make atheism
more sensible and reasonable?

9. Monumita’s picture of two young Muslims
praying over a backdrop of the shattered Twin
Towers of 9/11 asks profound questions about
God and religions. She writes: ‘devoted and
peaceful Muslims pray amongst the rubble of
the twin towers. This symbolizes the impact on
the perception of Islam in the media and
society today. I am very interested in this
religion: there are so many assumptions &
misinterpretations made by people about it. I
want to find out more and not be swept into the
acceptance of rumours and images portrayed
by the media and naivety of society.
The purpose of any religion is the spread of
peace. However if people continue to corrupt
this and use religion to channel their
aggression towards mankind then religion will
continue to be converted into political groups.
It’s up to us to stop this happening. Religion
and God are beautiful values which live deep
within us. Acted upon in a correct, unselfish
way, religion can help to rid the ever growing
injustice and discrimination against religions in
the world.’

10. Where is God?
In this slate-grey 3-D
corridor, a hunched red
plasticine figure sits.
Meredith (12) expresses
an experience. The words
say:
‘There was a man who
suffered every day and
every night. His sadness
radiated from him and his
anger burned like fire. He
sat in the dark at the end
of the corridor. He asked
“Is there a God? If there
is, why does he let me
suffer?” No answer came,
only silence. He curled up
and cried.’
Is personal suffering good
grounds for atheism?

11. My picture shows how I think god
is in the world. He is everywhere:
in good places but also in bad.
There are war images: is god
there when people fight and kill?
There is also a woman crying,
asking if god is there when you
feel alone. There are children, thin
and suffering: does god know that
they are ill? Is he watching them
slowly die? There is a Nazi flag
and the Jewish Star of David,
Holocaust and Hitler. Was God
there? But there are also children
dotted around happy and smiling,
the world isn’t only made up of
sadness, suffering, death, murder,
but also of happiness, joy and
love. Where is God? God is in
every person.
Elena is 15

12. Where is God?
Newspaper clippings
from today’s news with
barbed wire. My way of
symbolising war and
suffering for the world.
In the top left there’s a
big tear in the fabric;
underneath is bright
gold. This is where I
think God is, forever
growing larger in the
world and in our
hearts, biding his time
to cover the whole
image in gold.
Nicky, 14
Is Nicky correct? Is
God at work to bring
about more and
greater good in the
world?

13. ‘We have not answered
the question ‘Where is
God?’ But we have
suggested how to go
about answering the
question. Seek and you
will find. But it is not
that simple. If god was
“at the touch of a
button” would you dare
click it?’

15. Penny: ‘Your request has been
denied’
This expresses the feeling that God, if
he exists, is unreachable and hidden. At
a time when we need God most, such
as the peril the girl is facing, we reach
out. No one grabs our hand. The
masses of paper falling from the sky
suggest that our prayers never reach
anyone. The phrase ‘your request has
been denied’, written on every piece of
paper, suggests that I can’t reach God. I
feel there is no personal bond, no
personal response to my prayers. All we
receive is a weak cover up of the truth,
an automated message: your request to
be happy, to be alone, to do well, to get
better, has been denied. I feel it is very
unlikely that God exists. This is what my
paint and ink expresses. The different
coloured lines represent movement, the
different feelings the girl experiences
during each prayer, each denied
request.

17. Shamiso: The psychological bondage of ‘God’
In some of the photographs a white mask is painted over my eyes and I whitened my lips
too, the most expressive features on my face. I have tried to obscure them. As Karl Marx
said: ‘’religion is good for social control’ and ‘prevents any form of revolt, as it threatens
eternal damnation’. I did this obscuring to show that by committing to a religion, you lose
aspects of your character to adhere to whatever the religion tells you. To portray the
constraints in which religion holds an individual, I strapped various belts around my body
and bound my head with wire. The crucifix and padlock on my lips represents how
belonging to any religious group (Christianity was used only as an example) can be a vice
to censor free thought and freedom of expression. The monochrome photographs show a
journey of suffering and strife while believing that in accepting oppression and allowing
the psychological ‘bondage’ she will be ‘rewarded for her virtue’. I appear alone in all of
the images and they are taken from the perspective of someone watching who is more
powerful and has more control than me; they can be thought of as taken ‘through the eyes
of God’. The journey ends with ‘God’ watching as I clutch onto a balcony to keep from
falling, giving him the chance to save me. The final shot is looking at me after landing on
the ground below. I did this to try to convey my feeling that even if you do choose to
devote your life religiously, remaining loyal through pain and affliction, there is no
guarantee the promise that your God will ever deliver you at the end of it all. Inspiration
for this came from considering third world countries. For example parts of Africa are
extremely Christian yet they seem to suffer the most, their God has failed them time after
time and yet they maintain their loyalty: ‘Religion is an opiate of the masses’, Richard
Dawkins wrote in his book The God Delusion: ‘politicians avoid mentioning religion and
instead characterize their battle as a war against “terror”… or they”characterize terrorists
as motivated by pure “evil’ ‘. I agree with how Dawkins suggests that perhaps religion is
evil; if it was completely benign then God would be able to prevent suffering and would
certainly not cause it. I think religion psychologically imprisons people. Although Jihad is
not meant to include aggressive warfare, it has occurred with extremists. In essence I do
not think that there is anything that separates religion from so called ‘cults’ as they both
have the same brainwashing effect on people.
Hannah took the photographs

18. Rebecca:
‘Seek and you will find him’
Where is God? Seek and you will find
him. I depict a girl looking at her
shadow. Newspaper cuttings in the
shadow speak about the everyday:
terror, murder, death. Jesus stands
behind her, surrounded by light and
colour.
I put cuttings from newspapers in the
shadow, to do with what you see and
hear about on the news every day:
terror, murder, death, tension, crisis.
It’s easy to focus on the shadow in life,
as it’s presented so frequently. If you
think of God, it’s in the situations when
good things happen. But in the shadow,
God is there.
In the most war torn area people’s lives
can be transformed because of him.
The image of Jesus behind the girl and
the colour that surrounds them both
illustrates that even where things look
dark, God is working there. There is

19. Presented by :- Mohsin Sheikh