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The saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," suggests that attempting to say anything concrete about the nature of beauty is a futile task. As soon as one person deems something beautiful, ten others will show up deeming it ugly. But theologians of the early and medieval church did not assume beauty was subjective. Borrowing from neo-Platonic philosophy, they believed that for something to be beautiful, it must also be good and true, with God reigning as the ultimate source of beauty. Today's church can be thankful for people like David Taylor, who connect such esoteric reflections to the church's mission. As the arts pastor for 12 years at Hope Chapel, a vibrant congregation in Austin, Texas, Taylor helped believer artists make the connection between worship, creativity, and community. Here, Taylor makes a similar connection between beauty and gospel proclamation to answer this year's cvp question, "Is our gospel too small?"

What more, you may ask, do we want? … We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. —C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

Many of the houses on my block in north-central Austin, Texas, are architecturally ugly. Built in the late 1950s, they are one-story, squat structures. Slapped-on metal porches hang out from exceedingly flat roofs. The asbestos siding is faded. The construction is cheap, the brick dingy and dull. Collectively they perform the duties of houseness fine. But I can't say that I walk down my block and feel awe. I feel glum. I'm grateful for my house, of course, and many good people live on my street, but if I look too long the ugliness of our houses starts to weigh me down.

That feeling only increases as I encounter other uglinesses in the world at large: strip malls with their mass-fabricated façades; daytime talk shows with their voyeuristic gossip; relentless visual noise that drains and distracts us; racism; self-indulgent behavior; wastefulness; barely utilitarian church buildings; and "faith" movies that ignore every biblical notion of sanctification.

And the ability to make ugliness abound, whether material or moral, is in us all, sinners great and small. The effect of all this ugliness upon us is no small thing, either. Like a dementor in Harry Potter's Azkaban, it sucks the life out of us. Ugliness makes our souls sick, leaving us dissipated and eventually deformed. Ugliness is one of the three anti-fruits of human rebellion, alongside falsehood and evil.

So what will rescue us from all this ugliness? God, of course. But what about God gives us hope in the midst of so much ugliness? A fundamental attribute of God: that he is beautiful. He is a beauty-full, beauty-making God who invites us to participate in his work of expanding beauty upon the earth.

Consider the ordinary dictionary meaning of beauty—"The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality."

Then consider this God.

Our God makes beautiful material stuff. He fashions the carnival-colored, wacky-jumping flat lizard of South Africa and the severe environment of the Gobi desert in Mongolia. He constructs the extravagant diversity of life in the Amazon rainforest. He invents homier things such as the capacity to savor tea and toast.

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October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10