2 of 5

Our Creator commissions a multifaceted work of literature: the Bible. In it, we find the comforting poetry of Psalm 23. There is the Apocalypse, teeming with strange symbols that inspire fear and awe. In the Gospels Jesus' parables deploy allusive turns of phrase. There is no sentimentalism in the laments of Jeremiah, no slick or sloppy writing in Paul's letters.

There is also, preeminently, the beauty of God's self-sacrificing love—of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the cross the beauty of God is mangled, smelly, dirty, misunderstood, "banged with terror," to quote one modern poet. It makes us weep. And it is good. And how it makes us yearn to be loved and love like such a God.

What we see in this Trinitarian God is his ability to make beauty shine forth from all kinds of lovely and messy, magnificent and broken things—things from which we expect beauty to be absent. The doubt-filled book of Job? That freakish quartet of singing beasts cruising around the eternal throne? These are beautiful? Yes, these things, directed by the hand of God, are beautiful.

I submit, then, that when we present a gospel that ignores or devalues beauty, we not only present a small gospel, but also a distorted gospel, because it misrepresents our God.

The God whom we preach can end up not looking like the Word made radiant flesh, but like the Word who belongs to a Mensa club. He has the answers, all of which are true, but no real presence. He is the Right Idea who looks nothing like the resplendent, technicolor Son of Man—"hair a blizzard of white, voice a cataract, face a perigee sun"—whose beauty captivated the heart of St. John. Likewise, instead of the Good Shepherd whom Mary of Bethany leisurely beheld, we can easily find ourselves following a worker-of-the-month carpenter, a driven good-doer who gets plenty accomplished for the kingdom, but who looks like a far cry from the transfigured Glory whom the early church fathers called the "everlasting desire of nations."

We certainly must continue to declare Jesus as the Good Way and the True Truth. But he is not these alone. Jesus is also a Desirable Beauty, one who attracts us by the beauty of his person and works. And he has placed a deep longing in all humans for beauty. When you and I welcome the in-forming, re-forming presence of beauty into our gospel—our evangelism and social action, our worship and work, our praying and playing—we allow beauty to do something that only it can do: generate longing, a longing that is satisfied supremely in the Source of all created beauties, Jesus Christ. And this is very good news.

To be sure, beauty has its subjective dimension. I like a good mocha coffee. My wife prefers a good black tea. My architect friend Margaret favors the clean lines of modern architecture over the ornate gothic architecture I'll take any day. There are the nonbelievers who fail to see the "beauty" of the crucifixion. In no way, then, can we make simplistic statements about what is beautiful. Still, there are at least three fundamental qualities that suggest the basic nature of beauty. Let me explain.

When we say of something, "That is beautiful," what dynamics are at work? Three interrelated qualities: unity, complexity, and richness, all of which, when working together, evoke longing. Take a Mercedes Benz engine, a fine mechanical work of art.

First, all the parts of a Mercedes engine hold together, are excellently integrated—unified. Nothing is wasted, nothing missing. Second, the engine exhibits a complexity of action. Many things, electrical, chemical, and mechanical, are happening at the same time to produce wondrous functions. And third, the engine provokes, for Benz-lovers at least, poetic outbursts: "What a gorgeous engine! It's perfect!" While philosophers might call this "radiance" or "richness," car enthusiasts would call this ecstasy, for they sense that something "more than" is going on.

next page... |  2 of 5

share this page

October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10