PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS

GOD AND BEAUTY

PART ONE: God is Communicating to Us through Life

One thing I have become thoroughly convinced of is that life is meaningful and is actually communicating something to us. By life I don't mean all the silly speculations philosophers come up with but rather all the different elements which make up life. For example, last time as we looked at God and the Caveman we looked at life to discover truth about the caveman. Whereas H. G. Wells and many anthropologists would say that the caveman dwelt in a cave and beat his lover over the head with a club, life shows us none of those things. Rather all the drawings in the caves made by the cavemen show us that man at the earliest stage was an artist! He may have been more than an artist, but he was at least an artist. We need to stick with the evidence.

What else is life showing us? Last time we saw that life is showing us that there is a God and that God has given at least 3 major shocks to the universe.

1. That the universe exists at all is due to the fact that God has shocked it into existence.
2. That life (vegetable and animal) exists at all is due to the fact that God has shocked it into existence. Sir Anthony Flew one of the leading atheists of the 20th century claims that only God could have created the DNA molecule. It could not have been the result of evolution because it is the beginning point, not the ending point. The facts that it is the beginning point of life and that it is so complex show us that God had to shock the universe again for the DNA molecule to begin.
3. That man exists at all is due to the fact that God has shocked him into existence. Man is not primarily the result of evolution. If man drew better than the apes, he might be only the offspring of the ape. But the fact is that whereas man draws beautifully (even the caveman), the ape doesn't draw at all.

Many have come up with an ingenious way of getting God out of their lives. They make the rather silly claim that God is so superior to us that even though He does exist, we cannot know Him. That is silly for 2 reasons. First of all, these have created an unknowable God so that they won't have to get to know Him. They have a sneaking suspicion that if they do get to know Him or if He gets to know them, He might just want to change them, something they are unwilling to do. The second reason they are so silly is that if the God of this incredible universe does exist, surely He is brilliant enough to know how to communicate to us in such a way that we can understand Him.

"But," you might argue, "I had some teachers at school who were so smart that I couldn't understand them." Hogwash. They were either not all that smart or else they just didn't give a rip about you and your need to understand what they were saying. For example, who is the best person to work with an autistic child? Somebody mentally handicapped, a child, or a smart adult who has been trained in the area of autism? The answer is obviously the third one. It takes 2 things for somebody to communicate to you: some degree of intelligence and the desire to communicate to you. Without both of them, you won't be able to communicate (I suspect your professors just didn't care about you).

The creation of the universe shows us that God is brilliant. In fact the universe is so grand that it shows us that if God IS anything, He is at least brilliant. However, even more importantly, the coming of Christ into the world 2,000 years ago not only shows us that God is brilliant but also that He does cares. He DOES want to communicate with us. Christ is such a wonderful, effective communicator of who God is that the Bible actually calls Jesus "the Word" (John 1:1, 14). Not only are the 66 books of the Bible God's Word; Jesus is God's ultimate word to mankind. Now we DO understand Jesus. We might not like what He is saying; however, we DO understand Him.

Now this brilliant God has created life in such a way that it communicates something to us about Him (John 1:4).

PART TWO: God and Desire

So what IS life saying to us? One area of life we want to look at is desire. Today the idea of desire has gotten a bum rap. We are taught to be unselfish. Being unselfish is not bad; however, it's not the goal of existence. This influence comes to us from the orient, Hinduism and Buddhism. In fact Gautama Buddha actually tells us that desire is the cause of all suffering. If we would just deny these desires, we would then be able to get rid of all the pain and suffering in the world. According to Buddha desires are not only real but are also really bad. Christianity does not view desire that same way. It actually embraces desires and longings. According to Lewis:

"Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures,
fooling about with drink and sex and ambition
when infinite joy is offered us,
like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum
because he cannot imagine what is meant
by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
We are far too easily pleased" (The Weight of Glory).

So which is right? First, we want to say that our desires are logical. The fact that we experience hunger means that food must logically exist. Now our hunger does not guarantee us that we will get food--there are millions of children around the world who are hungry right now and will get no food today. However, the hunger we feel means that food does exist. In the same way our thirst in this world means that liquids logically exist. Our desires mean that they can possibly be fulfilled. In the same way our spiritual desires mean that they ultimately can be fulfilled. Will they be fulfilled? That is another matter. However, the fact these desires exist mean they must be able to be fulfilled.

Now there are 2 kinds of desire I want to look at: the desire for food and the desire for my mom's chocolate pie. The first kind of desire just comes naturally. A child doesn't have to taste food in order to experience hunger. He just naturally and automatically feels hungry. God has made him that way. On the other hand, until you read this passage, few of you probably knew that my mom used to make the best chocolate pie (in my opinion which is reliable) in the world. You do not have any desire for her pie because you've never tasted it. I, on the other hand, do desire it because after I tasted that chocolate pie, it developed within me a desire for MORE of her chocolate pie. This is the desire we want to look at right now.

The specific desire we want to look at is that of beauty. It is the desire to become somebody beautiful and glorious beyond all reckoning. Now this desire did not necessarily come about automatically. Rather this desire was created because we came into contact with beauty, not just with "beautiful objects" but with beauty itself.

Too often we confuse beauty with a beautiful object. For example, I hear a beautiful classical symphony which lifts my spirits to the stratosphere. I think that the symphony is the cause of this exhilarating feeling. I encounter beauty when I see the glacial lakes and mountains of Lake Louise in Canada. Or a beautiful starry night or a stunning sunset. Although these are beautiful, they did not create this sense of wonder, this desire for more. Why? Because many times whenever I hear that same symphony again or go back to Lake Louise, my soul is not caught up into heaven. Yes, I encountered Beauty in that beautiful object; however, I am deluded if I think the object is the source of that beauty. The tree hugger has experienced beauty in the trees. Yet, although the tree hugger hugs the tree, he is one of the most miserable people around because the tree is not quite doing it for him.

Rather there is something out there that uses nature, that works through nature which creates in me a desire for glory or for beauty. I want to be the beast who is kissed by beauty so that I can be transformed into a handsome prince. Like Pinocchio I feel like I am a wooden boy who wants to become flesh and blood. Many girls feel like they live among the cinders but hope that one day they will be seen for who they truly are, princesses. Beauty has created these desires and dreams within us.

PART THREE: The Christian Concept of Beauty--Glory

The Bible likewise deals with the idea of Beauty whenever it speaks of glory. According to the NT there are 5 major elements of glory:

1. We shall be with Christ
2. We shall have fame
3. We shall have some sort of official capacity; for example, we will reign with Christ. [Take The Chronicles of Narnia very seriously. Lewis is deadly serious whenever he crowns the 4 children in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The purpose of the death and resurrection of Aslan (Christ) is that He might seat us on the thrones of Narnia. (See Rev. 3:21.)]
4. We shall be luminous, shall shine as the sun in the heavens
5. We shall be feasted, banqueted, entertained.

Unfortunately, many of us misunderstand what the NT means by fame. In this world when we think of fame, we think of us being more famous than others. In other words, fame is competitive. I don't want YOU to receive fame because when you do, you are taking the spotlight off of ME.

Fame though in the NT sense is not competitive. It is not the fame that other people give me; rather it is the fame that God gives me. Just like the child loves the praise of his father, the dog loves the praise of his owner, or the private the praise of his sergeant, so the Christian loves the praise of his heavenly Father. We hear this exact praise in the parable of the talents. Just as in the parable of the talents, Jesus will say to many: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." When accepted properly, I don't compare myself with others; rather, I relish the praise Jesus has lavished upon me, me, even me.

Again, this praise is not automatic. We shall all see that Face, that Face behind the universe which many of us have tried to avoid in life by focusing on other people or on other things. But on that day all these things and all these people will be stripped away. It will be just Him and me, Him and you. At that point we will hear either "Well done" or "I never knew you." We shall experience unspeakable fame or unimaginable shame.

The second element of this glory is luminosity. Jesus says that His followers will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of His Father (Matt. 13:43). This is another way of saying that we shall be glorious creatures who have been transformed to be just like Jesus.

Creatures from the heavenly world are glorious. Twice when the apostle John encounters the angel, the angel is so glorious that John falls down to worship him. Well, as glorious as any angel is, all their glory pales in comparison to the glory of Jesus. Because of our relationship with Christ, we shall participate and share in His glory. Just like Jesus is so glorious that we would fall down and worship Him if He came to us today, so we would be tempted to fall down and worship you if you appeared today the exact same way you will appear whenever Christ returns. But just like the possibility of fame also means the possibility of shame, so the possibility of luminosity means the possibility of horror. Our response to Christ determines which of the possibilities we will experience.

The fact that all of us are creatures faced with eternal glory or eternal horror means that I must view those around me differently than I had before. They are not mere nuisances; they are not objects to be manipulated or used; they are not playthings. They are immortals. As Lewis says: "We live in a society of possible gods and goddesses" (W/G). The individual is the most important person on this planet. The trees, mountains, sunsets will one day all pass away; we though are eternal. This is not an easy weight to bear. Only the truly humble can bear it.

All the dreams, myths, and fairy tales are telling us something about ourselves, about our deepest desires. Like Pinocchio we do want to change from little wooden boys into real boys; like Cinderella we do want to emerge from the cinders to become royalty; like the beast we want beauty to kiss us and transform us into somebody beautiful. According to Christianity only Christ can do this.

In the meantime though, whereas we have tasted this change since Christ has come to live within us, this change is not yet complete. It will one day be completed but just not in this life time. In the meantime you've been told that your desires and dreams are idealistic, even adolescent and that one day you will mature and grow more realistic. The truth is that this kind of growing up is actually becoming jaded. The idealistic dreams of childhood and adolescence are far more realistic than the maturity of jaded adults. As Lewis writes in the intro to The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe:

"My dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you,
but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books.
As a result you are already too old for fairy tales,
and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still.
But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it,
and tell me what you think of it.
I shall probably be too deaf to hear,
and too old to understand,
a word you say, but I shall still be . . .
Your affectionate Godfather,
C. S. Lewis"

So as we live, enjoy life. Join in the merry banquet God is preparing for His sons and daughters. Yet realize that the ones you are living with, enjoying life with are immortals. Even more so, always remember that you are a signpost, directing people either to a future of exhilarating glory or to a destiny of unimaginable horror.