Here I stand, in all this wonder...

I've been on a spring break trip, mountain biking and hiking in the Carolinas for a while. Though I got back over a week ago, I've been struggling to catch back up and get back into the swing of things. I've made it, now, and I have a new offering -- this one looking at my life more than anyone else's.

The Seventh Sense:

Developing an Appreciation of Beauty

     A quick study of psychology, or even an honest look at one’s own life, will reveal that change comes most rapidly from dissatisfaction. Disrupt a schema, and you work quickly to correct it, to return to equilibrium of worldview. Oftentimes, only the most outlying perceptions are disrupted, and after a brief period of dissatisfaction a person will reorient to the deeper, underlying belief and return to normal. If, however, a core belief is challenged, that is when true change of character comes.

     In my own life, I can trace any number of times when I was led to spiritual dissatisfaction with a practice or belief that I held. Most recently, I was experiencing dissatisfaction with my response to Christ, and to my salvation through Him. At the core, I was concerned that I was not really and truly appreciative of what He had done for me; that, if I was, I should praise Him more and give Him my thanks more, and even trust Him more. I traced my apathy back to an under-appreciation for Christ. What I did not expect is that this dissatisfaction would work its way out by a study of beauty.

     In a set of circumstances only God can construct, I came to a class called “Engaging Beauty” (the class from which this blog was born) simply because the title “Faith and Literature” sounded applicable; I was seeking how to mesh my faith and my writing, and I thought maybe the class could help. As it turns out, it does not necessarily do so. Instead, it has almost directly addressed my relative apathy toward Christ.

     As the semester progressed, my dissatisfaction at first only intensified as we studied Annie Dillard’s keen awareness of the beauty of God’s creation. I immediately tied it to my lack of emotion and lack of appreciation in my spiritual life. But it was not until we got to Jonathan Edwards, nearly half-way through the semester, that the truth finally came home.

     As my appreciation of beauty grew, my joy in Christ and appreciation of life grew as well. As I truly and more completely realized creation as pure gift to us to appreciate and enjoy and to steward, and as I considered the fact of and reason for beauty, I came to give God my thanks more readily and more frequently.

     Armed with a better understanding of why beauty (to point to and bring glory to God), and instructed in a healthier view of beauty as God-made and made for God, I undertook a Spring Break trip to the Carolinas. There is much beauty to be found in the campsites we visited; on our second day at Dupont State Forest, we hiked to the top of a very large cliff from which we could see mountains too far away to accurately calculate the distance. But rather than feeling some disconnected sense of awe (which I have always felt when standing in a position which grants a large panoramic view), my thoughts instead turned to how small a piece of the world I was looking at, and turned from thence to an overwhelming sense of gratitude to the entirety of creation in which God has put us. Much of it has been destroyed by man, but even that which is left is too grand to comprehend.

     But even before leaving on that trip, the connection between beauty and my apathy was even more directly addressed. One of Edwards’ tenets is that beauty is defined as consent of being to being. Immediately, there, my apathy of Christ was defined; though Christ continually and joyfully consented to my being, I was not as joyfully returning the favor. I did not find joy simply in Christ’s and my existence as existence. I had always felt that I was either in disfavor or benign in God’s eyes: never was he pleased with me. Further, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross has always been difficult and abstract for my mind to grasp. It still is, and I have a certain amount of envy for those who are somehow able to comprehend it; and I know that should I finally truly comprehend it I will fall on my face before God and weep. But for some reason I cannot yet truly appreciate the cross, and for that I am still a little dissatisfied. But what I have got, now, is a tangible appreciation for creation, and for beauty, and for God’s love for me – even if not for His sacrifice of His Son, at least for the myriad gifts in my every day: for food, for shelter, for the money needed to survive in this world, for my fiancée, for the college I attend and the teachers who challenge me continually, for His gift to me of writing. On the last point, I am beginning to hope in the verse in Psalm 37 which says if we seek first His Kingdom, He will give us the desire of our hearts. My desire on this earth, and what all indications point to as His calling for me, is to write. I desire nothing more for my life than to write stories which glorify God and call people toward Him, and I am inexpressibly grateful that He is saying “yes” to me.

     Am I “there” yet? Of course not; sanctification takes a lifetime. As long as I am in Christ and in a sinful, fleshly body, I will continually be dissatisfied. But to those who lack wisdom, God will continually give generously to those who ask, without finding fault (Jas. 1:5). Through engaging beauty, and through writers like Dillard and Edwards, I will grow more and more in consent of being to being until I say with utmost fervor, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

The Contrast of Augustine

                Augustine, for me, is interesting to study as a contrast for what has happened to beauty in our culture. Interesting because Augustine asks many of the questions today’s world asked – and continues, in some circles, to ask – but the solution Augustine came to is vastly different from the world. Yet, for its vast difference, Augustine’s view hinges upon recognition of one single fact: the existence of God.

                I was handed a paper containing many quotes from Augustine; let’s look at several of them.

                “...I ought not to have been content with what the philosophers said about such things, even when they spoke the truth. I should have passed beyond them for love of you, my supreme Father, my good Father, in whom all beauty has its source.” Many times we assume that if someone has a Ph.D, or are particularly versed in a particular discipline, that we may take what they say as fact. But simply because they do not come out and say “God does not exist,” by their words and actions they live as if He does not. So when something appears to be the truth, we buy into it, rather than pressing beyond to seek God, who is the source of all true wisdom.

                “But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.” Has not our culture done this? Pleasure is what you call it, beauty is what you call it, truth is what you call it. Many have reconciled themselves to this, or at least resigned themselves to it; but how much pain, confusion, and error has multiplied when the beginning and end of all things is in ourselves. Kant committed this error when he marginalized beauty in favor of the sublime; and by favoring the sublime, he favors the individual, and God is cut out a little more from personal life.

                “I shall say no more, except that to us is promised a vision of beauty—the beauty of whose imitation all other things are beautiful, and by comparison with which all other things are unsightly.” The most beautiful woman, the most handsome man, the most awesome of nature’s wonders – if they are beautiful, it is because they imitate that from which beauty issues forth. But when held in stark contrast to that which is most beautiful, we see how starkly ugly and perverted by sin they are. This should be made most clear; before we go about valuing superficial beauty, we must remember to look at ourselves and others through God’s eyes. Our beauty comes from the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, not in a specific blend of genes which gives our features a particular form. Do not all things come from God? If He blesses one of his children with harmony of physiognomy, it is still nothing compared with the bodies we will receive in His Glory.

                Augustine, through these and many other of his quotes, reveals a man who wrestled with questions common to us all, and common through the ages. What sets him apart is his conclusions based on God, instead of spiraling into nothingness the way the postmodern movement has.

The great misstep of philosophers of all times is the starting assumption that the world is in good working order. From that standpoint, claims to reality have been searched. But it is akin to replicating a model which was not correctly assembled to begin with. Rather than returning to the blueprints, we try to make sense out of the mess before us. But if the realities of the world have been twisted and corrupted by sin and the Devil, is it any wonder it seems to make little sense? Only when we recognize there were original blueprints, and an original architect whose design was malevolently twisted by human error, can we begin to approach an ultimate, objective reality.