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.

The Words of Edwards

                Today, to sort of begin and end Jonathan Edwards, I want to go over several key terms Edwards uses when talking about beauty; what those terms mean to Edwards; and then my take on them, and on the concept Edwards is driving at.

                First, much as I did in Starting on Beauty, Edwards defines two types of beauty: primary beauty and secondary beauty. For Edwards, secondary beauty is form and harmony – it is superficial beauty. It is this beauty which the world got hung up on, and that Kant argued against in his endorsement of the sublime. The problem with secondary beauty is that it is subjective; some people see beauty in certain forms that other people do not. It is because of this subjectivity of beauty that Kant argues it is not the most important thing. What Kant and many others missed – and is especially prevalent in the postmodern movement, in areas outside of beauty as well – is the fact that the idea of beauty still exists, no matter what different people’s interpretation of it is. Roland Delattre, in his essay concerning Jonathan Edwards titled Aesthetics and Ethics, says: “Everywhere in the universe, and not only among human beings, there is evidence of a deep hunger for beauty.” What this should have pointed out to Kant and many others is, despite differing viewpoints of what exactly beauty was, the concept and the desire still exists; therefore, it should stand to reason, that beauty is something which exists, something which people can react to. But in staring at the trees, they have missed the forest.

                Second, Edwards speaks of primary beauty: beauty which is consent of being to being. For Edwards, as for the Bible and for anyone who claims to believe the Bible, everyone and everything springs from God. I spoke of this at length in my last post. So this primary beauty stems from God; when we see beauty in another or in creation, it is agreeing with God in the consent of His being to the other being. I should say, true beauty is this; when we cut God from the picture, it is a selfish and subjective perception of beauty, and likely is superficial. This is why so much of what we perceive as beauty today is so damaging to individuals; when we say a man or woman is beautiful, and we are using subjective, fleshly measurements to say so – we lay on pride and haughtiness to the individual being admired, and lust upon ourselves because the beauty is for our benefit only. Then, those who are not subjectively beautiful are discarded as of no use for our enjoyment, unless there is some cheap carnal enjoyment to steal from them. A person does not have to be beautiful if they are useful, after all; and, inversely, if they are beautiful they do not need to be of any other use. So humanity is enslaved by this subjective, selfish beauty. But when beauty comes from God, both in the observer and the subject, then God is given glory and the sinfulness and selfishness of man does not creep in. The purpose, then, of secondary beauty is to point us to primary beauty, which points us to God.

                So what about this cordial consent? I spoke of it much in my last post, but let me include it here for comprehensiveness’ sake. Consent of God is His saying “yes” to our existence, and of us responding “yes” to His “yes.” This consent is moment by moment; God does not say “yes” at our birth and leave it be. Why does the Law command: “You shall not murder?” Because we are claiming lordship over God’s consent to another being; we are saying “no” when God is still saying “yes.” Any time we say “no” to God – whether in our own lives or in the life of another – we are in sin, and I spoke of that at length in my last post as well.

                Edwards also speaks of the ethics of beauty. I do not have the space here to re-posit all of Edwards evidence toward what he calls true virtue and the ethics of beauty. He argues that God, in creating the universe, did not create from nothing but rather from Himself. The creation is not some separate entity which exists outside of God, but that creation is the natural outflow of a perfect God who is in complete consent to Himself within the Trinity. And this creative process continues; with each new life God creates and says “it is good.” God, by His very existence, beautifies life, if we read more of Delattre. So too are we, if we want to say “yes” to God, to engage in a beautifying life. There is a very good section in Roland Delattre’s essay which defines this beautifying life: it begins with appreciating the beauty that exists; from that should come a natural tendency to want to turn things that are not beautiful into things that are; and along with that is the resistance of anything which tries to destroy beauty. Remove any one of these three supports, and the paradigm begins to collapse. Appreciation without beautifying or resistance springs from selfishness; beautifying and/or resistance without appreciation is legalism; appreciation and beautifying without resistance is hypocrisy.

                Though volumes more can be written – and indeed have – this should be a good base from which to begin to define beauty. Which, I know, I was supposed to be doing from the beginning. And I am; but here I am, halfway (roughly) through the semester. Let’s see where things are after another two months or so.

On Beauty As Consent

     Today, I want to look at a few things that Jonathan Edwards teaches, and also return to two of my previous discussions. I will have to divert from the specific subject of beauty for a little bit, but because beauty and ethics and the Christian life are so bound up together, you cannot talk about one without acknowledging the other.

     The first thing I want to discuss is the concept of beauty as relational; that beauty does not exist separately from other things but is inextricably bound up in the living of this life. I’ve spoken before about Christ telling the Pharisees that, should the disciples keep silent, the stones would cry out (Luke 19:40). And I think it is very telling that Creation did not stop until Man and Woman were created. See, I think sometimes we take it for granted that “God created the Heavens and the Earth in six days, and on the seventh He rested,” as if the concept of a seven-day week were already established and God managed to fit everything in on schedule, as it were. But this is not the case; He created until Creation was complete, and it was not complete until Man and Woman were created. Because Jesus’ statement in Luke does not preclude our existence; if mankind did not exist, then Creation would praise God in and of themselves. But Creation was made to praise God, and we are the voices and the spirits and souls through which Creation can praise God. If we fail that, if we refuse as a species to praise God, then the rest of Creation will cry out.

     So, as Edwards even discusses, relationship existed from the beginning, between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and I’ll get into a little more detail when I bring up my second point. But my first point is this: while beauty exists outside of our perception, as I argued against Kant, it does not give praise to God until we praise Him for it. A sparrow does not fall without God’s noticing, Jesus tells us that: but He didn’t stop Creation with the sparrow – and I think that’s telling. Again, sometimes we take it for granted because we’re here, we exist, that if we didn’t it wouldn’t matter. If that were the case, God would not have spared Noah, he would not have made a covenant with Abraham, or with Moses, or with David, or with mankind through His Son Christ Jesus. If we were that disposable, He would have disposed of us. The question I feel we must ask, is why. My pastor in church the other week said, if you’re here [on earth] it’s because God has a purpose for you. And that is very good on a personal level; but what about a global level? If mankind is here, it is for a reason; and if we believe Jonathan Edwards, and beauty is relational, then what is beauty apart from us?

     But before we get too big a head on our shoulders, let us realize God is complete within Himself; He is perfect, after all. We seem, sometimes, to have a mixed up view of “perfection” because in everyday language we nuance perfect to mean “as perfect as can be done by humans.” But when we say God is perfect, we need to realize He is Perfect. So if God can exist on His own, how much of a say do we have in beauty? And this, I believe, is critical.

     I spoke in my first blog about the idea that “If God created it, it is beautiful.” But I want to focus that a little differently to say “if it points to God, it is beautiful.” Because another concept Edwards discusses is the idea that Creation is the outpouring of God. It was not created ex nihilo in the way we think about it, but it was an extension, of sorts, of God. He existed, and it came from Him.

     (Now one point I’m wrestling with, and I’m not sure how far Edwards takes this, is if he is saying the Creation is God, who is perfect, how has sin damaged the Creation. I’m not sure how that fits in just yet, but I continue to pursue.)

     But we must realize that, according to the Gospel of John, everything that was made was made for Christ. Nothing was made apart from Him. There is not anything in existence that He did not oversee. So everything needs to point back to Him.

     Here is where I want to digress for an instant, and discuss sin, among other things. Some people ask “If God created everything, where did sin come from?” And it may seem a very logical question. But the fact is this: sin is acting opposite to what God wants. There has to be a choice, or we would be automatons, with no real relationship with God. One of Edwards’ concepts is that beauty is consent of one being to another. The beauty of God is the consent of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to one another. Beauty in our lives is us saying “yes” to God. Beauty in creation is Creation pointing to God and saying “yes.” Recalling my pastor; continued life on this earth is God saying “yes” to us as individuals, and as humankind. When we say “no,” that is sin. Since God is perfect, He will not say “no” to Himself. Since we are imperfect, it is very easy to say “no” to God.

     I want to address one issue separate from beauty for a moment. There is no middle ground, here; we either say “yes” or we say “no.” Even if we do not decide, we are deciding not to decide, and that is a “no” decision. When Paul likens this life to a race in Hebrews 12:1, we must consider what a race is. Yes, we race toward the finish and prize of oneness with Christ Jesus. But the race is not the road on which we run. The race is the movement of people. If you are in a marathon, and stop in the middle of the road, the race continues whether you are moving or not. So by your stasis, the race, don’t you see, moves you backward. So it is in our relationship with God: when we aren’t moving forward toward the finish, we are moving backward. So either you are saying “yes” to God, and living in His beauty; or you are saying “no” and living in the deformity.

     You are always saying yes to somebody; to say “yes” to God is to say “yes” to beauty, because true beauty lies within God. But to say “no” to God is to say “yes” to deformity and corruption.

     God is always reaching out; in the relation of beauty, His half is always extended; in His creation, in the way of life, in your life. But until there is mutual consent, beauty is incomplete. If we call beautiful that which is not from God and that which does not point to God, it is not beauty. It is a superficiality, a cloak of the Evil One to lure those away from God whom he can. If it does not come from God, if it does not point back to Him, it is not true beauty, no matter how pleasing to the eye.

Vigen. John. Annie. Jesus.

      Vigen Guroian. John of the Cross. Annie Dillard. Jesus. What thing links the four of these, aside from God? Well, let’s see.

      Vigen Guroian wrote a book called “The Fragrance of God.” To begin the first chapter, Vigen tells the story of a rose that was planted off the end of the porch of his childhood home; a rose with a scent so fragrant, it made his mind reel. Then, one day many years later while browsing through a plant nursery, that fragrance hit him again; and, behind a sign, he rediscovered the rose of his youth. He bought it, took it home, and planted it at the end of a garden path at his home. Later in the chapter, he describes the presence of God much as the fragrance of that rose that, though hidden, is still present and offers itself to our senses. This did not mean much to me when I first read it.

      John of the Cross was a man who lived in the 1500s, who experienced God in an amazing way and, fortunately for us, left us many writings that we, too, may be open to what he experienced. In one collection, called “Living Flame of Love,” he writes: “The longing in your soul is actually His doing. You may feel only the smallest desire for Him. There may be no emotion at all. But the reason your desire rises at all is because He is passing very near to you. His holy beauty comes near you, like a spiritual scent, and it stirs your drowsing soul.”

      Immediately, a light-bulb went off over my head. Suddenly, Vigen’s words meant so much more. Maybe it is what Vigen was getting at, maybe not; I never got the sense from him. But I think of another story I was set to tell my class, and decided not to.

      I love popcorn. The microwave kind, actually; well, we all have sin in our lives. But I can always smell when someone is making popcorn. I might be engrossed in a video game, in my room upstairs – or  listening to music and writing, or working on school – when suddenly, my nose twitches. My head snaps up a little, and my mind says: “Popcorn!” Immediately, I fold up the book, or pause the game, or the music, and run downstairs. There are many foods, even, that evoke similar responses. I like food. A lot. But you see, the fragrance is not my doing. It is not because of me – in those instances, anyway – that the fragrance exists; it simply does. And that fragrance, in turn, awakens a desire for food. Vigen, upon smelling the rose, searched for it to buy it and take it home; it awakened a desire and a memory in him. Much the same way, as John of the Cross says, a desire for God is not born in us; God exists, and in passing near you, like a spiritual scent, awakens a desire.

      To take things back to the beginning of class, one of the first authors we looked at, was Annie Dillard – and I discussed this somewhat when we covered it. But Annie does not create what she sees; she even said – and I’ve quoted it – that beauty exists whether we will or sense it. Beauty, then, in the visual realm, can be a “scent for the eyes,” awakening our desire for God. Similarly, throughout Vigen’s book, he postulates that beauty in creation, and in the garden, stems from the beauty of The Garden, that of Eden, which we lost when our first parents sinned. Because microwave popcorn does not necessarily smell good in and of itself; but it awakens in me the memory, too, of eating popcorn. Just as, for Vigen, the scent of the rose awakened in him the memories of his youth; and scent is linked more powerfully to memory than any other sense.

      Which brings me to Jesus: how often in the gospel does Jesus link the kingdom of God (or Heaven) to something desirable? In a word: often. It is like a priceless treasure which a man finds in a field. He covers it back up, goes home and sells everything he has and buys the field. The treasure was not put there by the man; but upon discovering it, he acts in such ways as necessary to be able to obtain and enjoy it. The same thing happens with the pearl of great value. And when God reaches out and touches us, and we sense it – through fragrances literal and figurative – we reach back, searching for the source because we recognize its value and are willing to give everything to obtain it.

      But when we seek the thing itself, and not what is behind the thing, we fall into depravity. When beauty, and pleasure, and enjoyment are sought for their sole purpose alone, then we fall into the world of Kant, and of all post-modernists: it is your interpretation; it is what you make it; so where can there be true definition? So we have art made of toilets, or sex, or the grotesque – anything and everything. When all beauty does not point to one thing, it will point to anything; and when it can point to anything, it will point to everything; and when it points to everything, then it will point to nothing, because everything will be “beautiful” and the term is meaningless. And then beauty is gone – no longer to be sensed, no longer to be sought, no longer to point us to God. All that is left is outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The Purpose of Beauty

     It has been an interesting week for seeing and recognizing beauty. Let me try to draw together a few things.

     In class on Thursday, we went through the Bible – not all of it, of course, that would take weeks, but we hit a major portion of the books. Several of the verses jumped out at me. First, in Exodus 32:1a, the Israelites complain to Aaron after Moses has been on the mountain for a long time. But they say to Aaron “As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” (NIV).

     So many times I’ve questioned how the Israelites turned from God so quickly; they had just left Egypt after nine miraculous plagues, went through a divided Red Sea that closed up behind them and swallowed the pursuing Egyptian Army – and here they were, less than forty days later, building a carved image to follow. I always think “Well, if I had been there, I don’t see how I could have fallen away so quickly.” Now, many I’ve heard might mention the fact that, after Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit empowering us, and the early Israelites – at least, not en masse – did not. And there is, of course, truth to that. But I think more telling is what is in the verse itself. Notice the Israelites say: “As for this fellow, Moses, who brought us out of Egypt...” But it was not Moses who had brought them out; God had brought them out. It may sound like a fine line, like maybe in their minds they still meant “God through Moses” but I would not say necessarily. It’s very possible – at that time – that they had somehow given more credit to Moses than God for their deliverance. So when Moses was no longer there, their faith waned. Which leads me to my first point: If our faith is in something temporary, our faith will only be temporary.

     Now we look at Kant once more, and what he is saying. Because aesthetic beauty is fleeting and subjective (often), it cannot ground our perception of beauty. If I am raised seeing piercings as beautiful, and you are not, then our perceptions of beauty will be different simply because our minds were shaped differently growing up. Thus, beauty cannot be objective, argues Kant, unless it can be grounded in something else. The thing that has worth, then, is the thing which can more easily be quantified; human ability is finite, we can all agree on that. So if the sublime, then, is dependent on limited human ability, there is common ground, there is basis for objectivity. And that which can be “conquered” only by the mind, then, is what is truly important; the “sublime,” according to Kant. I think starting with Descartes, the mind and its ability has increasingly become the measuring stick by which we view the world; if our minds can do it, it is important; and if only our minds can do it, it is of greater importance still; meanwhile the physical is marginalized more and more, and become more “subjective” and less an authority of “what is.” It is a strange trick that a pursuit of rationality is becoming more and more irrational.

     This brings me to point number two, which I raised in my last post: beauty’s purpose is what defines it, and what makes it objective. Kant – and others – removed the purpose of beauty, and thus removed any sort of solid foundation for defining it.

     One man I heard speak once mentioned that philosophy has searched everywhere for objective truth, but has not found it; and so, now they have said there is no objective truth. Nothing has meaning or purpose. So we deprive ourselves of any foundation for answering anything. In the time of the judges, every man did what he saw fit; the time of the judges has come back.

     Thursday afternoon, in science class, we watched a movie on “the Privileged Planet” (Earth). An idea that a scientist and a philosopher stumbled across was the idea that the factors (they listed about 20) that were necessary for life to thrive – life advanced enough, such as humans, to have rational, thinking brains – those factors were also uniquely suited to observing and learning about the universe in which it was possible for them to exist. The philosopher asked, then, why? Now, many scientists these days will not ask “why” because there is no “why,” there just “is.”

     This blew me away. I played a game several times called “Myst III: Exile.” It’s a puzzle game, where you, the character, must solve a number of different puzzles in order to set the fictional world right again and make your way back home. Not only are the graphics and the worlds incredibly and beautifully rendered, but the puzzles themselves are simply amazing. Many times I wondered to myself how someone could even conceive a puzzle such as the one I was attempting to solve.

     So it is very easy for me to make the jump in incredulity to God’s creation. If, as many believe today, the universe was created “ex nihilo,” from nothing, then none of these rules and elements necessarily exists. Nothing of how our universe works is “natural” if there is no basis for “natural” outside of the universe. Unless these rules existed before matter existed, in which case where did those rules come from? So the fact that the elements we need for an atmosphere are also elements which are remarkably transparent, and thus allow us to observe the heavens, is not a necessary fact – unless it came about specifically so we could observe the heavens. Where our solar system resides within the Milky Way Galaxy is perfect for advanced life forms; it also gives us the best position with which to view our own galaxy and other galaxies, and learn even more about the universe in which we live.

     And what blows me away, is God did it for us. As a Christian, there is much God calls me to submit to His will – my entire life, in fact; and he could have also asked us to live in an environment of thick, opaque gases, and trust in Him for whatever knowledge He feels like giving to us. But He didn’t. He created this universe and its rules for us to admire His workmanship and give Him praise. Which leads me to my final point:

     God created beauty for us to admire and give Him praise. He created that which is beautiful, and He created in us the capacity to recognize it. When it points back to Him and His perfection and His glory, it is beautiful; because that is beauty’s purpose. That is why it exists. And from there, I think, we can begin building a more perfect definition of what is beautiful.

On Kant

     There are two places I want to go with Emmanuel Kant. Obviously, I could probably find pages and pages of things to write on Kant, and that’s without really knowing what I’m talking about. I mean, I don’t study Kant. And I don’t know responses to Kant. But I have some pretty strong opinions, and I’m going to share two of them.

     First, we talked in my class about the move from “beauty” to “the sublime,” specifically that beauty is rested in the object itself, but the sublime focuses on our reaction, what’s happening in us. And a lot of this has happened, this shift from outside to inside. Tying into this, I also want to talk about Kant’s view that the sublime stirs us because, mentally, we have “subdued” the infinite, the powerful. That when we see something grand and powerful and massive and nigh incomprehensible, we fear it until we get to a point where we gain dominance, in our minds, over the object – at which point it is no longer fearful.

     But first, this idea that the individual is the most important thing: that what we think and what we do and how we feel is completely up to us, and it relates to no one else but us. Kant speaks about this idea that when we value beauty, we want everyone to agree with us; we know they won’t, but that’s what happens. And this again is where I want to draw a line between aesthetic beauty and, shall we say, inherent beauty.

     Aesthetic beauty is a personal judgment. If something or someone appeals to my eyes, or ears, superficially, that is my judgment of the item. You may agree with me, you may not. Usually I can tell when I appreciate something that no one else is going to appreciate. It has no inherent ugliness that makes it evil or bad; I am not speaking of beauty with a moral component here.

     In my last post, I spoke of Annie Dillard, and her views of beauty. Often I don’t recognize the things she sees. But it is not that I don’t find them beautiful, I just usually don’t find them in the first place. There is an inherent beauty in things, whatever certain philosophers might say. This has annoyed me since I first heard people argued against any sort of ontological Truth. If other human beings exist, beings which think and rationalize apart from ourselves; and those beings encounter the same objects we do whether we are present or not, how can we argue that “things” do not exist? And if the “thing” exists, does it not possess some properties of its own? Forgetting animate objects – plants, other creatures, etc., -- even inanimate objects have substance, and have qualities inherent to them. Like Plato argued, how do we know what a chair is when we have not seen every form of chair there is? True, some people have never seen a chair before in their life; but many people have not heard the word “ontological” either; but once they become acquainted with the chair, there is something about it that signifies any other chair we come across as being a chair. Once we recognize its purpose, we recognize its form; does beauty not have a purpose that, once recognized, we can recognize it in all of its forms?

     That’s why beauty is not merely valuative, and not inherently moral; because beauty has different forms. Though it has a purpose, that purpose can be twisted. A chair can be made to recline against, to give relief to the one it bears; or electricity can be run to it, and it can kill the one it bears. Are both not chairs? Evil can appear very beautiful, aesthetically. It is that deeper beauty, the inner beauty, the beauty of purpose which contains the moral and valuative elements of beauty. Occasionally, yes, that beauty extends to the outer, and there should be no shame in proclaiming outer, superficial beauty, as long as that outer, superficial beauty is not masking and excusing and dismissing and marginalizing ugliness of purpose.

      I’ll leave that alone for now, and talk about this idea of dominating things – about the sublime. After reading this, it is curious to me how legitimate a point feminist philosophers have that rational thought through the ages has been dominated by men. I could feel the testosterone dripping from Kant’s words as he talked about valuing the general over the statesman, and that war, if “properly conducted” is still something that stirs us; that when magnificence and grandeur is “subdued,” that is what stirs us. I wondered if Kant has ever been in a Category 5 hurricane when he thinks about mankind “subduing” nature – that simply because we have fathomed it in our minds, it is somehow dominated by us. Nature just spins these little pinwheels of joy off every year; and the only way to survive some of these is to get out of the way. Countless hundreds have died in rugged terrain, the kind of mountainous regions that look really good on a canvas. I think God likes a good joke, but the idea of man “dominating” this world has to just make his jaw go slack. Well, if the world lives only in our minds, then rule by the mind is rule over reality, right? How can we think to say we have fathomed what God has created, simply because we can talk about it, can sort of kind of grasp it with our imaginations?

     An earthquake on one side of the world causes 90 foot waves on the complete other side of the earth! Stars, those things that are billions of nuclear explosions all at once, are being born. This gigantic earth rotates around one of them! And I think one hurricane on earth is bad? There’s a storm on Jupiter, been there a while, that could swallow the earth three times over!

     These things are staggering, truly.  But did you know a flower can push through a tiny crack of concrete? Did you know an ant can carry the equivalent of a human carrying a dump truck? Did you know there are engines inside your cells, ferrying bits and strings of amino acids from one part of a cell to another? What is sublime? What is awe-inspiring? What is beauty?

     Beauty points back to God. Whether small or large, whether aesthetically pleasing or functionally exquisite; and one thing is not more grand than the other. Can the hand say to the foot, because it is not a hand, the body has no use of it? What if man made the object? I like the story I heard from a pastor once: a man came to God and said “Alright, we know how to make man from dust; we don’t need you.” God said: “Okay, go ahead.” So the man picks up a handful of dirt; and God says: “Hey, start your own dirt.” What does man create that God has not created? Perhaps a ridiculous sense of what beauty is and what its value should be....