While Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, its transformative impact is there for all to see, if not, to fully appropriate and appreciate.
When I was younger, I didn’t really grasp how this Beauty element encouraged flourishing, nor how it positively reflected a work of God. Things just looked good, and that was enough. Now I personally experience it like the arrival of a sea-breeze on a sweltering summer’s day.
Recently, an example of the impact in this translation specifically entered our family’s daily routine.
Let me show you what I mean.
The people in view are, Sir Apirana Ngata, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Kate Sheppard. And now for a little more up-close perspective.
So very talented.
And what a wonderful addition!
We have taken this road, and pass by a non-descript. and rather abjectly boring building at least two times every week-day, and many days, even on most, it becomes more like four. Like the many pieces of said construction, it is about the utility of structure; what it accomplishes as a receptacle for human endeavour; no bad thing, but very much, been there, seen that; until very recently. A local business decided to commission a gifted artist to preach his talent with paint on wall.
The impact was instantaneous. The infusion of worth was immediate and immense. Life had added value through that moment. It was like my soul was singing a sonnet. Not only has this beauty since attracted much attention, it has added real value into the normative spaces of life. This artistic addition communicated what is too often absent, proving through its inclusion that art and beauty impact at a level more visceral than your own chemical tango.
On the final school day of 2018, this attraction would also remind of extended words on this Beauty subject, out of the massive original RELOVUTIONARY tome. I will quote liberally:
Beauty is not a subject Christians necessarily give much serious reflection upon in their worldview post lip-service in the witness and wonder of the Creatorship of God. We don’t celebrate this factor Imago Dei, but I would contend the closer we get to God, the more we crave for this destination, the more we understand the positive impact within, and the more we view beauty as a vehicle of God’s grace and a signpost there is more to this living search through the rubble of bitter earth.
“The world of beauty that does in fact exist can have originated nowhere else than in the creation of God. The world of beauty was thus conceived by God, determined by his decree, called into being by him, and is maintained by him.” [1]
This makes our beautiful creations and actions explosively creative opportunities to demonstrate a world beyond. Beauty is another neon sign there is something more and Someone more. There is a qualitative depth that dives beneath our external facade and identifies a space too many can not adequately fill in a post-Christian western culture. The fact that our ability to discern and interpret sets us apart in general creation is another Imago Dei intention: “It is an undeniable fact that a notion and a sense of beauty are unique to us as human beings.” [2] Where could this notion and sense come from?
“Can something belonging to our human nature be anything else than an ‘innate’ capacity? If it has been created in us, by whom else was it deposited within us than by the One who created us? Now if, on the one hand, we find within God himself the ordinance governing beauty, so that he has stamped it upon his creation like a divine imprint, and if, on the other hand, we find in every human being a sense of beauty that has been created in us by God, what else could that concept of beauty within us be than one of the features of God’s image according to which we have been created?” [3]
Imagine. Beauty is an apologetic that our propositions do not so easily diagnose or refute. Not only because the artistic vehicle is more subjective, but also because the angles are innumerable, often emotionally moving, and how do you quantify that?! And the importance of Common Grace to this beautiful idea?
“At creation a sense of this divinity that is located in the form and appearance of things was created within human beings, such that one of the features of our creation according to God’s image consisted in the sense of beauty… This sense of beauty was darkened by sin, and would have been lost entirely if common grace had not preserved it for us in part.” [4]
Beauty is an imprint and impress from God that is grace is still at work inside creation. It is an outlier whispering that redemption is possible; that beyond darkness there is light. This explains why the witness is comprehensive and emphatic, even after the Fall, which pulls back the curtain on something glorious. The results often happen deep within and explain why the witness of a beautiful life can be profound into a given generation; especially the millennial that wants meaning through authenticity.
We referenced excellence… which assists in elevating individual expressions into artifact, with beauty another string to bow. If beauty can be described as the translation of the artform experience, what is the result? Scripture states that whatever we do, we should do, to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). What is glory? When we understand this connection, our understanding of the relationship, impact, and goal can be further elevated:
“Glory is, in fact, nothing other than a higher degree of beauty. It is beauty in its consummation, but still in a way whereby ‘present’ beauty and ‘coming’ glory are connected to one another, such that both are revelations of one and the same principle.” [5]
We could suggest that Beauty is to Common Grace what Glory is to Special Grace. [6] Only the Christian can be described as bringing glory to God in the most complete sense of this concept. We must live this intersection.
Truly, these opportunities are also an apologetic for the applicational lines of the Gospel. A picture of the redemptive process is contained and declared, on an old lost surface, given second life, with an infusion of meaning and purpose. Common grace being led toward the Special. In the images above, it is as if someone has brought the location through the change in the surface, such is the newness, and impact.
God is the supreme artist. We merely follow His lead. While the Gospel truly makes for real beauty in our broken time. This understanding should infiltrate all the various callings of our lives.
As we do, we de-compartmentalise; we remove the false borders and secular boundaries, which keep our sacred private, and our flourishing more comprehensively immune.
Beautify!
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[1] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, location 1602 [Christian’s Library Press, November 15, 2011].
[2] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, location 1621 [Christian’s Library Press, November 15, 2011].
[3] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, location 1638 [Christian’s Library Press, November 15, 2011].
[4] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, location 1766-1785 [Christian’s Library Press, November 15, 2011].
[5] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, location 1656 [Christian’s Library Press, November 15, 2011].
[6] Some further elaboration on the connection between beauty and Common Grace:
From this is becomes evident that common grace has performed a twofold service with respect to beauty. First, common grace has spared much paradise beauty and preserved it from loss, and continues to supply us along life’s way with such a rich treasure of beautiful things in nature. Common grace has tempered the curse and in this way left us with genuine poetry within nature. One and the same stem holds both the unfurled rosebud and the wounding thorn. Second, within the sinful human being common grace has preserved from complete loss the sense of this beauty in nature.
To be sure, our sense of beauty has suffered as well. Numerous people who stroll every evening under God’s firmament can do so without ever lifting their eyes to worship God in the splendor of his starry sky. There are even people who have cultivated a desire for the vulgar and disgusting.
But in humanity as a whole, the notion of beauty has been preserved. It is still there. It still operates.
Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, location 1729-1748 [Christian’s Library Press, November 15, 2011].