“Beauty will save the world.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, “the Idiot”
I received a lot of gifts during my time in bible college. Friendships (one of which turned into marriage!), a sense of family, exciting doctrine and many tools for ministry. But something important was missing, and the more I missed it, the more I realized that with it missing, the rest lost some of its flavor, too…
Have you ever listened to someone teach, preach or just tell a story, and realized that you were moved far beyond the words that were spoken? That you were touched by something or someone other than the speaker? That what was said wasn’t just true or important, but that it was beautiful – and therefore created in you an experience information alone never can?
Last December I attended a service that featured the Christmas portion of Haendel’s Messiah. In his introductory words, the minister talked about the importance of beauty as part of the Christian experience, and how music is one of the many ways God touches our hearts in a way reason or conviction cannot. I went home, moved by the incomparable music, but also compelled to explore the mystery of beauty.
For centuries, the philosophical tradition has explored the transcendentals – the areas of our life that go beyond what can be experienced within the limitations of our physical world. The three categories of transcendentals are Truth (logic), Goodness (ethics) and Beauty (aesthetics). In line with our modern age of reason and justice, those categories are usually put in the order above; first Reason, then Morals, and in the end the Arts. This ranking of the transcendentals found popularity through the influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and, although challenged by mystics and philosophers like Hans-Urs von Balthasar, has mostly prevailed until now.
By now, you’ve probably asked yourself, and what does all of this have to do with my life today?
Glad you asked.
Although we might not be aware of it, our concept of worship, of evangelism and of Christianity as a whole has been deeply shaped by Kant’s ideas. We believe that the way to show people Jesus is to tell them about what he taught, and to show them how he cared. And these are both important ways to share Christ. Yet we’re usually gravely neglecting the third realm of transcendent living – to experience the beauty and mystery of Jesus.
Not everything in our lives as followers of Jesus can be carefully explained or dutifully done. Some of it has to be experienced. And nowhere are we in a more vulnerable position than when we experience. Unlike beliefs and actions, we cannot control what we experience. It is the moments where we hold out our hands and say, “Lord, I have nothing. But I want what You have.”
Beauty finds its way to us in various forms, none of which can be produced or controlled. Beauty is truly spirit-led, freely given and usually taking us by surprise. I believe it shapes our lives in a way no knowledge or actions can. And if Christians would start talking more about beauty as one of God’s forms of communication with man, I believe we’d see many more so-called “irreligious” people perk up and share their own stories. Because most of us, even if we wouldn’t say we’ve been touched by God, would admit we have been touched by beauty at one point in our lives.
When I was 22, I one day found myself in a tiny movie theater in Zurich on a rainy day. I had been reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables as part of my final exams in French. Anyone who’s read this work in any language can appreciate the challenge set before me (my native tongue being German) and I decided to go watch the new film by the same name that had just come out. I had been moved greatly by the book but hadn’t understood all of it in French.
I cried throughout the whole movie, thankful for having chosen a daytime showing with almost no people in the theater. Something touched me in my deepest core – something I can only describe as a mystical experience. God’s grace was all around me. His compassion for His creation was almost palpable where I was sitting. And Jesus’ words: He who will lose his life for my sake will find it, sank into my being. I experienced a mystery beyond understanding but abounding with a hope I hadn’t known before.
I had experienced beauty.
I have had numerous encounters with beauty before and since, and I know you have, too. And “beauty” is not the only word used to describe these experiences. C.S. Lewis called it Joy, an experience of the same supernatural quality as beauty. None of our stories are the same, and here is something to consider. We generally try to agree on what is the truth, and even on what the ethics are we should live by. But when it comes to beauty, we all experience our very own version of God revealing Himself to us. It is God’s reminder that His relationship to each one of us is entirely unique. There is no proper way to experience God, there is only your own way. The mystics understood this. They didn’t teach, they gave invitations. They approached the Divine not as a subject to be studied or a decree to be executed, but as a mystery to be experienced.
Von Balthasar, the theologian who challenged Kant, developed an alternative order for the transcendentals: Theo-aesthetics, Theo-drama (ethics) and Theo-logic. He suggests that modern man will not be moved toward truth by logic in the same way as he is by beauty. Beauty is just as meaningful, revelatory and educational as the other two, and he goes so far as to say that only when arrested by beauty and the sublime will one be ready to think about goodness or truth.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. Consider the suggestion that humanity is not primarily convinced through logic nor persuaded by ethics alone (which are the aspects we are in control of), but wooed by beauty (which comes from God directly). This would lead us to become inquirers instead of teachers. We would start to be interested in how God has already touched a person, not whether they know or agree to a certain position, or whether they act according to what we consider worthy of Christianity. Conversations about spirituality would take a whole different approach – wholesome, inclusive, personal and … if I may dare say, beautiful.
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