Beauty is all the rage. In the Movie of the Moment (Barbie, obviously), there is a scene in which Barbie sits on a bench next to an elderly lady, looks at her intensely, and breathlessly exclaims, “You are beautiful.”
Studio executives suggested cutting the scene because it served no real point in advancing the plot. But the director stood firm, “If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about.”
[Further reflections on what the movie is “about” are in Tremendous Trifles here. (And if you have not signed up for the newsletter yet, this is a great time to do so!)]
Philip Ryken’s new book was timed perfectly to coincide with the Barbie Phenomenon. Beauty is Your Destiny sure sounds like it could be the subtitle of the movie. But Ryken isn’t writing about the extended advertisement for Mattel toys. He is writing about God.
First, the definition. What exactly is “Beauty”? If you have never tried to define it, then give it a try right now.
How good is your definition? Not great, right? It is a notoriously difficult word to define in a satisfactory way. Ryken too leads off with “the conundrum of definition.” “Today we do not seem to be much closer to an answer than we were two thousand years ago.” This is an odd state of affairs for a concept that we do not doubt exists.
What is the way out? Ryken first turns to the most beautiful thing that exists: God. If anything can be described as “beautiful,” then God is surely beautiful. He quotes Jonathan Edwards, noting that God is “infinitely the most beautiful and all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but a reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who has an infinite fullness of brightness and glory; God is…the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty.” Ryken repeats the idea: “beyond simply being a divine attribute in its own right, beauty is an aspect of all God’s attributes.”
Starting with the idea that God is by definition beautiful, chapter by chapter, Ryken shows how God’s beauty radiates outwards to other things. Because God is beautiful, God’s creation is beautiful. The beauty of the created material world includes the culmination of that work; humans are beautiful too. (And, in a chapter which is rather specific amongst the rest of the chapters about broad themes, Ryken explains that the way humans create new humans is also beautiful—at least when the creative act happens within the bonds of matrimony.)
God, creation, and humans are all beautiful, so it naturally follows that the moment when God and Humanity combine in the incarnation of Christ is also beautiful. Following that beautiful moment when Jesus humbled himself and became human, we find another supreme act of beauty in the midst of the supreme act of ugliness: the crucifixion.
Throughout this exploration of the ways God’s beauty overflows to all these other things, Ryken draws heavily on thinkers of the past to show that this beauty has been widely recognized for thousands of years. In the chapter on the beauty of creation, for example, he quotes Chesterton:
I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud.
He follows this description of the beauty of creation with admonitions on how we should think about what God has created. We should pay attention to all this beauty; we should adore the beauty of the world; and we should protect that beautiful creation. Beauty, in other words, is not something to acknowledge in passing. We should continually and consciously immerse ourselves in what is beautiful, enjoying it and doing what we can to help others enjoy it too.
Similarly, in the chapter on the incarnation, Ryken asks what it is about that act that makes it so beautiful. The humility of what Jesus has done. The holiness of the incarnation. And the sacrifice inherent in the incarnation leading to crucifixion. These are all aspects of the beauty of Christ.
Chapters 1 through 7 of this book are a long reflection on all these beautiful things. A few discordant notes pop up now and then (sometimes beautiful things are destroyed by the activity of humans), but the tone of these chapters is continuously uplifting, pointing our attention towards the Good and the True and the Beautiful.
Chapter 8 thus comes as a complete shock. A chapter entitled “Beautiful Community: The Beauty of Christ’s Bride” sounds like it will be more of the same. The first two paragraphs describe the image of a transcendent bride representing the community of God’s people on earth. Then the third paragraph:
We need this vision because in the present time, we are living a different reality. The church we see is not as beautiful as this painting—not as fully global, as genuinely diverse, as truly unified, as clearly illuminated by the gospel, or as radiant in its witness. These shortcomings cause us to long for the day when the people of God will finally look as beautiful as our savior does.
That tone continues. The church should be beautiful.
Why then, are we so ugly? Everywhere we look, we catch glimpses of the beauty that our Creator has put into the world—his divine beauty displayed in creation and reflected in the people he saved. But we also see the deformity of sin wherever we look, and sometimes the church looks like the ugliest community in the world.
The ugliest community in the world? Really? Obviously there are some things about the modern church that are not so great, but can Ryken truly not imagine even uglier communities outside the church? Is God so absent from the modern church that there is nothing uglier in the world?
Ryken proceeds to explain what we all should be doing to make the church more beautiful: Practice Hospitality, Give Generously, Do Justice, Pursue Reconciliation, Live in Christian Unity. These are all very sound admonitions to Christians everywhere. But there is no escaping the fact that when Ryken looks at the church, he does not see beauty; he just sees ugliness:
Today we face a strong temptation to give up on the church—to watch from home, sit in the back, sleep in, or stop going altogether. Sometimes, in its ugliness, the church has become for us the scene of the crime. Nevertheless, God has promised to beautify his blood-bought bride.
At some point, God has promised to make the church beautiful, but right now Ryken just doesn’t see it.
In a different book, Ryken’s complaints about the modern church would fit right in. But, what are they doing here? Ryken looks at God and creation and humanity and sex and the incarnation and the crucifixion and steadfastly points out how beautiful these things are even if they sometimes appear ugly to us now. But when he turns to the church, the entire discussion changes into a focus on descriptions of ugliness.
Looking out at the world of Christians in the church today, does Ryken really see no beauty? Does he not see the people showing love to their neighbors, the people being light in dark places, the people meeting material needs with generosity and love? Does he not see the hospitals? Does he not see the schools? Does he not believe that Wheaton College, where he is the President, is not a magnificent and beautiful work of the Universal Church?
The change in tone when Ryken comes to this chapter is truly stunning. A chapter focusing on how the church is (not “could be” but “is”) beautiful, with a section noting that the church is not nearly as beautiful as it could be, would keep up the theme of a book which has a whole chapter on how the crucifixion (which surely is uglier than the modern church, right?) is really beautiful because of all the good that came out of such an ugly act. The chapter on the beauty of the creature made in the image of God is not centered on the Fall; it is not a chapter devoted to the ugliness of people corrupted by sin. So, why doesn’t the chapter on the church have the same emphasis? Is the church uglier than the imago dei which makes up the church?
The problem here is not that Ryken is noting the ugliness of the church. Original Sin is real. People are truly and totally depraved. I get that. If Ryken wanted to write a book about the ugliness of the world, he would have no lack of examples. But, that is not the message of the bulk of this book. In a book showing that the beauty of God radiates throughout all of creation, then surely the beautiful works the bride of Christ has done by the grace of God deserve an exploration too.
Let us not lose sight, though, of Ryken’s main point. Once you realize the beauty of God, the beauty of what Christ has done, then it immediately follows that beauty is indeed your destiny. There is beauty all around you; you should notice that beauty and enjoy that beauty and do everything you can to protect and enhance that beauty. Lift your eyes up off the ugliness and notice the beauty of God shining forth everywhere. Or as Chesterton put it in a poem Ryken discusses:
The world is hot and cruel,
We are weary of heart and hand,
But the world is more full of glory
Than you can understand.
Related Posts:
Fitzgerald, F Scott The Beautiful and Damned, “A Cautionary Tale”
Kingsolver, Barbara Prodigal Summer “The Beauty of Appalachia”
(Alas, a not so beautiful note to end a reflection on beauty. The publisher insists that I remind you that federal regulations require that I tell you that I received a copy of this book from Crossway so that I could write a review of this book on the topic of beauty. Having done so, I now encourage you to think on more beautiful things than federal regulations.)
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