Is God Dead? Series: More of Beauty

Beauty. Such an interesting topic. It is a topic that everyone has an opinion about, and all opinions are; we want more beauty in our lives. As we said last week, beauty is food for the soul. In fact, true beauty is said to be so personal, and so transcendent, that talking or writing about it seems to do them a great injustice and tarnishes their radiant glow. Perhaps it is because, as John-Mark Miravalle explains, beauty affirms balance and order, and a longing for the transcendent. Thomas Aquinas was keen to this. He once wrote that “nature is nothing other than a certain kind of art, namely God’s art.” This is why there is often a haunting loneliness that comes when experiencing true beauty; our soul longing for the transcendent Artist of all the beauty that we see. It is because of the linking of beauty with the transcendent that human beings have a personal moral obligation towards beauty’s creation and preservation. We know this because nothing evil can be beautiful. Think about it. Can a beautiful evil be conceived? Nor does evil bring serenity or peace, or anything that humans long for. And if it did it would immediately cease to be beautiful because it was in fact ugly from the start. That is why beauty is a place of common ground between believers and the skeptical unbelievers like Michael. Michael appreciates and loves beauty just as much as the ardent Christian. Miravalle explains that is because “we believe in objective standards of goodness and morality. In other words, beauty isn’t just a preference.”