Spiderthreads on Created Beauty

"It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness." ~Tolstoy


Beauty is not goodness; in fact, beauty is often the most deceptive disguise beneath which masquerades abhorrent ugliness. Perhaps that statement hinges upon my definition of beauty...lately, I have realized yet more deeply that pure beauty is extraordinarily rare in this world (perhaps nonexistent?)--even in that which I love most for its beauty, that which draws me nearer to God and impresses me with His character or creation. Rather, anything done without God and without faith is dead, worthless, useless, ugly...no matter how such works may rate by earthly standards of beauty, what is not of God is hateful to God. Most of the works I consider so agonizingly beautiful are then the epitome of ugliness because they misuse God's precious gifts of amazing talent and breath-stealing beauty, seperating them from God. Such works take the glory of God, the ultimate aim of mankind, and cast it down in pride, even if unintentionally. "Beauty" created aside from God-centrific faith is then the greatest possible perversion of the incredible beauty and gifts with which God has endowed those who bear His image.

Thus plays like Our Town, sculptures like Nike of Samothrace, the Cruel World pas de deux, Prokofiev's score for Romeo and Juliet--each and every one of these agonizingly beautiful works is void of true, pure beauty. However, I am not condemning forms of created "beauty"--art, music, dance, theatre. Just as God speaks to us through sin-caused troubles and trials, I believe He speaks to us through these forms of sinfully-created "beauty". Despite their horrifying spiritual ugliness and perversion, God reveals Himself and aspects of true beauty through these works. We have spiritual eyes and hearts open to seeing and savouring God through such earthly and impure/imperfect beauty--I know I have seen and found God in Prokofiev, Nike, ballet, Emily Webb's final monologues...

So I desire to evaluate wordly beauty, to remember that it is ultimately repellant and revolting to God, but to see His beauty through it and to find Him in it. I seek beauty because God has created me with a soul that CRAVES it and cannot live without it. And I am eagerly and wistfully awaiting the time when I will finally see true, pure, unadulterated beauty unmasked! Then I will no longer hear an agonizing beautiful echo and suddenly, sadly realize in the midst of listening that it bears no resemblance to the real sound.


"Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility..." ~C.S.Lewis

"The fine arts once divorcing themselves from the truth are qutie certain to fall mad, if they do not die." ~Thomas Carlyle

"We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it...Someday, God willing, we shall get IN." ~Lewis