A PREVAILING BEAUTY
FORM AND FUNCTION
One thing I have desired of the LORD, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD, And to inquire in His temple. – Psalm 27:4
It has been said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Although true that a trained “eye” can recognize that which is beautiful, this statement is misleading in that it suggests that beauty is primarily subjective. In this essay I hope to explore the intrinsic and objective nature of beauty, so that perhaps you and I can be more cognizant of the beauty of the Lord and His creation.
Firstly, beauty comes through completeness. The words “perfection” or “perfect” are closely associated with “beauty” in Scripture. When Jesus speaks in Matthew 6:29 of the flowers of the field in their perfected array, it is in the context of God’s provision. God is holy, and God is into wholeness. It is beautiful when a person receives Christ because he or she becomes complete. It is beautiful for “brethren to dwell together in unity” (Psalm 133), compared here to anointing oil, or clouds of dew descending on the mountains. The beauty of the church is sourced in God’s provision, as Christ’s sanctifying work “present[s] her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:26-27). An artist makes skilled applications with the brush, but is not satisfied until the all elements are placed. This is why compositions require balance. One may say “it was already beautiful” or admire something that is out of balance, but that is ignorance in the eye of the beholder. Do we often settle for something as beautiful—as good enough—when in fact it is incomplete? History’s gr
eat compositions, stories, and lives have carried all the necessary elements. Sure, rogue artists and composers—and postmodern individuals—have attempted to redefine beauty as chaos, or dissonance in and of itself: but they lack, and thus fail.
Beauty is sourced in a completed creation and created order. Genesis 1:31-2:1 reveals that God surveyed his finished, completed work of creation and declared it “very good.” But that is no longer his assessment. We now inhabit an incomplete world. The fall of mankind and our relinquishment of Earth to the devil himself have marred perfection. So, to recognize true beauty, we must understand its ideal. To acknowledge beauty is to regard something as possessing degrees of or attaining toward God’s ultimate. If, however, one regards nature as created through chance, struggle, and death via cosmic and biological evolution (even if he or she credits God as the architect of the process) then that person has eschewed a major component of beauty.
Secondly, beauty is shown in that which is fitting. In design there are rules: proportions and relationships that must reflect the beauty of reality. The “golden ratio” is a well-defined mathematical relationship expressed in sea shells, flowers, planetary distancing, and the human form, and is replicated in architectural design and art. Rhythms, dynamics, and harmonies in music, and analogous attributes in all of the arts rely upon particular proportions and relationships. In the Old Testament, the word na’veh is used nine times regarding that which is beautiful, translated as “beautiful,” “lovely,” or “fitting.” Robert Moore, an American impressionist artist and a good friend of mine, has shown me that a pink dirt road can fit believably into a landscape painting, provided that other hues and values carry the appropriate relationships to that road. Ironically, his color-blindness has proved as a tool to sharpen his study. The Chaparral Fine Art gallery gives him credit for painting on location, “working to preserve the color relationships of the natural world while seeking depth and sophistication in his compositions.” Scientists seek for “elegant” theories—and in my evaluation, these are the ones that most closely fit reality. Sadly, scientists often cling to clumsy, unbalanced frameworks, necessitated by the false realities which they guard.
In a world attempting to blur wrong and right and bathe truth in subjectivity, we need to remember that there exists rightness. God’s holiness may be thought of as his utterly complete rightness. “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He” (Deuteronomy 32:4). We can study Jesus’ balance in handling others’ needs, in dealing with His detractors, in his very timing. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has made everything beautiful in its time.” We can extract clarity from the Proverbs, noting that “honor is not fitting (na’veh) for a fool” (26:1), or that dishonesty is an abomination, while fair trade delights God (11:1). We can recognize and award greatness as that which is a person’s due for their fitting efforts, accomplishments, and sacrifice. Yet if everything is regarded as equally appropriate or of equal merit (a marked direction in our culture) we again have missed a primary component of beauty.
Thirdly, and closely related, is that beauty is pleasing. The Hebrew no’am (the noun) and na’em (the adjective) are used fifteen times in the Old Testament to refer to that which is pleasing. This is the sense in Psalm 27:4, which leads off this essay, and the same idea is used in Proverbs 16:24 regarding words that are “sweetness to the soul and health to the bones.” Perhaps this might be considered a subjective matter, as what pleases one person may not necessarily please another. Yet I think that if one truly beholds the beauty of the Lord, he or she shall indeed be pleased. There exist profound pleasures that are beautiful to all: being loved, being encouraged, and being inspired, as examples. We are admonished to “find out what pleases the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8, 
NIV), or we might say, to be beautiful to God. When we think of beauty that pleases, we may think of the eye of the beholder; yet if we recognize that pleasure is sourced in God, we should rather think of the eye of the Creator (and not limit “eye” to the physical sense, but to the greater matter of understanding). What pleases God can give us greater pleasure than anything the world offers—than the fleeting pleasures of false beauty. For example, In Isaiah 52:7 we are told that feet are beautiful, that is, the feet—perhaps even dusty and blistered—that carry the good news of salvation over the mountains.
The intensely materialistic thought of many scientists fosters a tragic oversight regarding beauty. Flowers are seen primarily as showy organs designed to attract insects, despite the fact that many conspicuous flowers are shunned by certain insects, and many inconspicuous flowers are well-attended. Fruits are regarded merely as delivery mechanisms for seed, to propagate species. The scientist’s inclination is to validate only benefits for the tree itself, yet from the outset of creation God declared the Garden’s trees as “pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9). That is to say, their purposes are preeminently for human enjoyment. “Structure and function” is a major theme in biology, analogous to “form and function” as denoted in the world of design. The beauty of a thing’s design is not divorced from its function, as in Kant’s “aestheticism” philosophy, but neither is it necessitated by its function. God has often made beauty independent of function or extravagant beyond its function—the “unnecessary” beauty that baffles the evolutionist.
Our Creator goes to great lengths to preserve and promote beauty in a world much marred by incompleteness, things out of order, and things detestable rather than pleasing. He does this to exalt the ideal that is Himself, and he infuses our very lives with the beauty we are learning to recognize. Rather than to miss or misrepresent beauty, we must depend on God to open “the eye of the beholder.” In Him we can recognize that which is truly complete, fitting, and pleasing.
All Scriptures NKJV unless otherwise noted.
©2009 Chard Berndt.
An essay to wrap up the summer
Did you know that the splendid color of corals comes not from the organisms themselves, and is not inherently in the structures they deposit? No, the most striking color, across a wide range of intensities and hues, is provided by countless bacteria that live among the coral. They are the “paint” of an oceanic reef. This information got me thinking about the nature of beauty’s presentation: from individuality and detail, to collectivity and big-picture composition. And that got me pondering more about the nature of beauty, and what I might contribute about the subject in the context of “the known world” blog.
After some months, I’ve prepared this essay amidst the conclusion of a very full and exciting summer. I have taken a different direction from the idea of detail-versus-big-picture presentation, although that is a good thought to ponder still. Rather, I decided to have a look at some of the intrinsic and objective characteristics of this matter that is often relegated to the external and subjective. Hope you’ll enjoy the August post, #8 in the series thus far.
In Christ Always,
Chard