Can the beauty of God speak for itself?

Archie Honrado

To contemplate God is to see beauty.

What a pleasure to see a piece of installation art speak for itself. In one of my pieces entitled “Wastebasket,” several crumpled pieces of paper are scattered around a wastebasket. To make it beautiful and simple installation art, I put a soft, aqua-blue spotlight on it. In this prayer station, I proposed two questions: How should you be looking at this art? and What do you want to do here? I witnessed two different reactions. A boy and his mom emptied the wastebasket on the floor, and the boy declared, “Just like God, dumping my waste.” A different family put all the crumpled papers in the basket without any comment.

I lived in Western Europe and was immersed in the architectural beauty of their sacred spaces, and I couldn’t agree more with Thomas Merton when he felt the presence of Jesus through the architecture of their cathedrals. But sadly, most of the cathedrals have become more like museums. After my time in Europe, I moved to Los Angeles—a land where I was concerned that my need to experience religion through sacred art could become malnourished. I know, I was a bit of a snub. I realized art’s limitation when I went to places like the Getty Museum. Museums and galleries put art on pedestals—not just literally—and unnecessarily venerate the creators.

I am most intrigued and mystified when artists allow their art to speak for itself. The less they say about their art, the more it speaks to me. I am drawn to it because of the lack of noise it makes. No wonder there’s an aspect of God’s beauty, character, and nature that speaks for itself. This reminds me of Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the works of his hand.”

Have you ever been to a mediocre art show, music concert, movie, or even worship service and walked away half satisfied? We long and yearn for beauty; nature is good at satisfying this need. We get disappointed at a mediocre artistic expression or show. We subconsciously want to symbolize the beauty of God in us because we demand God-like performance from imperfect creators imitating the beauty of God, don’t we?

Have you noticed how the experiential worship style continues to grow in popularity? There is a cautionary tale about experiential worship spaces that unknowingly mimics what artists and curators in museums try to achieve—a pure art-imitating life, or an educational experience—but often, they push their boundaries and flirt with providing patrons with a religious experience or otherworldly transcendence. That is why I copy them sometimes or get inspired by them. These avant-garde artists and museum curators are no doubt brilliant at transporting us to a world of beauty. It is a beauty, however, that in some ways only counterfeits God’s invitations to God’s beauty.

Creating sacred space can be limiting and limited to a museum type of experience only. Let us not create artsy, sacred space that venerate art and relegate the art of daily living out of God’s dwelling beauty in us. We can only try to create something powerful that will open us up into the awareness of God’s presence in our lives and not just an ornamental space like the post-modernists dictate. Imagine the psalm I have seen your sanctuary and behold your beauty and strength being reflected inside a staid, nineteenth-century, industrial-era building design. Can the beauty of God be seen in such a space?

God’s beauty can only be gauged by us. We’ve all been awed by nature and have thanked God for the beauty, right? What about the beauty found in the art of doing the dishes and the laundry? Do you revel in God’s beauty that is present in your quotidian living, and not only in spaces venerated or consecrated? When we do mundane stuff soulfully, the beauty of God will speak.

When we live our lives before the face of God daily, whether in the mundane, in the sensational, in affliction, or even in the virtuality of our realities, the beauty of God will speak for itself.

“Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” –David Hume, Essays, Moral and Political, 1742.

To contemplate God is to see beauty and be invited to live in it.

Archie Honrado is a passionate worshiper of God and a 25-year veteran of children, youth, and family ministry through Youth With a Mission(www.ywam.org) in Los Angeles. He is also the Los Angeles city coordinator for the DeVos Urban Youth Leadership Initiative. He creates and guides prayer walks and curates prayer space for Youth Specialties and is a speaker with the Urban Youth Workers Institute (www.uywi.org).

Lilly Lewin

I would say yes, the beauty of God can speak for itself, if we understand it; if we have access to it; and if we are encouraged to look for it.

When I think of the beauty of God, I think of a sunset over Lake Michigan, or the silhouette of the Olympic Mountains on the horizon with their snow-covered peaks against the crystal-blue sky of Washington State. I also think of my kids, especially when they were born; the beauty of those small faces, hands, and those amazing little toes.

For me, the beauty of God is about experience. I’ve experienced the beauty of God listening to music—like Handel’s Messiah. Or I’ve seen God’s beauty through others’ creativity in great works of art at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the National Gallery in London. As a visual person and an artist, I hunger for beauty, especially in vistas. God’s beauty found in nature always inspires me.

We all need help seeing the beauty of God—both the tangible beauty in creation and the beauty of God as our Father and Creator. Too often, we have placed ourselves in boxes—in cubicles in office buildings and in boxes made of brick, wood, or stone that we’ve designated for worship. For me, I’d rather be at the lake, on the beach, by a campfire in the woods, or even in my backyard. I’ve always experienced more of God’s presence and his beauty just from being outside, rather than in the building designated for the job.

In high school I sat in the balcony of our church and gazed out the window at the trees, wondering what God was talking about and doing out there. I met Jesus at camp in the mountains of North Carolina, and it’s still much easier for me to connect with God by taking a walk and watching the sunset. Thankfully I’ve had access to the beauty of God and have chosen to go after it.

Sadly, people often have limited access to the beauty of God. Or, we have access, but we don’t really live like we do. When we engage God on Sunday, it’s a routine and just the same as last week.

Living urban without resources; it’s a thing that closes us from the beauty of God. The authors of the Bible certainly never saw the dreary inner cities of major American metropolitan areas in the middle of winter. Yet tons of people in inner-city ugliness worship Jesus better than any suburban or rural people. Does poverty really prevent someone from seeing the beauty of God? I do think it makes it harder. In fact, George Hunter, in The Celtic way of Evangelism, says that we live in a pagan society today because so many of us live in the land of concrete jungles—places where trees and mountains and rolling hills and rivers are nowhere to be found. How do we help change this and help people engage in the beauty of God, even in a city?

We need to reacquaint our communities with the beauty and mystery of God. We need to provide ways for them to experience nature, like retreats and parable walks and times just to be outside in God’s beauty. Also, we need times to create. We need time for art, music, writing, poetry, etc. We need to help ourselves and others learn to practice silence and being still with God for longer than two minutes at a time.

We’ve either been trapped in our cars, driving on pavement from box store to box store, or we are in front of computer screens most of the day, so we are unable to see what beauty lies around us. We have lost beauty in busyness and in our need for organization and practicality. Thankfully, beauty for beauty’s sake can be rediscovered through art and exploration and pilgrimage to places of beauty and spiritual significance. It just takes time and practice and giving ourselves permission to try something new.

So I started taking students and our family on pilgrimages to experience places of beauty and spiritual significance. In the last few years, our church community had a bi-monthly practice of going to the Cincinnati Art Museum to listen to Scripture and see where God is and how God might speak to us through the various art pieces. Art Walk became a big part of my personal church experience, and I have spent the last decade designing spaces of beauty—sacred space—where people have time to experience God’s presence and engage his Word through all of their senses. And I have friends in Kiev doing medical missions because an entire church was founded there, thanks to a group of Ukrainian musicians who played and sang Handel’s Messiah for the first time and wanted to know the person they were singing about! The beauty of God in music and art is truly powerful!

Can you see the beauty of God if you want to? Can you choose to see it anywhere? According to the Bible, if we have seen the sun or the stars, we’re without excuse. So I’m toast. I’ve seen the beauty of God. I have to continually choose to see God’s beauty, and my desire is to help others learn how to engage God’s beauty for themselves. I’m choosing to make time to experience the beauty of God my Lenten practice this year. I’m looking forward to just being in his presence in the beauty of his world.

Steve Argue

Beautiful things are reflections of the creator. God speaks and creates (Genesis 1). Creation speaks in praise (Psalm 19; 150). Creation speaks to creation. Let’s not miss God’s beauty speaking within us and around us, that interprets and needs interpreting.

There is beauty within. Sadly, there are too many messages that tell us we’re not good enough, healthy enough, pretty enough, or productive enough. Being human is often described as a deficiency rather than an asset. I’m not calling for some sort of self-love that demands the entire world to worship me. Rather, I believe that God’s good news is our good news—that the best we can bring each day is our God-given, image-bearing selves. It’s when we resist this or try to bring someone else that we betray our beauty. Embrace the reality that God created you and calls you “very good.”

There is beauty around. It’s easy to believe this at a sunset, sitting on the beach, skiing down a mountain, or walking through the woods. It is much more difficult in traffic, in arguments, in tragedy, and in devastation. As a result, people can quickly fall into half-empty or half-full camps that either naively choose to see the world through the lens of Disney or who are unable to see beyond darkness and despair.

It seems to me that the hopeful message of Jesus is that we can find God’s beauty in everything. The obvious beauty (sunsets, laughter, happiness) doesn’t escape our attention, and we celebrate with it. Vigilant beauty-seeking rescues us from blinding routines that dull our senses to the miracles that are all around.

The less evident beauty is increasingly seen through a lens that is fueled by hope as we walk the crowded streets, seeing each person as made in the image of God; as we see the profound masterpiece of each awkward adolescent and as we discover that even our greatest enemies are more like us than different.

God’s beauty also moves us to weep over beauty’s absence. Those who seek beauty weep more over events of war, devastation, and oppression. They see systemic poverty as their own, own up to being part of the problem, and look to be part of the solution. They pray for all people, their own, for those in hellish situations, and for the people their country chooses go to war with.

They find that the beauty in our world is found in the blurred lines that resist being divided by conservative/liberal; modern/postmodern; male/female; Christian/Muslim; gay/straight. Beauty is found in third, creative ways that hope for all people everywhere. Thus, noticing beauty is more than an activity for the ignorant, young, hopeless artists, or the inefficient. It’s for all of us to notice, to name, to celebrate, to enter into.

Beauty interprets and needs interpreting. Does the beauty of God “speak for itself?” It certainly is speaking, and like any good message, it has layers of meaning. No one gets the message of love once. It takes on deeper and deeper meaning. No one values friendship because they acquired it once. It grows deeper, multifaceted qualities.

So it is with God’s beauty. As we understand (intellectually, experientially, developmentally) God’s story, it interprets what we see. And what we see interprets God’s story. Sometimes our experiences run ahead of our understanding, and we crave words/art/music to interpret what we’ve felt. Sometimes we know cognitively the concepts of love, grief, or faithfulness, but it bursts with color when we experience what we know.

Thus, I find I am drawn to the people who have thought and lived deeply. Beauty isn’t an experience or a concept but something that has been interwoven into the very person. There’s a quality in their words, a safety in their presence, a mystery I long to discover, a hope that runs deep. This is evidence of beauty discovered and beauty joined. Life lived here inspires everyone to join in, responding to God’s hopeful embrace that is speaking faithfully, perpetually, beautifully.

Can the beauty of God speak for itself?

Archie Honrado

Lilly Lewin

Steve Argue

Comments

Post a Comment

Slant Topics

Slant Archive

Featured Slants

Latest Posts