Beauty Matters

All across the United States, houses glow at night with reds, greens, yellows and blues this time of year. They don’t have to be lit. There’s no real need. Or is there?

In an otherwise hectic time of the year, with the shopping clock ticking down, the twinkling lights on a crisp night seem like beacons of peace. The colorful Santas, snowmen, and manger scenes remind us that imagination has not died.

What makes life worth living are the "useless" touches. The love of a parent for a child. A painting, novel, song, or poem. The beauty that remains abundant in a fallen creation-sunsets, mountains, and the quietness of the plains. The sacred drama of the Christian liturgy.

The literary critic, poet, and philosopher Frederick Turner contends that man’s sense of, and need for, beauty is "hard-wired" into his neurochemical composition, which may explain the common themes and forms in the arts and literatures of different cultures. That chemical connection may be true, but more is at work here than matter in motion.

Deep within man’s being is a call to experience and create the beautiful. Mind you, we’re not talking supermodel beauty here, but rather a beauty that, involving body and soul, links man with his Creator and the creation. While creating and experiencing the beautiful, man demonstrates that he was made in the image of the beautiful-that is, God. He shares that ability to create, on a much smaller scale, with his Creator.

Sometimes we moderns fail to appreciate beauty and its importance, or else we appreciate it but don’t realize it. The reasons are numerous. The nation’s Puritan heritage plays a role. The nihilism and triviality of much modern and post-modern work understandably turns off many. The mind- and spirit-numbing unholy trinity of race, class, and gender consumes too many of today’s writers, critics, and artists. Sometimes people also think it childish to be concerned about beauty. You can’t make any money or save the (fill in blank with the fashionable cause of the moment) that way. Well, all I can say is that Shakespeare wasn’t a starving artist, and the soul you save may be your own.

Usually such folks go on about the necessity of being grown up. But, as C.S. Lewis remarked, adults who insist too often that they’re grown up simply have quit growing. Nor is the appreciation of beauty just a fairly recent development. Even early man didn’t toss his family and friends into the ground when they died. He engaged in "useless" acts of beauty-decorating their graves with flowers and other plants. Something within man calls for such a response.

Beauty can be found in more places than a gallery wall or the lines of a sonnet.

A well-designed computer application or Web site, a good cup of coffee, an orderly farm and a well-stocked and organized library. Real utility-that is something truly of use-involves the beautiful. Nothing could be more truly useful for man than worshiping God in the "beauty of holiness," even though the world may scoff that it’s unnecessary.

To say beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder is akin to saying marriage is merely a good economic arrangement or a way to keep the human race alive. Such a statement trivializes the point. Ancient philosophers didn’t explore the connection between the good and the beautiful to hear themselves chatter.

In other words, set up those Advent candles, string those lights, decorate the Christmas tree and table with care, and take time with that holiday dinner. Beauty matters.

December 19, 2000

R. Andrew Newman is a writer whose work has appeared in such places as Modern Age and The Social Critic.