Beauty Counts!

One of my personal values is, “Beauty counts!” In a culture where progress and efficiency rule, the destruction of beauty is tolerable. Great forests have been denuded without a thought to how long centuries old trees would be replaced. Majestic homes are razed to accommodate another high-speed Interstate exit ramp. Marvelously hand-crafted pieces of furniture are left at curb sides, doomed to landfills, and replaced with plastic laminate facsimiles.

Cultures committed to efficiency inanely trash the majesty of sea shores with plastic bottles, wrappers and audio systems which drown out the rhythmic movement of timeless tides and ignore sunsets which stun the observant into silence. The craft and beauty of now extinct stained glass artisans are obliterated with boards made of compressed wood chips so as to accommodate digitally generated images projected on rambling white surfaces. We have done it because we can, and in the name of progress, but without asking about the importance or influence of beauty.

Church leaders and I struggled with the cost of restoring a large stained glass window over the altar of Resurrection Life Church. Will people break it with rocks and bricks? Will another bullet pierce the image of Jesus? Can we better give the money to the poor? What will replace the beauty?

The singers of an old Gospel chorus prayed
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me
All His wonderful passion and purity
Oh, Thou Spirit divine, all my nature refine
Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me
How could the singers reconcile their prayers with Isaiah’s prophecy, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him?” (53:2) His beauty is found in the stark respite, silent contrast to the raucous raging of those vying for office and computer clicking clerics, red-in-the-face promoters of Judeo-Christian values.

The beauty of Jesus is that he was as a lamb before shearers, silent. “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7) The beauty of Jesus is found in the cross where he demonstrated everything he had taught. Then, as his disciples, why do we argue, complain, and wish destruction on presidents, bosses, neighbors and evil enemies of his Message?

The failure and embarrassment of the crusades proved that the sword cannot advance the Kingdom of God. Angry epithets and retorts in kind will never reveal Jesus’ beauty, and that is what our culture really needs!

I know, all that needs to happen is for good men to do nothing. Then evil will run rampant, unchecked and win the day. Is that what happened when Jesus “did nothing” on the cross? How much might happen if we prayed as Jesus, “Father, forgive them, they don’t what they are doing?” When another edict is handed down that we find abhorrent, dare we pray as when Peter was imprisoned for doing good, and find another evidence of the power and presence of the Kingdom. Does the God we serve still clamp shut the mouths of lions when we are in the pit? The beauty of Jesus, I believe, is when we allow the Holy Spirit to apply the “Blessed are they who . . . ” to daily life, allow both cheeks to be slapped before considering how we will embarrass a foe, to await the Day of the Lord when the fullness of the Kingdom will be realized. But, until then, I’ll go on singing, until then I’ll carry on, making an effort to demonstrate the beauty of Jesus. Beauty counts!