The World Needs Beauty

Our culture's questions are far from new but require novel answers and fresh solutions. We feel Western culture teetering on feeble and fickle pillars. Post-modernity has failed us in answering the heart’s cry for fulfillment with its hollow advertisements of self-actualization being the answer to the wrongness we feel. We are in a moment of crisis. Political polarization, the rise of technology, and the byproduct of ever-increasing distraction are signposts that we are searching for something deeply satisfying. How is the church to respond to the cultural climate we find ourselves in? How are we to reach those whose hearts have become cold or indifferent towards the gospel of Jesus, whose minds are fraught with frameworks and arguments set up against these truths, and yet still desire something transcendent? It is imperative that we, as the body of Christ, acknowledge and engage these all-important questions and, in turn, endeavor to answer them. The world, knowingly or unknowingly, is ever in need of a Savior, and likewise of the transformation the discipleship Jesus speaks of in Matthew 28 would produce. In response to these questions, we would be wise to follow the model given by those who have preceded us - to take up one of the transcendentals, beauty.

Beauty possesses the rare ability to catch the beholder completely unaware, to sweep their feet right out from under them, to take their breath away. Beauty’s sharpness can cut through the many defenses and logical strongholds the human heart and mind construct. The question that naturally follows in light of this is, who is able to take up beauty’s standard and weapons of war? It isn’t who we might expect. The church’s most influential demographic in reaching a lost and dying post-Christian world isn’t the businessmen or politicians, it’s the artists and creatives.

In the hands of the artist, the limited scope of what is understood to be possible becomes soft, impressionable, and able to take new shape. The artist, using the powerful act of creation - radah, holds a unique ability to influence the boundary lines of imagination, broadening these demarcations and creating space. It is from this open horizon that the artist produces the artifacts that, in many ways, often shape what culture will become. History shows that legislation supports and reinforces implementations that are brought into culture through artists and their creativity. As Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic once said, “You keep the legislators and politicians, give me the artists and I will have the heart of the nation.”

Suppose beauty holds the key to unlocking our culture’s receptiveness to the gospel. In that case, the Church must reinstate its historic relationship with the artist, one in which the latter is not merely tolerated, but supported, resourced, and viewed as the most capable gospel carrier of the day. An ecumenical reformation must take place in revolt against the animating force of  capitalism and utilitarianism which often influences many of our perspectives on what makes “successful ministry.” An active and costly choice will need to be made to equip, engage, and empower the creative with theological depth, communal accountability, and resource allocation. Where is our modern-day Sistine Chapel? Who is discipling the next cultural prophet in the likeness of Ezekiel, Rembrandt, and Dylan? If we, just as our predecessors are to hold fidelity to the Great Commission in our day, perhaps we should assert to take more room in our imagination. Beauty is the apologetic, and artists are the evangelists.