For Glory and for Beauty (An article NOT about the election)

Not everything that matters to our civilization has its foundations laid in high places of government. We all know that of course but the daily news blabbers would never make you think otherwise. I had to untangle my mind and soul from it all and reflect on something else. All week I kept thinking about how the Scriptures and our God are beautiful and that it does a soul good to ruminate on that precept.

 In some ways beauty is something we expect, at least when we view the created order. We understand that if God made it, whatever it is will be wonderful to our eyes. It will amaze our minds with complexity, genius, and marvelous simplicity jumbled together into this astonishing world in which we walk. Nothing is what we would expect. Snowflakes, for instance, appear as an indistinct mass of white until you peer closely to discover that every flake is unlike the last. There are apparently trillions of possible designs (and I do mean designs not just shapes), and two alike have never been recorded. When I first started sawing air dried walnut in my shop I discovered that the boundary wood between the cream colored sapwood and the dark heartwood is often interlaced with fading shades of rose and teal. You can ramble through these woods for a life time and never know that beneath the bark under your hand lies an oil-brushed signature of the mighty Mind who assembled this forest. The rainbow in the sky is repeated beneath bark and fiber awaiting the one man that may see it before it disappears into the saws.

 We also understand from man’s assembled order that we have an astonishing penchant for whacking together unholy masses of magnified ugliness. As a species we struggle against the mess. We pass laws to unwind the worst offenses, but we create an unending supply of ick which here, in theAppalachians, displays itself as big road-side trash and truck tires in the creeks. For man, the accumulation of trash is more natural than unnatural. We have to work at it to maintain beauty.

 The entrance of Christian civilization changes this, although not in every case, because Christians often do not act christianly. When the Lord describes the heavenly order He asserts we must, “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Psalms 29 and 96). So, we are meant to recognize that beauty is first and best derived as the perfect product of the holiness of God. It is the beautiful holiness of God that places in motion His gracious order of beauty. Christians, recognizing the perfections of God’s beauty, are to work, within God’s law to bring what we can into conformance with that higher reality. We are ambassadors of Christ who, when possible, ought to demonstrate to an on-looking world, that beauty is a prolific feature of our mighty God. The building of a beautiful civilization is not so much option as it is obligation.

 Psalm 90:17 implores, “And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us: yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” This is what we desire. We pray with righteous expectation that the beauty of the Lord will be upon us and that He will establish the work of our hands. It is a prayer that followers of the terrifying and hideous gods of the earth cannot pray. They have no realistic belief that their religion will be a spring of righteous beauty in the earth. Their idols convey the wretched ugliness that is at the center of their worship. Their veryDNA is death. Our modern idols of stone and glass reflect a similar spirit. This is why so many of the newer public school buildings look like prisons and the courts appear as fortresses. Our philosophies carry through and our minds design what our hearts have come to serve. The beauty of artistic glass is impractical where the students are rogues. Wall them up then and put metal detectors at the doors.

 The mighty Greek and Roman cities were built with slave labor. Slaves were hobbled in from the newly conquered provinces and forced to hew and sledge till their broken bodies were cast aside. Fresh muscle was imported to replace the wasted men who dragged the stones and earth. That cycle was repeated for centuries to produce what are now the ruins of the ancient civilizations. These sleeping stones are eternal monuments to cruel tyrants who sought beauty under the arbor of their sordid philosophies and deadly religions. Their gods were not beautiful, and every intention of their hearts was evil, as are the hearts of every unredeemed society of our race. There is only one salvation for them all, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 Here, on our land, I have built a lovely, wood-frame greenhouse. It is a solace to sit there, to pray, to be surrounded by the visual delight of the building and its planted treasures. On the back edge of the entry door I have painted the quote from Exodus 28:2, “For glory and for beauty.” This is the heart of any righteous man who seeks to push forward Christ’s kingdom. We desire to press back the ugliness of sin and all its seed, and plant a better-seeded society that exhibits the beauty and holiness of our God wherever we can. We begin with righteousness and we end with beauty. We invite you to join the effort.

  For Christian Civilization,

 Don Schanzenbach 1-21-12