The magnolia tree shudders as I pluck a flower and send the branch springing back into place high above my head. The velvet petals had been too appealing to resist. I spin the bloom slowly, drinking in the fragile scent of summer and citrus. Gratuitous Beauty scientists call it. The unnecessary extravagance of nature, the beauty that goes far beyond mere utility.
Our modern era obsesses over aesthetics, and yet it doesn’t quite know what to make of beauty.
Once upon a time, the Western world was swept up in a revolution of reason. Thinkers back then became convinced that rational inquiry alone could construct the ultimate utopia. God, it was argued, was the antithesis of reason, since he could not be seen, smelled, or proved using scientific means. If common men and women would simply stop reveling in religious mysteries and transcend to the realm of empiricism, then heaven would finally come to earth. As a result of this “Enlightenment,” God-denying rationality assumed intellectual dominance, and we’ve dwelt in the shadow of materialistic secularism ever since.
Mysteries remain, however, for even the most rational atheist. If the material world is all there is, then why does the songbird sound so sweet? Why does water sparkle so happily in the sunlight? Why does the sky swirl in such a scrumptious tapestry of white billows? Why does the magnolia tree burst into lavish blossoms every spring?
And why does the human heart respond to such things?
Our disenchanted culture would have us believe that art can be enjoyed apart from the Artist. That the beauty of our universe, which seems to exist for no other purpose than human awe, is really meaningless and empty. Totally gratuitous. This worldview flattens our deepest desires into something primal and boring. If there is no metaphysical purpose, then our longings are like those of any other creature in the animal kingdom. We crave, we consume, we fulfill our biological imperatives. We live in the dirt like everything else.
But we are not animals.
Animals do not watch the sunrise, enraptured. Animals do not grin as they inhale flowers, weep as they behold a mountain range, or burst into song before the sea. Animals do not take in the world the way we do, confounded and enfolded by its splendor and magnitude.
Humans are uniquely drawn to beauty, and our longing cannot be rightly understood apart from a Drawing Hand. If there is not some Higher Beauty behind the shimmering stars, if there is not some greater shape and purpose to the universe, then our aching expectations fall back down to earth, disappointed and disillusioned. Art is meaningless without an Artist. Beauty itself makes the case for a Source. Human design and human desire are tethered together, pointing heavenward.
Such a view is decidedly counter-cultural. Our land has fallen under the dark spell of secular reason, and it is our duty as Christians to reenchant our senses with the Old Story, to remind ourselves and our neighbors that we were made for more than spreadsheets and algorithms. We were made for beauty, and we were made to be beautiful. Most of all, we were made to delight in the Beautiful One.
It is therefore our mission to live delightfully alive in a world frozen over in materialism, and this requires recognizing God as the Artist behind every awe-inducing sight. It means yielding to the Holy Spirit as he kindly transforms our view of reality into the shape of a Cross. It means craving Jesus as the ultimate source and worthy object of all our longing. And when Jesus becomes the central gravitational pull of our delight, life can be lived in deeply satisfying alignment with our design.
It’s almost too simple and happy to believe! Could this really be what we were made for? For stroking flowers, splashing in the sea, and lifting our arms in praise like the trees? Could it be that the letters of our DNA compose a sonnet of Jesus-aimed yearning? Could it be that God delights in creating beauty for beauty’s sake, that he is not a being of mere utility but of superfluous abundance, pouring forth an endless provision of loveliness?
Could it be?
It can. It is.
Blessed are those who delight beyond pure reason, who have set their desire upon the Lord and discovered his wellspring of gratuitous beauty. We were designed to delight in Jesus, and our every hope finds its home in him.