“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. ” – Leo Tolstoy
OK, today’s obviously confession time, because having outed myself as a Kevin Rudd supporter (albeit from a “who else is there” perspective), I’m now about to unleash one of my theological blind spots. Here it is: I don’t understand how or why we talk about God as being “beautiful”. And even once we accept that it is possible to speak of God as being beautiful, why is it important?
Thinking about this was triggered by hearing someone describe their new favourite worship song, which I gather centred around repeating over and over again how beautiful God is. Now, maybe I’m on my own here, but I really struggle to understand how I could possibly relate to singing about the beauty of God. I don’t have any concept of God being beautiful, and I’m not sure that I need God to be beautiful himself for me to love him.
Now part of this is probably to do with me being a boy, and being a computer nerd at that, so my aesthetic appreciation is likely to be considered somewhat diminished. But I DO actually believe that lots of our push towards seeking after a beautiful God relates back to the underlying cultural push to be make everything beautiful. We need God to be beautiful because beautiful is better, and we want our God to be better than anything else that the world has to offer. We end up being determined to beat the world at its own game.
So I’m much less interested in a beautiful God than I am in a messy God, and in a God who gets dirty. But I’m very interested to hear people explain where a beautiful God fits into the equation, how you connect with God being beautiful, and whether or not it’s of genuine value to your faith. It’s been really good and encouraging to see the lively discussion around the place – particularly on the consumerism posts, so I’m hoping we can keep that going.