The Beautiful Book in a Beautiful Cosmos with the Beautiful People

Last updated on: July 2, 2021 at 7:39 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

The Beautiful Book in a Beautiful Cosmos with the Beautiful People 2021-07-02T07:39:19-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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The good Book is beautiful.

The beauty of the Book of Books points us Godward. Beauty always does. The books of the Bible reveal God to us and so are full of literary beauty. There is in truth always great beauty and the beauty of language in the Psalms or John declares the glory of God.

God is beautiful, His creation is beautiful, but sin mars the beauty. Since the Bible tells the truth about the world, not all the stories or language is beautiful. Judges deals with ugly times in the life of Israel and Revelation is written in the choppy Greek of an old man in exile without his scribe who still has something important to say. The messages of the inspired authors reflect the subject matter and the situation of the writer, but the meaning is so powerful that beauty rises, epiphenomenal, out of the text.

Read the text of any Bible book carefully and the beauty will be apparent.

Years of reading the text guided by my friends who are theologians has taught me a simple truth: the revelation of God in the Scriptures speaks of beauty continuously. God declared His creation good. Jesus came and lived a beautiful life. Humans tried to end that life in ugliness, but Christ conquered death in the splendor of Easter. God will restore that creation at the end of time beautifully.

Demonic and human sin can warp, deface, cover up this goodness, this beauty, but not for long. Light pollution covers up the stars, but they burn still. The slightest slip by mechanistic men and the machine glare dims and the Heavens once again declare the glory of God. The creation is an expression of beautiful ideas: mathematics incarnate. The physical creation was made good and if good, beautiful.

Each person in His image is beautiful. Bad cultures cannot see this universal beauty, narrowing their vision to a few preferred “looks.” Sometimes the beauty mental, spiritual, and physical is so great that even the most messed up society sees the beauty and is startled into thought. This recognition could save, but often just leads to mistakes or evils.

The book of Esther begins with a tyrant who thinks someone else’s beauty could belong to him. The books ends with beauty enthroned for herself. Esther saved the Jewish people by her brilliance, but also her beauty. That Esther was beautiful within and without was hard for stupid or evil men in the story. Exceptional physical beauty has often been overpraised, discounted, or viewed with suspicion.

All kinds of beauty cause attraction in the beholder. This can become twisted as the beholder forgets the nature of the beauty. Another person’s beauty does not belong to the beholder, but attraction may cause a selfish person to think that such beauty must be for the beholder. Haman could not cope with Esther. She was physically beautiful, but the beauty was her own and not for him. She was mentally beautiful, but Haman did not know how to deal with such a combination. He was dazzled and defeated by beauty.

The Book, nature, and the body all have their own beauty.

Learning to appreciate beauty appropriately in all three is essential to become fit for Paradise.

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