Audio By Carbonatix

A recent BBC podcast told the story of a young pianist who found God through music. Though she now goes by her baptismal name of Eleanor, Yirui Wenggrew up in Communist China. The stringently atheistic education she received there emphasized the importance of hard work and that reality only consisted of the physical world. She learned technique, not about transcendent concepts like beauty, much less the God behind beauty.

It was on an educational trip to Italy that Eleanor encountered the beauty of Christian architecture and the worshipful attitude of people at prayer. Most of all, she was moved by the beauty of Gloria by composer Antonio Vivaldi. She was confronted with phrases such as “Lamb of God” and “Son of the Father.” According to the BBC article, Eleanor wanted to know, “What did these words mean and why had composers been inspired by them for centuries?” In answering her questions, a local priest pointed her to the Christian faith.

In a profound realization, especially for an artist, Eleanor concluded that the simplistic narrative of her upbringing could not explain the beauty she encountered in the world. When asked why people “are touched by the presence of God in music,” she replied:

Because in music, you no longer feel the passage of time or space. Often, the moment when you are moved by beauty is a symbol of eternity. Many people were touched by this feeling, because it is a kind of beauty that no language or image can fully describe.

It was, in part, the ugliness of the worldview in which Eleanor was raised that explains why this discovery was so profound for her. As Os Guinness has said, “Contrast is the mother of clarity.” Consider, for example, the Brutalist architecture expressed in the endless, grey structures of formerly Communist nations and still in China. Though some may describe the style as “bold and ambitious,” it is a style that wears on souls that were made for more. Like a lot of Modernist art and architecture, as well as the Marxist worldview overall, Brutalism communicates that the individual doesn’t matter, that the material is all that exists, and that appeals to beauty or transcendence are self-indulgence.

Compare this to the Christian vision. Creation reflects God’s artistry. He did not need to create the world, much less fill it with such delightfully unnecessary beauty. As GK Chesterton quipped:

It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.

And God created humans to image Him as His “sub-creators.” We do not merely consume; we imagine and invent and innovate. In doing so, we fulfill the first mandate of our Creator, which is to make something of the world. As Hans Rookmaker put it in his book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture:

Culture is the result of man’s creative activity within God-given structures. So, it can never be something apart from our faith. All our work is ultimately directed by our answer to the question of who—or what—our God is, and where, for us, the ultimate source of all reality and life lies.

That’s why, just as it is tragic to dismiss beauty, it is just as tragic to reduce it to mere entertainment. As Chuck Colson asked many years ago:

Does God value beauty for beauty’s sake? It seems He does. Consider the two columns Solomon set up before the Temple. He decorated them with a hundred pomegranates fastened upon chains, as God commanded. These two free-standing columns supported no architectural weight and had no engineering significance, [Francis] Schaeffer writes. “They were there only because God said they should be there as a thing of beauty.”

Whether a piece of music or a beautiful sunset, we are moved by beauty. At the birth of a child or an act of athletic artistry, we wonder. Beauty points to what is transcendent about reality and about us. It points us to the presence and nature of God that can penetrate even the most stubborn personal and cultural defenses.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/CJ_Romas

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.

Audio By Carbonatix

A recent BBC podcast told the story of a young pianist who found God through music. Though she now goes by her baptismal name of Eleanor, Yirui Wenggrew up in Communist China. The stringently atheistic education she received there emphasized the importance of hard work and that reality only consisted of the physical world. She learned technique, not about transcendent concepts like beauty, much less the God behind beauty.

It was on an educational trip to Italy that Eleanor encountered the beauty of Christian architecture and the worshipful attitude of people at prayer. Most of all, she was moved by the beauty of Gloria by composer Antonio Vivaldi. She was confronted with phrases such as “Lamb of God” and “Son of the Father.” According to the BBC article, Eleanor wanted to know, “What did these words mean and why had composers been inspired by them for centuries?” In answering her questions, a local priest pointed her to the Christian faith.

In a profound realization, especially for an artist, Eleanor concluded that the simplistic narrative of her upbringing could not explain the beauty she encountered in the world. When asked why people “are touched by the presence of God in music,” she replied:

Because in music, you no longer feel the passage of time or space. Often, the moment when you are moved by beauty is a symbol of eternity. Many people were touched by this feeling, because it is a kind of beauty that no language or image can fully describe.

It was, in part, the ugliness of the worldview in which Eleanor was raised that explains why this discovery was so profound for her. As Os Guinness has said, “Contrast is the mother of clarity.” Consider, for example, the Brutalist architecture expressed in the endless, grey structures of formerly Communist nations and still in China. Though some may describe the style as “bold and ambitious,” it is a style that wears on souls that were made for more. Like a lot of Modernist art and architecture, as well as the Marxist worldview overall, Brutalism communicates that the individual doesn’t matter, that the material is all that exists, and that appeals to beauty or transcendence are self-indulgence.

Compare this to the Christian vision. Creation reflects God’s artistry. He did not need to create the world, much less fill it with such delightfully unnecessary beauty. As GK Chesterton quipped:

It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.

And God created humans to image Him as His “sub-creators.” We do not merely consume; we imagine and invent and innovate. In doing so, we fulfill the first mandate of our Creator, which is to make something of the world. As Hans Rookmaker put it in his book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture:

Culture is the result of man’s creative activity within God-given structures. So, it can never be something apart from our faith. All our work is ultimately directed by our answer to the question of who—or what—our God is, and where, for us, the ultimate source of all reality and life lies.

That’s why, just as it is tragic to dismiss beauty, it is just as tragic to reduce it to mere entertainment. As Chuck Colson asked many years ago:

Does God value beauty for beauty’s sake? It seems He does. Consider the two columns Solomon set up before the Temple. He decorated them with a hundred pomegranates fastened upon chains, as God commanded. These two free-standing columns supported no architectural weight and had no engineering significance, [Francis] Schaeffer writes. “They were there only because God said they should be there as a thing of beauty.”

Whether a piece of music or a beautiful sunset, we are moved by beauty. At the birth of a child or an act of athletic artistry, we wonder. Beauty points to what is transcendent about reality and about us. It points us to the presence and nature of God that can penetrate even the most stubborn personal and cultural defenses.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/CJ_Romas

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.