Why Beauty Is a Problem without God
The Origin of Beauty
Understanding beauty is a huge asset in our Christian witness and evangelism. Sometimes people have critical questions of Christians like, What about the problem of evil? And that is a problem, and there’s a place for talking about that and working it through. The Bible has a lot to say about it.
But I think in a way, for somebody who has not yet surrendered to Jesus Christ, beauty is a problem because beauty is so evident in this world—in creation, in other human beings—and it awakens a desire for eternal things. And unless you have a personal relationship with the living God, you have nowhere to go with your praise. You have no way of understanding the questions, Where did this beauty come from?
Philip Yancey writes about this in one of his books. It was really before he had given his life to Christ and he wasn’t really sure about God, but he had seen the beauty of a Monarch butterfly and he wanted to talk to the person who created it. That was just his little way of saying, There’s something here that is awakening a desire for God, and it helped him recognize that there is a God.
We should be aware, as we are talking to people who have not yet given their lives to Jesus Christ, that they are having experiences of beauty that won’t be fully satisfying to them until they know who to praise and until they have the assurance that they can have that experience of beauty forever.
Philip Graham Ryken is the author of Beauty Is Your Destiny: How the Promise of Splendor Changes Everything.
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Author: Philip Graham Ryken
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