Relocating To Elfland

Blogging has taught me afresh the difficulty of carrying deep water in a shallow vessel. So many subjects I want to write on simply resist being treated in such a forum. In their profundity, with their long history and various ramifications and implications, they defy the impertinence of a few paragraphs’ disposal. I have to resist the urge to start nearly every post with a caveat, “Now, I’m fumbling my way along the edges of something again. . . .”

Take aesthetics, for example. I’ve heard it argued, even by Christians, that there can be no such thing as objective beauty. I don’t accept this denial of objectivity, because it seems to leave the verdict regarding what is beautiful entirely in human hands; and while that might be appropriate in the sphere of human things (which I’m not quite ready to concede), it is surely wrong when it comes to our beholding the divine glory. God says to us, “Behold My glory,” and we have no right to tell Him we don’t happen to regard His beauty as . . . well, beautiful. If it’s all in the eye of the beholder, then God can’t tell us His beauty is objectively beautiful – which is about like saying He can’t tell us His truth is objectively true, or His righteousness objectively right.

But if there must (in my view) be some place for objective beauty, there’s a ditch across the road as well: the objectifying of beauty. As a father of two daughters, living beside the fashion capitol of the universe, this is of more than academic interest to me. What’s a fellow to do if his daughter asks him, “Daddy, am I pretty?” One can’t just respond, “Well, dear, it’s all relative,” or, “I think you’re beautiful, so you are.” If she’s sharp, she will probably respond, “Okay, then I’m going to stop cutting my fingernails, brushing my hair, and using makeup. Oh, and forget the braces.” We know there are certain things one can do to make oneself more beautiful, more aesthetically and visually pleasing, and this assumes some rough standard beyond oneself. It’s not wrong, strictly speaking, to say one person is rather plain and another person strikingly lovely. There are noses that are a bit comical, and eyes that can make one swoon; and some guys (not me, for example) have enviable hair. But then you trace this out a bit, and you land where our culture has arrived today: teaching its girls that real beauty is airbrushed, with a certain bra size and a blemish-free complexion. If you aren’t hot like all that, you’d better find some other way to get attention.

Set aside, if possible, how this kind of objectification has led to the commodifying of “beauty”; ignore the horrible fact that, having objectified “beauty,” we can now buy it and sell it like any other object on the market. I want to question the objectifying itself: Who says that “that” over there is the standard of beauty (male, female, or otherwise)? Who speaks with such authority?

As people of God, must we not say at some level that a thing is good and beautiful just because it is created? And does this not, in turn, require us to affirm a fantastic diversity within the field of beauty? I happen to like certain physical features, and I think they’re objectively beautiful on the ground that God put them there. Someone else may think other features equally beautiful; and he or she is on no less solid, objective ground, because God made those features, too! But we must go further. Cultural images of beauty are dominated by the physical; the biblical image of beauty is fundamentally personal – which is to say, there is a whole lot more depth and variety to beauty than can be exhausted in the human body. A person is truly beautiful as a person: the radiance of his or her soul (the character, the heart, the animus within) is joined to a particular body in which that inner life finds adornment and expression. This is why we have all looked at an old man and thought him exquisitely handsome; why we have all looked at a pretty young face and thought it hard, even ugly; and why no amount of makeup can ever make a corpse a thing of beauty. (It is also why no amount of pornographic images has ever satisfied a heart’s yearning for beauty.)

There’s truth in the old line, “God made you, and He don’t make no trash.” Perhaps we need our imaginations broadened to delight in more of His creativity. We certainly need our definition of beauty expanded beyond the soulless images of our culture. So, little girl, God made only one of you; and in all that you are – in all that He made you – you are truly beautiful.