Three Imperative Values: #2 Beauty
“Whatsoever things are lovely [. . .] think on these things.” Philippians 4:7 [KJV]
Chiggers are tiny parasitic insects who, after biting your ankles and legs, leave a red itchy spot, like a mosquito bite, only three times flaming worse. In Texas they find your carefree, unassuming legs when walking through tall grass.
I awoke early one morning just before sunrise itching my chigger bites like a madman, battle scars from a recent tromp through the hill country. In exasperation I leapt off the couch and moved toward the back deck to get some refreshing air to hopefully get my mind off my affliction. I got something better.
Just as I was about to open the sliding door, I saw through the glass a doe nosing around for a sunrise breakfast. She was closer than any wild deer that I can remember watching. Separated by the glass, she could not smell or hear me, so I was able to watch her for quite some time. Usually, deer seem to dart off at the smallest breath, but this time, she let me admire her for a very long time.
I became possessed by her beauty, enraptured, as all my cares, all my chigger bites, melted away, and I thought only on her.
Real Beauty, unlike prettiness, changes the beholder. The beholder is not self-seeking in his beholding; he rather forgets himself. He somehow participates in that beautiful thing, just as that beautiful thing participates in Beauty itself. It is as Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedo:
“I cling simply and straightforwardly, naively perhaps, to the explanation that the one thing that makes that object beautiful is the presence in it or association with it (in whatever way the relation comes about) of that other Beauty. I do not go so far as to insist upon the precise detail; only upon the fact that it is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful.”
Socrates is hitting so near the mark. Christians, however, can name Beauty Himself, because He has been revealed to us in the person of Jesus the Christ.
Beauty is an imperative to value in a child’s education because Beauty reveals Truth, it reveals God.
God’s Beauty can be seen most easily in nature. Beauty drives out fear as it even drew my children to behold the live snakes at the Nature Center the other day, even my daughter (and I confess myself too) who is afraid of snakes.
In addition, God’s Beauty can be discovered in an elegant equation, a poem, a story as these things can foreshadow the Beautiful Vision of God we all will see in our Eternal Home.
Beauty can also be captured in even the arrangement of space in a home or a school. Sunlit rooms, flowers on the table, attractive colors and shapes can all help form our affections for all things Good. Just as we train a child’s appetites whether we feed her junk food or vegetables, we train her to love trash or high art by the habit of feeding them the best of all sphere‘s of human knowledge.
I have heard it said that we become the thing we behold; therefore, let us place before our children all things beautiful so that they too may become Beautiful.
