Beauty. Imagination. Truth

Alabaster’s Ink Well dwells in the lift of beauty, imagination, and truth. Today’s focus is beauty.

Keats, who died young and his faith unknown, wrote in the Ode to a Grecian Urn that truth and beauty are equal. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, //—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, “Beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend for the hearts of men.” 

William Wilberforce, the key figure who persuaded English thinking to revile slavery,

promoted the poet Hannah Moore to employ beautiful and potent words to turn the imaginations of the English people.^[1] (Slavery, A Poem)

The beauty of a sunset, the sparkle of sun on ice after a dreary winter storm, diamonds on an ocean wave, rivulets of rock in a mountain cave—we all gasp and try to grasp the moment where heaven draws its curtain back and we see something beyond the ordinary of plodding earth. Beauty draws us; imagination transports us; truth transforms us.

“The path to freedom leads through beauty,” said German poet, philosopher, and playwright Friedrich Schiller.^[2] Beauty also guards the path to truth. The God of truth woos us through the beauty of the natural world into deeper truths. Since “through Him all things were made”^[3]those lovely, created things are reflections of the Maker. Through beauty, God gains a foothold in our imaginations so that we want to know Him better.

Drawn by the beauty of the natural world to the acknowledgment of a Creator, we are more easily captivated by the beauty of Jesus, the Creator who came as a man to show us perfect love. By faith, we can ponder His life through His most beautiful victories: His death cross and resurrection.  Natural beauty and the beauty of the character of Christ can spark our imaginations to embrace redemption.

BIT (Beauty, Imagination, Truth) by BIT, we flourish.

“You are worthy at all times and in all places to receive glory, honor, thanks, and praise, through Jesus Christ our Lord; For He is your living word from before time and for all ages; by Him you created all things and by Him you make all things new.”^[4]

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[1] Mere Christian (Call to Mastery) podcast by Jordon Raynor interviewing Andrew Klavan May 4, 2022.

[2] As quoted in Jurgen Moltman, The Theology of Play (Harper, 1972), 4.

[3] John 1:3

[4] Anglican eucharistic Prayer, Diocese of Sydney, Australia

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