Beauty | Letters to a Samuel Generation

by Rachel Starr Thomson
written November 2003

Have you ever heard of speed dating?

I read an article about it in a Christian magazine recently. Participants sign up for a speed dating event, held at a location near you. They gather in a meeting room and form their chairs in two circles—inner circle for the women, outer circle for the men. Each participant has a card with the other participants' names, with appropriate boxes to check for how highly you rate each person.

A supervisor with a stopwatch gets the night going. For a few seconds, each female participant speaks with a male participant. Just as the conversation gets going, the buzzer goes and the men move one place to the right—once again, ready, set, date.

There was a time when most girls believed in true love and eternal commitment—or if they didn't, at least we thought they should. The world was full of young romantics, sashaying around the kitchen humming “Someday My Prince Will Come.” And while most of those young romantics were never exactly carried away by a knight in shining armor, at least they had an ideal to believe in.

Nowadays, that innocent belief in romance and true love has been replaced by yet another episode of The Bachelor. We date the way we shop for shoes, trying each new person on to see what criteria they meet—are they comfortable? The right color? Could I wear that with anything else in my closet? And most important—do they make me look good?

Some young people still believe in true love, albeit a skewered version of it. But the culture at large has taken romance, which for generations has been the most beautiful thing we knew, and sucked all the beauty out of it. Mystery is gone, replaced by immodesty. Faithfulness is gone, replaced by a credo that says we should only stay with someone as long as they make us happy.

The bottom line: romance, as presented by our culture, used to be beautiful. It isn't anymore.

This is not the only area of life that has suffered from a stripping-down of beauty. There was a time when family life was beautiful. Call to mind a scene from Little House On the Prairie. The Ingalls family sits around the fire at Christmas-time, stockings hung with care, snow blowing past the windows outside. It's a cold night, but it doesn't matter; there's love in the room, and that is beautiful; and when you're surrounded by such beauty, who cares what the weather's like outside?

Now call to mind a scene from Married With Children. The Simpsons. Eight Simple Rules. Seventh Heaven, even.

'Nuff said.

Whatever happened to beauty in our daily lives?

And then there are the artists: the singers, dancers, poets, painters, writers, and composers who once made it their business to make the whole world open their eyes to the beauty around them. There are still artists who present beauty in their work. But there are many more who seem concerned only with ugliness, with presenting jarring, bitter truths or twisted imaginations.

I am a writer; I spend five to six hours every day writing and reading. As a child I was drawn to reading because it opened up whole new worlds, and in those worlds there was beauty and wonder. Narnia and Middle-earth took my breath away. I rode on the back of George MacDonald's North Wind. I loved the silky darkness of an Indian night in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books. I loved to watch as time after time, the good guys defeated the bad ones.

But now? It grows harder and harder to find that kind of beauty in books. So many people use their creativity to create horrid things, disgusting things, jarring things; and more times than not, it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad.

All of this is simply to say that the world has changed, and not for the better. There is a dearth of beauty in the world, and it is a tragic loss.

It's easy enough to see the cause of it. God is the original of Beauty, and our culture has moved away from Him. The farther they go, the more warped their creations become. Instead of working as God works, to create that which is beautiful, wise, and good; they work as Satan does—twisting and perverting that which God has done.

As the world grows uglier, it is imperative that we as Christians pray the prayer of Moses:

“And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and stablish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (Psalm 90:17).

In our lives, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. In our families, in our friendships, in our romances and our marriages. In our art, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. In our work. In our very souls.

The call of our time is to stand up in sharp contrast to the darkening world around, to shine a light into gross darkness:

“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee” (Isa. 60:1-2).

I have seen beauty in dark places. I've seen it in the face of a wife and mother who gives and gives and gives for her children, who walks by her husband even when the road is mired in difficulty. I've seen it in young women who have kept themselves apart from the dating game, who have waited—and what a hard thing waiting can be!—until their prince came at last. I've seen it in the young men who have struggled to become worthy of a princess. I've seen it in my friends when they've clung to God through times of hurt and confusion. I've seen it at night, lying in bed, as I think back on my life and the people in it, and I think on the God who brought me this far. I've seen it in arms stretched out on a cross, in a scarred face, in the bloody footsteps of the Master.

Become a student of the Beautiful. Do beauty, think it, sing it, pray it. Stand against the tide of ugliness.

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8).