Reflections on Truth and Beauty

The question has been asked, “What is beauty?” and “Is there a true, or absolute, beauty?”
The saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder;” thus, in this view, the concept of beauty is completely subjective in every instance. Whether or not there is objective beauty, apart from the beholder, depends entirely upon what you believe. Your beliefs about God, Truth, Meaning, and Life will come into play significantly.
First, I want to begin with a short definition of the nature of Truth. We live in a time in which much of public thought occurs within a post-modern framework. It is difficult to prevent ALL forms of post-modern, or relativistic, thought from infiltrating the mind and affecting the thought processes (for instance, it IS true that my feelings and definitions of what a family is, for example, should be and are probably not the same as yours). But the Post-modern worldview says that nothing can be truly defined; everything is subjective to constructed norms of society, experience, and the interpretation of the individual. I can not say, according to a postmodernist, that human sacrifice in Aztec culture is wrong and immoral because I am not living in the time of the Aztecs. I am looking at the Aztec culture from my 21st-century perspective and am therefore imposing my definitions of what is right and wrong upon the historical situation. What may seem barbaric and wrong to me today was perfectly accepted as the norm 500 years ago. This severely calls into question all forms of criticism past and present. Words do not have a definitive meaning to a post-modernist, because the individual interpretations of that word are so varied there cannot be consistency. And so when we begin to talk about things that are true, we hear language like “that’s true for me,” or “this is what this means to me,” which seems to imply that to suggest a truth that is true for you and for me would be presumptuous at best.
The post-modern, relativistic worldview does not, however, fit into a biblical worldview. It is an attack on the power and dignity of the written and spoken word. Isn’t it interesting that, in a world of media, photos and video, the God of all creation has chosen to speak to us in a BOOK? What an amazing choice on God’s part! He uses WORDS! I believe that this calls Christ-followers in an age dominated by images and relativism to hold fast and defend the written word. It is through the written word that God reveals Himself to us most explicitly (The other way that God reveals Himself to us is in nature). The Bible is very clear that the WORD of God is Truth, that the word is meaningful and can be clearly understood by everyone. Jesus said “I AM the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), a statement that says that God is the embodiment of Truth (Jesus is “the word became flesh” (John 1:14), THE Truth as a living, breathing God-man). So it is important to recognize that, while there are variation in our experiences of certain things, objective truth is possible, it is biblical, and it is out there.
Now we come to the subject of beauty. There are almost an infinite amount of ways that beauty can be described; almost any road you choose to go down in defining beauty ends up a dead end because you seem to end up where you started. It is one of the hardest concepts to define and yet is one of the simplest realities of life. Perhaps if we organize a few categories that we could place beauty in that may help us to understand and classify it better: Sensual Beauty (Beauty that is seen, smelled, tasted, touched), Intellectual Beauty (Beauty that is pleasing to the mind because of its order or intricacy), Emotional Beauty (Beauty of the heart; something that is felt and experienced), and finally Spiritual Beauty (Beauty that gets its value from the Truth that it embodies). The first problem that presents itself in categorizing beauty is the fact that beauty is not scientific; there are no definitive lines that we can draw to separate one category from another. So we must allow the categories to be somewhat loosely defined with some overlap within them. The second problem is that the list of categories could certainly go on and on because beauty is very unique in every form. Therefore the above list is not exhaustive. It helps us to look at things categorically because what we are looking for is what makes beauty universal; what makes it a concept that all humans can understand.
There are some things about beauty that are subjective (in the eye of the beholder). The beauty of a scene, a person, or a painting ARE dependent on the appreciation of the person looking at them. The idea of beauty is, by definition, something that pleases the beholder (or thinker). This idea, however, is not subjective because, even if someone does not find a person beautiful when I do, they still understand what I mean by my saying she is beautiful. So an easy definition to attach to beauty would be pleasure; beautiful things please the eyes, please the mind, or please the emotions. This definition serves us well to a point; but it does not help us when we come to beautiful things that are not pleasing to us. The beauty in the midst of ugliness or pain strikes us differently than beauty that is pleasurable; but this is still a form of beauty. So it follows that in addition to something pleasing we must add a second definition: beauty is value. As I said before these two definitions overlap each other because most of us value things that are pleasurable. But beauty as an expression of value is important because it helps us with the more difficult forms of beauty that we face. When I experience great pain in life it can be seen as beautiful -certainly not because it was pleasurable -but because it was a valuable agent in producing a needed result in my life. The greatest example of this is of course the example of Christ as described in Hebrews 12 who “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame.” Jesus did not enjoy the cross; he did not enjoy the physical agony of the whips and nails, nor did he enjoy the spiritual agony of separation from the father and the acceptance of the wrath of God being poured on him. But in spite of this torture, is the cross beautiful? To a believer there is nothing more beautiful than the sacrifice of our Lord. “O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.” The precious, beautiful blood of Jesus is beautiful because it has value to redeem sinners and bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).
I believe that all expressions of beauty can be seen in one or both of these two categories, things that are valuable and things that are pleasurable. Pleasure is subjective; not every person finds pleasure in the same things. But value is not subjective, at least if we think biblically. The Bible makes clear what is valuable when it gives instructions to how we should live. Experientially, people value things very differently (e.g. money, time, human life), the same way that different people enjoy very different things. But this brings us again to whether we will choose a postmodern worldview or a biblical one. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone the new has come.” (2 Cor. 5:17) This transformation brings about a change in what brings pleasure and what we value. We no longer search for an expression of value contained within our "inner self", but we find it given to us by God in scripture. The scripture tells us what we should value and see as important, simply because it tells us what is important and valuable to God. The scripture also tells us what to find pleasure in, because God knows what will ultimately give us the most pleasure and satisfaction, namely, Himself.
God has the right to require these changes of us for 2 reasons: first, because if we are in Christ we are a new creature and no longer live the way we used to when we were lost and dead; a new-creature in Christ can do things that are "impossible with man but possible with God." Second, because He is God and has the power to command things that we cannot do on our own. His command carries with it the authority and power that will actually changes us into people that are more like Christ. So as we examine things like beauty the ultimate question is what do we believe about reality. If we believe that everything is meaningless then certainly a word like beauty will have no special traits. It will merely blend in with the rest of the meaningless universe. But if we embrace the truth that the Living God has ordered, designed, and established truth and beauty, we will be set free to live a life where all of life's questions find their answer in the source of all things beautiful.