Beauty's pursuit

Fighting despair through truth

At the end of last month, I was lucky to spend a week in and around Savannah, Georgia, for the first time. 

Though we spent most of our time beaching on Tybee Island (as all good vacations go!), we were able to spend one of our days touring Savannah to see all the historic sites. I knew I would like Savannah—I always love a historic city—but I underestimated just how enraptured I’d be with each intricate detail of the downtown area. 

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The impeccable homes; the well-manicured squares; the Spanish moss dripping from trees older than the U.S.; everywhere I looked I saw beauty, and I couldn’t get enough. The sense was so overwhelming that it almost stressed me out. I was overcome by the need to drink in every detail. 

It’s not that Savannah, Georgia, has a monopoly on beauty—there was no doubt in my mind that I’d have equally as illuminating experiences once I returned back to North Alabama. But it did help draw my attention to the value of beauty, and to its true Source. 

There’s one particular scene in C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind since I read it in January of this year. I’ve been hesitant to write anything about this book because the story is so good that I don’t want to risk spoiling any bit of it for future readers. 

Here’s the gist: Our main character, a princess named Orual, has just left the small kingdom where she lives for the first time in search of a beloved companion who she believes is in danger.

Orual hasn’t experienced much beauty in her life. Yet, as she sets out on this fraught journey, she encounters that overwhelming sense: 

“We had come into the sunlight now, too bright to look into, and warm (I threw back my cloak). Heavy dew made the grass jewel-bright. The Mountain, far greater yet also far further off than I expected, seen with the sun hanging a hand-breadth above its topmost crags, did not look like a solid thing. Between us and it was a vast tumble of valley and hill, wood and cliffs, and more little lakes than I could count. To left and right, and behind us, the whole coloured world with all its hills was heaped up and up to the sky, with, far away, a gleam of what we call the sea…There was a lark singing; but for that, huge and ancient stillness.

And my struggle was this. You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I came on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice—no words—but if you made it into words it would be, ‘Why should your heart not dance?’”

The next few pages consist of an internal battle as Orual attempts to connect the beauty she’s experiencing with the sadness she should be feeling. There’s no use in trying to deny it, though—the beauty even makes her begin to disbelieve things about her own identity that she’s known her entire life. 

“The sight of the huge world put mad ideas in me,” she narrates, “as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world’s end.”

Isn’t that what beauty, real beauty, does to us? And doesn’t Orual’s struggle ring true in a world so devoid of—desperate for—enchantment? 

I know that her experience is true because I’ve been there. I’ve experienced that overwhelm of beauty, so powerful that it overrides your deepest convictions and inspires you to spend the rest of your life chasing it down. 

The really amazing thing, though, is that you don’t have to go looking for it; it will find you. That’s Orual’s experience, at least. As hard as she fights to sober herself and push the beauty away in light of the task she’s undertaking, she can’t help but be changed by the experience she’s having.

It’s a hopeful message, if a bit confusing. Here’s how I’ve been thinking about it lately. 

At its core, beauty is a kind of truth—sort of like a tool that truth uses to make itself known. Psalm 19 states that “the heavens declare the glory of God,” and the sky “proclaims his handiwork,” revealing information on par with “speech” and conferring “knowledge” to those who will listen. 

Likewise, Paul reminds us that God’s “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” 

Beauty is truth. Both belong to God. Why does that matter? 

There’s no question that we live in a world filled with turmoil. Current events are reminders, symptoms of the deeper problem that all humanity has faced for all of time. 

It’s easy to feel like Orual; to look around at the tragedy surrounding us and assume that there’s nothing redeemable left any more, or at least not that’s worth our attention. To fight the beauty that pulls us out of ourselves and into communion with the Godhead. 

Certainly, everything has its place—there’s a time to mourn and a time to dance. There is evil, and darkness, and division in the world. You will have troubles; Jesus promised as much. Yet, Christianity is not a worldview that’s compatible with despair. “Take heart, for I have overcome the world.”

Uncertainty prevails; disenchantment attempts to take hold; beauty pursues us anyway. I think that’s a gift of God’s grace. 

So much of the Christian walk is the tension between the eternal and the temporal. “We are the living souls with terminal hearts,” always trying to understand what it means to live in possession of a truly transcendent hope. Keep striving.

From the archives:

In honor of our wedding anniversary, which happens to be today!

And a recommendation:

Ever wondered how we know the Gospel of Mark is reliable? This video compiles a lot of the evidence, and it’s fascinating.