I can celebrate and protect beauty even though I believe the world has an expiration date (Part 2)
If you don't mind, I'd like to take you on a little personal journey to explain why my Christian faith prompts in me a strong urge to uphold the natural world. It might seem like a roundabout way of getting to where others might arrive by a sense of responsibility ("We need to protect the earth to give our children a place to live"), but I think it's just as meaningful and maybe even more pertinent for a person of faith. For me it has to do with beauty.
I love beauty.
There is rarely a day during which I have not spent a part of my afternoon at my local beach here on the Oregon coast to marvel at its beauty. That in itself is not too surprising: Once something is beautiful in our minds, there's no reason it would ever lose its beauty or we would lose our wonder. But what's remarkable about my infatuation with "my" beach's beauty is that it is never the same as it was the day before or the one before that. There are so many elements that influence the way it presents itself—the tide, the swell and the different levels of the surf, the roaring of the waves and the cries of the seagulls and chirping of the sandpipers, the color of the water, the smell and taste of the salty air, the organic debris scattered on the sand, the new carvings in the sand that the last high tide and the birds' claws have left behind, the many and ever-changing colors of the sky, the intensity of the sun, the cloud formations, and of course the wind and the rain here at the Oregon coast.
These are just some of the many elements that make up what I anticipate every day as I step over the foredune. But here is what's odd: There is no day when I come back to my office afterward and complain about the beach's lack of beauty. There might be days when I wasn't dressed right for the elements, but it's breathtakingly beautiful out there no matter how the range of possibilities is configured.
Sand? Water? Wind? Clouds? Taken each on their own they can be annoying at best and life-threatening at worst—and yet together they form great beauty. A kind of beauty, I would contend, that is not "in the eye of the beholder" but is objectively appreciable by every person (who is not plagued with phobias or illnesses that would stand in the way of appreciation).
By the way, I don't go to the beach by myself. Each day my yellow lab and my dingo come with me. And they love it, too, but for very different reasons, like chasing birds, swimming far out to make contact with the ever-elusive but always beckoning seals, and chowing down on semi-rotten crab legs. But beauty? Not a clue. A large open landfill would be equally (or probably even more) enjoyable to them as the beach.
What is it then that sets our species apart and makes us—generally—agree on some kinds of beauty and not others?
In my Christian eyes, it is because we are specially made to appreciate that kind of beauty. And while natural beauty can be found at so many places, it is always in and of itself perfect and therefore always the most beautiful thing.
When I praise the beauty of the place where I live, I like to tell others that "ours" is the most beautiful beach in the world. I know that's both true and not true at the same time. There are thousands of other natural places that are more or less preserved from human modification—other beaches, mountains, deserts, forests, lakes, and rivers. There are natural phenomena like sunrise and sunset, rainbows and northern lights, a rose bush, an individual flower, a single petal, or its molecular structure. Someone might have a preference for mountains over the sea or roses over tulips, but we will still agree that our less preferred revelation of beauty is still beautiful.
Interestingly—and tellingly—we can receive beauty but not generate it in an equally unanimously appreciated manner. Consider art. While art and beauty are not synonymous, the creation of beauty has long been one of the drivers of art. And there are certain works of art that many of us will agree on as being beautiful. A poem by Rilke, a fugue by Bach, Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel, or the Taj Mahal will be deemed beautiful by many, maybe even the majority of people. But by all? Not even close. And when it then comes to more abstract art, more current music, more experimental literature, and more modern architecture, there is going to be a lot less agreement on their beauty or even their intrinsic value.
Why? Because our sense of beauty only truly and immediately resonates with what God has created. Any human effort ends up needing a translation from its creator's expression of beauty to its recipient's sense of beauty. And "translation" might be an appropriate term here: Someone who is not well-versed in the language of 12-tone music might not enjoy a performance of music by Schönberg. To appreciate manga comics, you need a different skill set than for reading poetry by T.S. Eliot or watching a dance performance by the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Here beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, in a resonance of a sense of beauty (or art) between creator and recipient. When God speaks through his created beauty, we all understand because God simultaneously speaks all of our languages.
Why are we given this overflowing sense that seems so counter to our other more utilitarian senses? Most of our basic senses serve our protection and safety. People afflicted with leprosy are mutilated not by leprosy itself but by the loss of sense and the loss of protection it provides. In the same way, if we can't smell, see, hear, or taste, we are either helpless in those areas or need to compensate by other means.
Our innate sense of beauty is both a sustaining force and a force that wants to be sustained because it fills one of our innermost desires. And that really is my strongest motivation to preserve beauty around me. Yes, there is also environmental justice, which is a driver for many other activist Christians. I share that sense, but I can't say it compels me as much as the need to preserve this gift that has been given to us along with the accompanying understanding of its beauty.
Does this mean that I worship nature? Well, I shudder in awe at the many things I see nature do—how it's expressed in us and around us—and I know there's so much we don't even know about. But awe is not the same as worship. I, and other Christians, worship the one who is responsible both for nature and the sense of awe: God.
So how does this work, believing that this world as we know it will cease to exist? It's kind of like parents doing their utmost to teach their children and love them without reservation, even while knowing they might have very little influence on what will become of them in their adult lives. Still, we don't spare any effort to form and shape them according to our sense of responsibility for them when they're still with us. Even if we knew they'd later decide to live their life in a way we might disapprove of, we'd still give it our all, happily. That's how we're hard-wired, just like that sense of beauty and the desire to maintain and protect it.
This is true whether you're a Christian or not. The only difference is that Christians believe there is an expiration date of sorts, one that we're eagerly waiting for because then we'll be in God's presence. At the same time, we are made to take in this present beauty that is beyond ourselves, to celebrate it and make it last, and to have a deep and urgent sense of thankfulness for it.
