God Is Beautiful
For many years (a phrase which seems to introduce almost everything I say or write these days), I have thought about and preached on the subject of the beauty of God. I have never heard anyone teach on the subject, but I did through the decades come across two written sermons on the topic, “The Beauty of the Lord” by J. D. Jones and “Are There Shortcuts to the Beauty of Holiness?” (the short answer is “No!”) by A. W. Tozer. More recently, I read a review of a scholarly article about the American preacher Jonathan Edwards (of “sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” fame) that mentioned in passing that the beauty of God was one of the great themes in his preaching. I was thus encouraged that I have not headed off on an unprofitable tangent. In simple terms, beauty is that which attracts, causes a favorable interest, and creates an affinity. Such real, eternal beauty is found in our God. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
God’s beauty is intense and interactive. As Jesus said in John 6:44, “No man can come to Me, except the Father Which hath sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Recently, we have been considering how God employs logic to reach out to us and attract us to Himself. I could spend many more days discussing the logic that directs us to God’s existence, but I will limit myself to just two more days. The key point regarding our faith is that it is fact-based; logic uses these facts to provide a compelling case for Christianity. Much of the opposition to our faith falls far away from facts to engage in speculation. You have probably heard the silly question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” It is silly because at least two chickens (male and female) or at least two eggs (presumably fertilized – and how did they get that way?!) would be necessary for life to be perpetrated. It is worse than silly because it presents a false binary choice, for a third choice – God came first – is not only possible but supported by a reasonable interpretation of available and observable data. Those who reject God often use the mantra “Time and chance! Time and chance!” to try to explain the existence of life. A common statement, first attributed to the biologist Thomas Huxley, is that monkeys typing randomly over a long enough time period not only could but would produce the complete works of Shakespeare. This speculative idea was the premise for an experiment at Plymouth University in England; not surprisingly, the monkeys attacked the machinery and failed to type even one word. Of course, that experiment completely misses the crucial point. Where did the monkeys come from? Where did the intelligently-designed machinery originate? Who made the room in which all of this was housed? Who fed the monkeys? Where did the food hail from? A host of other such questions arise; it would be fair to state that Huxley’s speculative scenario is irreducibly complex. I am reminded of something that the physicist Wolfgang Pauli once wrote in assessing a colleague’s speculation disguised as scholarship: “This isn’t right; it isn’t even wrong.” (I wish that I had written that!)
As Christians, we must focus on facts. In John 17:17, Jesus said, “Sanctify them [all disciples] through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.” Here, Jesus is making an absolute claim regarding the Bible: it is absolutely true. Any such claim must be carefully assessed. Is it speculation, or is it fact? A rigorous examination of our belief in God reveals that it is evidentiary: we have every good reason to believe, and it is the beauty of God that draws us to this convincing evidence.