The Beauty of Christ

 

In recent days, the institution where I live has come off COVID restrictions and I have been able to get outside early in the morning, do some walking and praying, and watch the sun rise. It has been a delight to see God paint the sky in pastel hues every morning.

I have always appreciated the majesty of the occasional sunrise or sunset, but as I have been working recovery and been clean from porn and masturbation, I appreciate these things more deeply. The colors of the world have a more vivid hue since my heart and mind are uncluttered from lust and porn. We live in a beautiful world, and it is a blessing being able to see that beauty more clearly.

We are wired with a longing for beauty, this is one of the gifts God created us with. God has a taste for beauty; after all, he is the one who made the beauty of the mountains and oceans. He crafted the leopard and the eagle in flight, formed the planets and the galaxies. Every marvel in this universe is his masterpiece. Since we are made in his image we have a similar desire for beauty, and the capacity to create beautiful things.

As with all good things from God, Satan perverts and distorts this longing for beauty. One of the most effective and dangerous ways he has done this is in the area of pornography.

As I have been working my recovery from porn addiction, I have realized that one of the reasons (among many) that I was obsessively looking at images and videos was an attempt to satisfy my longing for beauty. As a teenager I would rationalize looking at porn this way, "God made women beautiful, I am just appreciating that beauty!"

It is certainly true that women are the fairer sex, and there is nothing wrong, it can even be a good thing, to appreciate their beauty. But the reality is that while porn claims to celebrate the beauty of the human form, what is really happening is that it is bastardizing and perverting that beauty. Porn takes the goodness, wonder of the human body, and twists it into something evil and profane. It exploits beauty, ravages it, and turns it into a commodity to satisfy the unclean cravings of men and women.

One of the problems with porn, and also with much of the media that we see, is that they make beauty into an idol to be worshipped on its own merits. But beauty was never meant to be an end in and of itself, but a means, a conduit, by which we adore a person, most importantly, God. We were not meant to admire the beauty of a man or woman independent of that person, that is, separated from their personality, heart, and mind.  If we are only appreciating beauty at a surface or physical level this is objectification, and quickly leads us into lust. Beauty was meant to draw us to the person, to draw us into connection and relationship. The face and figure appeal to us, so that we might get to know them and learn to appreciate who they are as a person.

The beauty of creation, as well, is a marvelous and wonderful thing, and it is all too easy to be carried away with it. The majestic glory of the velvet sky bedazzled with stars, the awe-inspiring wonder of a waterfall, the shimmering colors of the rainbow are all amazing, and it is tempting to appreciate them as ends in and of themselves. But these created things were meant to be signs that bring our attention and adoration to our great Creator God. Beauty is God's invitation to worship. When we are dumbfounded, standing at the rim of a canyon, and we cannot help but say, "Wow!" we need to be careful that we turn that awe into praise for our Creator and not let it fall on the deaf ears of the canyon.

Beauty was meant to be like a trail of crumbs, leading us to God. If we could behold every beautiful person, enjoy every glorious sunrise, and take in all the beauty that this world can offer, we would still find our thirst for beauty unquenched. We would find that our longing remained. Our desire for beauty cannot be fully satisfied by anything in this world because our hearts were not made for this world. It is only in God and his Son, Jesus Christ, that we find the truest form of beauty that can satisfy the deepest hungering of our souls. The beauty around us is only a shadow, a hint of God's beauty. It is like the wafting of freshly baked bread on the wind, God himself is the bread.

When I was indulging in porn, I was trying to satisfy my thirst for beauty with things that only hollowed me out more.

As I have been working recovery, I have learned to satisfy my desire for beauty in good and healthy ways, to turn away from the false beauty of lust and seek the true beauty that is Christ Jesus.

This has taken a great deal of effort and even more time. For years I had trained my heart and mind, my sensibilities, and tastes to be tuned to the pornographic, and now I had to learn to be satisfied with the more prosaic and mundane. Though that is not exactly right. The beauty of Christ is far from mundane, he is infinitely more glorious than any semblance of beauty porn offered. It was as if I was blinded by porn, and then I had to learn to see things more clearly. I was like Gollum, living in a cavern of lust, and it has taken time for my eyes to adjust to radiance of the sun.

There are many places in Scripture when men have come face to face with God and had a peculiar experience of the divine. In those moments they were overcome with the majesty and the glory of God. As we read of their experiences, and the poetic imagery they often employed, we can sense the stretch, the reach, as they try to find the words to capture their experience. One of the most profound of these passages is what we call The Mount of Transfiguration, we find this in Matthew 17:1-8,

"1. And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart,

2. And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

3. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.

4. Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.

5. While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

6. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid.

7. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid.

8. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only."

Notice that when the disciples witnessed the unveiled radiance of Christ's beauty, they were immediately struck and fell to their faces in worship. Jesus wants us to see his beauty in a similar fashion, but we never will so long as we are charmed by the porn, the lust, and the empty entertainments of this world. There is nothing and no one so majestic and glorious as Christ, to know him is to have our hunger for beauty finally and fully satisfied.