The Idolatry and Redemption of Beauty

"One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple." Psalm 27:4

Anything can become an idol. Even our false views of God, held within our minds all the while imagining we are worshiping the true God, can be a form of idolatry. In his incredible work The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer writes, "Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him...Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which polluted waters of idolattry flow; they are themselves idolatrous."

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about beauty, the beauty of nature, the beauty of poetry, etc. However, at times I have not had my mind and heart set, first and foremost, upon the Fount and Author of beauty, the Master Artist, without whom no other beauty would be seen or much less exist. It is only in God that I truly see and experience the invited depths of beauty.

I find that there is often a sentiment among artists that art must flow out of angst, disappointment and separation; therefore, the worse the suffering, the better the art. While God is a redeemer and big enough to welcome us in bringing Him our pain, I believe that the most beautiful and worthwhile art is produced out of connection with the One who IS Life, not out of dwelling (or even increasing) in my feelings of disgust and despair.

Don't get me wrong, I do not subscribe to the candy coated view that to speak or live as a follower of Christ means to stuff or hide my struggles, whether internal or external, and walk around with a goofy, pie in the sky grin as if everything is coming up roses. There is a certain connectedness and beauty that emanates from a true, authentic expression of pain; however, for one who knows the Creator, pain, angst, and brokenness are never the end of the story. Most often they are aspects of life one must face to taste of redemption, but they are not the end.

No one is immune to disappointment. All of us live in a world that, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, has been "subjected to futility" (8:20), but the power of the good news is that this futility has been and is being dealt with through the Son. God the Father, through His Son, has redeemed, and is restoring, all things to Himself and to their rightful order. (see Romans 8:18-25) From creation to chaos to re-creation.

It takes faith to see God's story working out in this world. In another of his letters, Paul encouraged a faith-full outlook when he wrote, "For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). So, just as it takes faith to see and experience the relationship the Father offers through the Son, it also takes faith to see the fullness of beauty, the One who IS Beauty. Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, God longs to come in and rewire and reconnect out natural eyes and our spirits so that we can see His goodness in creation and spiritually, in the depths of our being, taste that He is good.

With eyes finally wide open, strolling through the Father's gallery, we are freed to behold a beauty that leads, not to idolatry or confusion but, to worship. Out of this overflow of adoration, we are invited to gaze and enjoy AND to join in the work by dancing, singing, writing and shaping with Him and for Him.

The Pond

This pond takes time, and
this pond tells time, for those
standing on its mossy rim
willing to look into waters and remember
who and whose they've been

How can I look? when the memories
along your edges may hold so much pain
uncovered by voices clamoring
to claim who I am and am
not

Dare I crouch to glance and see
reflections stilling in your mirror
within which many, so many have fished
before I stood as a child, hoping
waiting, with my line in your murky waters

This pond gives time, now
even as I stoop to gaze
through nothing but memory and
haze, created by pain and separation
cradling a gift submerged within your murky waters

A Poem Out of Darkness

This morning, I was reading through some old poems I had written, back in 2005 when I was going through a period of wrestling, and came across the one below.

Darkness falls on my theological parade
The band strikes up with my love for a Father
I make sounds
I speak forth truths
Without Your love
they are empty
Without Your presence
they are frustration
I can be right
and not be known
In my rightness I
lost You
In my blindness I
found you

A Prayer of Confession: Loving Inordinately

Father, I confess that I have loved myself more than You at junctures too numerous to fathom. However, in loving myself before You and others, I have actually not loved myself at all. For it is only in loving and being loved by You first that I am loved and am then able to pour out true love on my neighbor.

"Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?" Jesus replied, "'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments." The Gospel of Matthew 22:36-40

Brian "Head" Welch & "Tales of Resurrection"

While reading through Brian "Head" Welch's book Save Me From Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story, I wrote the following poem. Welch is a former guitarist with the band Korn, and this book is his testimony of redemption.

I read a story of resurrection
A tale of life from death
Death disrobed like a towel
On a cold stone floor
After a warm bath
In the living water of the Son
Baptized, Cleansed, Raised to walk
As a new man who has been claimed

I live a story of resurrection
A journey of peaks and dales
Formed from the shedding of dried bones
Of death exchanged for breath
Breathed into my nostrils by the Wind of Life

Play is a Serious Issue

God has been re-teaching me how to play lately. And, by "play," I don't mean wasting time by avoiding responsibility or frittering my life away in selfish endeavors. As a matter of fact, wasting time can be very hard work. One of my favorite songwriters, Ben Harper, sings, "You can kill a lot of time if you really want to put your mind to it, or leave it all behind and never go through it." Much effort and mental energy can go into wasting time, avoiding both my inner and outer life.

The type of play I'm talking about is a mentality where I take myself lightly, embracing laughter, tears, pleasure, pain, beauty, or ugliness; whatever God, in His sovereignty, allows. G.K. Chesterton, the great British novelist, theologian and apologist once wrote, "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly." When I take myself too seriously, I tend toward self-protection and control. On the other hand, when I take myself lightly, I let down my guard and free myself to experience all of life. Life with God; life with others; the beauty of creation.

I call this "Growing Young." Growing old is easy, but deadly. All I have to do is float down the world's stream, winding up in a pool filled with the flotsam of negativity and the jetsam of cynicism. Growing young takes focus, and it is a focus that frees me to dive and explore. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, wrote, "We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." By focusing my gaze on Christ, I am supernaturally renewed, gaining heart and learning to seriously play.

The Adventurous Heart of a Son and a Father's Second Chance at Childhood

Last Saturday, my 7-year old son Patrick was playing outside in the sandbox in our back yard. Actually, he was sitting in the half-sand, half-water mixture, piling the sand around and all over himself. As I stood at the back door watching, I felt the nudge to bypass my planned nap and, instead, head outside and get in the sand with him. So, I went and put on an old t-shirt and a pair of raggedy shorts and walked to the wetted-sandbox.

As I approached, I asked, "Do you mind if I get in there with you?" My son quizzically looked up at me and responded, "In here with me? Yeah!" Sitting there together, as he inevitably started to pile and toss the sand on me, we began to laugh, and I said, "Buddy, we are going to do be doing a lot more together outside. Okay?" To that he smiled and replied, "We'll have some adventures. I want to go deep into the woods where bears are, take some spears, kill one and look into its mouth." I said, "Ok."

Over the years, I have grown to take myself too seriously at times, often burying my humor and playfulness under a blanket of religious responsibility and "dignity." By learning to simply be present and pursue my son's heart, I have a shot at growing young.

Oh yeah, back to the hunt. The preparations have begun. We've decided that, prior to actually facing the bear, we will spend some time hiking and honing our skills with spears (which has since turned to bows and arrows).