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Beauty, Pleasure
All beauty begins with pleasure. Though it was beauty that I found in the tones of poetry on those early November mornings of my childhood, the avenue through which I encountered it was pleasure. At five or six years old, listening to that poem with a full stomach and looking forward to a day of playing in the woods with my cousins and brothers, I had no idea what beauty meant; but pleasure I understood, and drank it in. It seems there is an inherent relationship between beauty and pleasure, indeed, Webster (1913 edition) defines beauty as "an assemblage or graces or properties pleasing to the eye, the ear, the intellect, the aesthetic faculty, or the moral sense." That which brings us pleasure is beautiful.
The difficulty is that there is much in this world that seems pleasurable, but we know is not beautiful. The alcoholic and the adulterer and the rich young ruler are all pursuing their own brands of delight; but they are ugly, and lead only to death. They are perversions of pleasure, and so they are perversions of beauty. The trick, it seems, is finding an objective standard for pleasure and beauty beyond our own cravings. The ancients argued that that which is beautiful must also be true and good; in this way they established boundaries for deep pleasure, for drink and sex and wealth are all beautiful things when they are enjoyed in true and good ways. This is true, but it is not preached on much. For much of my life, I believed that following Christ meant that I had to give up pleasure--it made me hate God, for I saw him as my enemy, the One who threatened me with death and sought to keep me from finding the desires of my heart. I longed for a pleasure-filled life I believed I could never have, and I became bitter and angry because of it.
But God has mercy on whom He will have mercy. For I have learned that it is not pleasure He hates, but the perversion of pleasure. And when I cloak myself in his righteousness and submit to his definitions of truth and goodness, I have not less pleasure in drink and sex and wealth, but rather more. I envy the pagan no more; for my delight is far deeper than his.
What then is beautiful? It is what gives those who fear God pleasure. It is the fresh apples I peeled and sliced, the ones my wife rolled in cinnamon and ginger and sugar before piling them into in the pie she made with her hands and we shared with friends. It is my wife herself. It is the moment the sledgehammer hangs in the air before pounding into the wedge to split the logs we'll soon burn in our fire. It's Tristan, who is my charge for an hour every Sabbath, who is four and always walks on his tip-toes, who thinks grass is "mighty tasty" and tells me I have freckles when I'm trying to make him be quiet and listen to the teacher. It's grown men flailing at a slow, floating knuckleball, and Aaron Boone leaping for joy down the third-base line, and onto home plate when he finally hit it hard. Of course, it is also realities like absolute sovereignty of God, His consuming passion for His glory, and His particular and relentless love in my life. But while there is much pleasure to be found in those deep theological truths, that pleasure is inseparable from delight in the concrete and physical reality of our lives. For the theme of the gospel is not to turn our backs on the pleasures of this life; it is to truly enjoy them.
Joshua Anderson
October 2003
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