The Bible is beautiful and Jesus most of all
I'll admit at the outset that this blog post is not going to be important to everyone. To this exhilarating disclaimer I have to add that it is desperately important to other people. While all of the rational arguments which may be presented that Jesus is real and the Bible is true may be interesting and even somewhat persuasive, to some of us more artistic types the really important question is not so much, “Is believing in the Bible and Jesus reasonable?” as “Is the Bible beautiful?”
I must admit that, in my opinion, we artistic types have a good point. I acknowledge that just because something is well-crafted and lovely doesn’t make it factually true. One of the nicest, most beautiful scenes in the movie Darkest Hour takes place when Prime Minister Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, rides the subway in London with ordinary folk. Did that scene ever actually happen? As lovely as the scene is, and as pivotal as it is to the movie, I regret to say, it probably didn’t actually happen. Still, the scene drives home to the viewer the beauty of ordinary folk and their commitment to defend their island.
On the other hand, factual information can be conveyed in a way that, if it’s not beautiful, lacks a certain sense of completion and integrity. I vividly remember on Christmas Eve, 1968 watching the telecast from Apollo 8. When the camera was turned onto the earth, I gasped. There was our planet, hanging in isolated splendor in all its fragility amidst the harshness of outer space, housing as it did all of us humans (except the three astronauts). Even in black and white, the image was unspeakably, transcendently beautiful. No amount of factual information about our planet could approach the effect that the lovely image had on me. It was a life-changing moment, especially as I heard the astronauts read selections from the lovely creation hymn at the beginning of the book of Genesis in the Bible.
Those few moments in 1968 did more to influence me on the beauty, importance, and worth of our planet than almost anything I've ever read or experienced. It was a most convincing aesthetic argument for the truth of a viewpoint that esteems planet Earth. The beauty of the Bible and Jesus, which I'll explore in future posts, is equally persuasive.
This blog article is an excerpt from my book: Five Languages of Evidence: How to Speak about Reasons for Christianity in a Post-truth World. Not yet published; available upon request.
Next post: Jesus solves the philosophical problem of morality