Beauty

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty �" that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” penned the famed John Keats in his poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” It seems few can agree on the topic: Robert Bridges wrote how these lines redeemed an otherwise mediocre poem, while T.S. Eliot saw the lines a blemish on something otherwise beautiful. I tend to agree with the latter as the lines seem a bit contrived to me. Whatever the case may be, however, the lines set one to thinking: what is beauty, and how is it related to truth?

What things are beautiful? Beautiful things include the scent of a delicate flower, the sound of a wind chime in the breeze, someone carrying groceries for a frail, elderly woman, peace in a nation that has been torn asunder by civil war, the breath of air you find when you finally surface after thinking you might drown, a marriage that survives the tumult of life into its fifth or sixth decade, and the face of the Prince of Glory, my salvation.

What things are true? 1 + 1 = 2. The sky looks to be blue on certain days. The earth revolves around the sun to create the seasons and revolves on its axis to create days and nights. Cats and dogs are mammals, and ants are insects. We get hungry because our bodies require energy to function. Those who call themselves homosexual feel attraction to those of the same gender, whether it’s by choice or by biological condition. Affairs can destroy marriages, and subversion to the government, whether internal or external, can destroy a nation and violently end the lives of its occupants. The world is in a constant state of chaos on some small or larger scale, and the seeing the face of the Prince of Glory is salvation.

Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. I find that truth and beauty are much like two hikers ascending the heights of a mountain from two different angles: they meet at the summit. Truth and beauty are, at their pinnacle, the same: the face of the Savior. In some ways beauty and truth exclude each other: sometimes the beauty of a nation at peace is not a truth but rather a scenario that invites and mocks a country ravaged by war. Sometimes our truths are not beautiful: a marriage torn apart by abuse and violence, or a nation torn to pieces and its citizens fleeing in the wake of loved ones slaughtered.

Truth and beauty find themselves joined in one Name, and in a rather unbeautiful, untruthful reality turned salvation: the Prince of Glory died a gory death on the cross, a death grotesque and ugly beyond words, in an act that was the ultimate untruth proclaimed by man that his God, the God of life, whom he did not recognize, deserved death. But this darkness broke to light, Hallelu Yah. The Prince of Glory rose in splendor and overturned the horrid, burning untruth that had been His death: He rose to life, evermore, and in His face we find truth and beauty divine. We find salvation.

Perhaps I agree with Keats, in a way: Beauty is truth and truth beauty, in their purest form. The countenance of our Beautiful Truth, Jesus: “that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”