What beauty tells us about glorifying God

These concepts connect for me:

Irenaeus said "the glory of God is man fully alive."

In Captivating the Eldredges say we can come to know God through beauty and a great example is nature.

Ann Voskamp connects to God through thankfulness ,and beauty is one thing which makes her thankful.

The most important thing is God. As C.S. Lewis pointed out "it is not the feeling of God or the idea of God we seek, but God himself."

As Voskamp knew, seeking the perfect photo of the beautiful moon is not the end but the means to the true end, knowing God. I know how easy it is to settle for the created instead of worshiping the actual Creator. Lewis showed how that goes in The Pilgrim's Regress and Solomon aptly called it "chasing the wind."

These concepts really gelled for me when I read an analysis of Irenaeus' words, just to make sure Eldredge was using it right. "Thus the life of the Christian, in faith as in future vision, is essentially knowing and being known." (www.ewtn.com/library/theology/irenaeus.htm) that sounds like exactly the point John Eldredge was trying to make. But in addition to beauty which he names as an avenue to God, there are others.

It's interesting to pair this with the statement that we are created to glorify God. How do we glorify Him? By being fully alive, which is much more than the YOLO attitude. Glorifying God is knowing Him and letting Him, getting Him to know us. We glorify Him by developing our two-way relationship. Obviously, and this resonates with me, we can do that by seeking the glorious things He has created. Also, we get to know Him through His word, through prayer and through service.

I think that's the missing ingredient from Wellsboro Bible Church's mission statement. Yes, we live to glorify Him through what we do with His word, how we care for His body and serving Him. But by glorify we do not mean "make Him look good." We mean making that relationship shine between us. The relationship is not the means to the end. It is the end. And we seek that end for all people. Amen.

The issue isn't whether Peter Sam deserves to be famous. The issue is how you define "rights."

In response to homophobic rants against football player Peter Sam and his defenders, a friend of mine said he hopes that someday everyone will have the same rights but for now it's good that we celebrate homosexuals who come out because they don't have the same rights we all enjoy.

I agree but the devil's in the details. A right to free speech is well defended for everyone. A right to marry and have it recognized by the state is not, but not everyone agrees that's a right. I still don't get why even bigots complain when gay people want to pay taxes, whether they file jointly or not.

The right to have a job regardless of your minority - religion or sexual identity - is supposed to be guarded, but it's not for bigots or gay people employed by bigots. That's a sticky wicket.

It'd be nice if the Founding Fathers were more clear. Jefferson's pen guaranteed us all a right to "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and that "all men are created equal." Whether he intended it or not, those words were later expanded to include blacks and women, despite protests by conservatives in the 19th century.

Will today's conservatives look as silly in 150 years as Civil War conservatives look today, their intolerance so out of fashion? I don't know.

Here's a devil's advocate argument. If the right to marry is a fundamental right, then it ought to apply to homosexuals. It was hard for interracial couples to get married 150 or even 50 years ago, but we think that's horrid now. Or is that fundamental right limited to marrying per God's standard for sexual behavior? Weren't all men (people) created equal? Not just all Christians, for if we said so we would be promoting the "some are more equal than others" argument from Lincoln's era.

And if the right to marry is NOT a fundamental right, then perhaps we heterosexual couples have no right to expect the state to recognize it. Perhaps we have no right to demand or expect we be recognized as couples anymore on our taxes or wills or custody papers. The frightening conclusion is that if we limit the definition of marriage to the Christian definition, then we are letting one religion define the law of the land and breaching the wall between church and state without saying so. I think you'd call that a faulty appeal to tradition.