In Defense of Magic

Most of you know that I'm a bit of a fantasy nerd. I have an entire bookshelf dedicated to Lewis and Tolkien. One of the reasons I'm so fond of fantasy is that I believe it to be the most inherently spiritual genre. It deals with the supernatural almost by definition. This is both it's biggest strength and weakness. When done correctly it can powerfully portray biblical truths in a way that no lecture could. The imagination helps to link the mind and the heart. As I've written about before, I believe that good Christian fantasy is essentially theology in 3D. It's no coincidence that the founders of the genre (Bunyan, MacDonald, Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, ect.) were all Christians. However, when it's done wrong, the genre can be very pagan and almost satanic.

For this reason, many Christians have rejected the genre and "magic" altogether. Now, there's certainly a concern that needs to be raised about the misuse of magic. J.R.R. Tolkien himself disapproved of his friend Charles William's use of occult imagery. However, I feel that it's an overreaction to dismiss all stories that deal with the supernatural. I'm not trying to molest anyone conscience. If your conscience doesn't all you to read about Gandalf the White than don't read about Gandalf the White. However, I would like to explain why my conscience not only allows me to read about "magic" but rejoices in it.

Or rather, I'm going to allow a couple of men a lot smarter than I explain it. The following is a couple of videos done by theologian Doug Wilson and his son, novelist Nate Wilson. The first one lays the ground work and talks about (among other things) the difference between "Gandalf wizards" and "Harry Potter wizards". The second one is a follow up video that answers some objections raised to the first interview.

I found them well worth my time and I hope you too enjoy them.

The Atheist C.S. Lewis: Filth and Strain

I recently came across a collection of poems entitled Spirits in Bondage. Though written under the pen name of Clive Hamilton, these are the first published works of C.S. Lewis. However, I was struck by how un-Lewisian they were. This is because the poems were written directly after the First World War, an era that deeply scarred the young Lewis and sealed his turning from the Christainity of his youth to the militant atheism of his middle years.

The later C.S. Lewis would be characterized by joy and wit. Even a causual reading of his works will reveal to the reader that the author was a happy man. However, the godless Lewis was anything but happy. I desire to share one of these poems with you in order to illustrate the hopelessness of a world without God. Reading this poem made me very greatful for the God who is. It caused me to realize that He alone is my hope and without Him the world is a cruel place. Even as an atheist Lewis understood this (at least in part). Though the first lines of the peom expressly deny the existence of anything outside of the physical universe, the poem is interestingly titled "Satan Speaks". In other words, if there is no God than all that's left is Satan (i.e. Evil and Cruelty).

"Satan Speaks:

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,
I am the law: ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,
I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle's filth and strain,
I am the widow's empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,
I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason
To thwart your fantasy's new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,
I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun
And I will catch him ere day be done."

All is vanity of vanities. All is Satan. Unless God is real. Thus the later Lewis would discover that in the worship of God joy could be found and completed: "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation."

Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

During the recent TeenPact Iowa event, someone posed a question to me that I haven't been able to get out of my mind. It's continually come up in conversation and has taken on new relevancy with the recent death of painter Thomas Kinkade. The question is this: is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Another way of asking it is this: is art and beauty objective or subjective. In a previous post ("Butterflies and Growingdown") I talked about the artistry of God. God is the great Artist who painted the cosmos and the grasshoppers and you with His voice. But He's more than that. He's the Source of all other art. The only reason you are artistic is because you're created in the Image of an artistic God.

All artists make things based on their personality. Likewise, God made things springing from His own divine character. Is that character beautiful or ugly? Naturally, He's beautiful. Everything about Him is objectively beautiful. More than that He is the Standard and the Sourse of beauty. The Beauty that is God can't be in the eye of the beholder for if that were the case He could not be soveriegn. Were that Divine Beauty subjective than God would be the mercy of His creature's personal tastes.

Thankfully, such is not the case. God is Beautiful. The Trinity is Beautiful. The Father is Beautiful. The Son is Beautiful. The Spirit is Beautiful. Likewise, all His attributes are objectively Beautiful. Love, mercy, justice, grace, compassion, holiness, righteousness are all objectively Beautiful because they spring from Beauty Himself. Even if every creature on the planet called those things ugly they would still be beautiful.

Furthermore, everything that reflects God and His attributes are also beautiful. Thus, everything that reflect God and His attributes are objectively beautiful. Just like love and justice, if everything single person in existence came together and decided sunsets were ugly it wouldn't matter. They'd still be beautiful. Thus, beauty is not the eye of a beholder but in the eye of the Beholder, the Lord. Everything He declares to be beautiful is objectively beautiful and everything He declares to be ugly is objectively ugly.

Now, I can see at least two possible questions that may arise from this assertion. One, how does this work in a fallen world? Two, what about personal tastes?

Firstly, how does this work in a fallen world? For example, are cockroaches beautiful? Most people would say no. But they were created by an objectively beautiful God weren't they? Well, here's the problem, sin has corrupted God's beautiful world. Therefore, we find ourselves in a mixed up world where beauty and ugliness often appear on the same canvass. However, this need not lead us to despair.

Since God is the standard of beauty, ugliness is anything opposed to Him. A similar definition could be used to describe sin. Sin is the Standard and Source of Ugliness, just as God is the Standard and Source of Beauty. However, God, though not the author of sin or ugliness, is such a good Artist that He can use sin to make Goodness more good and ugliness to make Beauty more beautiful. Every artist (whether your art is painting, music, writing, mechanics, drawing, landscaping, ect.) needs to apply a good dose of Romans 8:28.

Here's an example: I would call a painting that featured only black and gray splotches to be ugly. However, I would describe a painting that uses black and gray to draw attention to beautiful shapes and colors to be beautiful. Ugly things are only beautiful in as much as they draw our attention to true beauty. Thus, the "blacks and grays" of this world can be beautiful in their own way in that they point us to God. We'd better all be very thankful for this truth for we are ugly splotches of black and gray that are only beautiful in as much as we draw attention to our Beautiful God.

Second question: where do personal tastes come in? Well, let me first say that some personal tastes are just warped. There's a lot of people calling sunsets ugly and garbage dumps beautiful and they're simple wrong. Period. End of statement. However, within what God has defined as objective beauty, I do believe that there's room for personal tastes. The objectiveness of beauty doesn't limit creativity and personal artistry. It enables it.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Melkor, the Lucifer figure, attempts to create creatures that are superior to God's creation and free of His influence. However, he finds that the farther away he gets from God's standard the less he's able to create. Eventually he can't create at all but can only corrupt that which is already made; turning Elves into orcs and Ents into trolls. Standards don't limit creativity but empower it.

Nor is objective beauty a monist one-size-fits-all mold. That would be ugly. Remember God is the Standard of Beauty and God is triune. In other words, within the Beauty that is God there's diversity. Thus, within the objective standard of beauty there can also be diversity as long as it remains true to the Source.

In closing, I would just like to point out that we all desire beauty. That pursuit may take different forms, but it's the same basic human desire in every case. That pursuit may express itself through art and creativity. However, the highest fulfillment of that desire is a relationship with Beauty's Source. Take some time today to praise God that through Jesus Christ you can stare into the eyes of Beauty Himself.

Butterflies and Growingdown

When did the extraordinary become so ordinary?

I distinctly remember the day when my maturing mind had reached a point where the simple things no longer captivated my attention. I was about ten when one of my siblings came running in from outside, panting and exclaiming over the sighting of a butterfly. Hurriedly, so as not to miss of second of beholding that incarnate wonder called butterfly, my siblings raced outside to take in the six-legged spectacle. And I was left standing in the kitchen wondering what the big deal was.

In five months, I'll be leaving the teenage years forever. I've learned a lot since the day the butterfly ceased to impress me. I've graduated from high school. I'm pursuing higher education. My room is now host to a library that seems to breed like a rabbit. And yet, I feel like the whole thing has been nothing more than a journey to take me back to the place where I marvel at butterflies again. It's as if I'm not growing up so much as I'm growing down.

All my studies and books and projects have led me to a conclusion that seemed self-evident at age six. There's no such thing as "ordinary". All things are beautiful and awe-inspiring because every single thing that exists was created for a cosmic purpose.

C.S. Lewis stated: "Art has no survival value but gives survival value." Human beings are the only creatures who make things simply for the pleasure of making them. The bird makes a nest to keep warm. The ape catches ants with a stick because he's hungry. But human beings building gorgeous cathedrals and painting beautiful paintings and create stirring songs for no other reason than that we get pleasure from them. Where did this irrational artisticness come from?

Speaking of Christ, Paul said that not only were all things created by Him but they were created for Him (Colossians 1:16). Moreover, the Twenty-four Elders in Revelation proclaimed that all things were created for His pleasure (Revelation 4:11). Take a look around you some time. Look at the blades of grass, the grains of sand, the creeping insects, the flying birds, the floating particles of dust. Look at the details, the glamorous markings of a meticulous Artist. All these things were created for the pleasure of Jesus.

Notice His care for the seemingly unimportant things. No one notes nor cares when you smash a bee or kick the sand. But look at the beauty the Artist put into even these insignificant things. These ordinary things. What grand purpose do they have if not to give the Artist pleasure?

Look at every floating speck of dust. To get that tiny speck there are innumerable combinations of molecules which are made up atoms which are made of elections and neutrons and smaller and smaller we go. Scientists keep finding smaller and smaller particles. Trillions of relationships unseen by humans but delightful to God.

Existence itself is just an immeasurable series of distinct persons forming a single substance which than come together to form another single substance. A billion shadows of the Triune Jehovah. Were it not for the existence of an artistic God the universe would be a scary place.

You and I are just snowflakes in a blizzard, unnoticeable amidst a billion other snowflakes. We could melt at any moment and no one would notice the difference. But each snowflake is a unique display of unreplicable beauty that causes the observant heart to soar and fills its Creator with delight.

At the end of the day, getting to be a part of God's blizzard makes being a melting snowflake worth it. We get to be a drop of paint on His canvass; a letter in His novel; a note in His symphony.

Every time we gaze in wonder at what He's made, we are sharing in the pleasures of God. We get to gaze in wonder at the glories of His masterpiece. Like delighted children, we can marvel at the simplest things because they were created for the pleasure of an awesome God. Life is worth it all just to be a part of His beautiful artistry.

When did the ordinary become so extraordinary?

"I Will Wait For You"

Someone showed me this a few days ago. And while I'm not really into this style of poetry, I'm definitely into the message. It expresses a lot of things that I've been thinking about lately, but from a different angle - a woman's angle.

This is a result of a generation of boys who don't want to grow up. For the guy's point of view, the first part of the poem is what not to be. But her beautiful description of "you" is an incredible challenge of what we are to be.



I hope that this is an encouragement to you.