Beauty

It has been eleven days since a tragic automobile accident took the lives of four Taylor University students and one staff member. My heart ached as I thought of the finality of death. I struggled with how to grieve nearly as much as I struggled with why I was grieving. I found it ironic that I spent the week thinking of beauty. I asked questions about the nature of beauty and how we experience it. A week later I experienced beauty in a way that I never thought of and it moved me to tears. In Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, Wordsworth talks of a beauty that lies too deep for tears, of which I have only recently come to understand.

As I began to recall the thoughts of beauty that rushed through my head just weeks ago, I remember thinking that children could be the only ones that truly experience beauty. Children are able to find awe and beauty in things that we see as purely ordinary. When a child, I did not see beauty and think it to be beauty; rather, it manifested itself as a feeling. That feeling that allowed me to see a perfect world. I was seeing a world which I perceived to be untainted by sin. I saw a world in which the only existence was the one that I allowed. “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream/ The earth, and every common sight,/ To me did seem, Apparelled in celestial light/…/The things which I have seen I now can see no more.”(1-4,9)

I recently made a list of the ten things that I thought were the most beautiful. A rule that I had was that I could not list abstract ideas. I found the majority of these things turned out to be adult experiences. I wondered why I thought beauty was best held by children yet the only things that I thought truly beautiful were reasoned experiences. I hoped I had not lost the simplicity in life. I still wanted the steam that I crossed as a boy to be just as amazing as watching two grown men cry in an embrace. There is still something different however. What once was invigorating and intoxicating has come to resemble to me something that is missing. Wordsworth nailed this when he said, “But there’s a Tree, of many, one,/ A single Field which I have looked upon,/ Both of them speak of something that is gone:/ Whither is fled the visionary gleam?/ Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”(51-53, 56-57) These words rang in my heart as I searched to find what had changed as I have grown.

Wordsworth believes that infants still possess a memory of heaven and use it as their setting in which they experience life. Although I disagree with this idea, I cannot divorce its concept. Children possess absolutely nothing when they come into this world. Children receive their values and ideology from the environment in which they live. Wordsworth offer the words “shades of the prison-house begin to close/ upon the growing Boy” to describe what happens as a child begins to experience the world around him. I love the description of the child’s imitations of adult life. It captures the heart of what is lost. As the child begins to take on these roles, even if it is only imitations, he is taking on a certain responsibility. Responsibility is the very thing that squelches the “glory and the dream.”

A child’s process of understanding the world around him begins at this point. The child has seen beauty but has not understood it to be so until he begins this process. As humans we tend to see the prison shades as an injustice to this small child. Looking at children, adults see what they once were and have since been striving to achieve once more. They see a human being that is divorced from the value effects of sin. A child sees a world that is inherently good because what has shaped his life up to this point has been good. An adult sees the world from the other side of the fence where the grass has been over taken by weeds. Instinctively, our first reaction is to desire what we do not possess, a freedom from the thought that we are existing in a state that was not meant to be. We are strangers in what was meant to be our own home. We see a child invigorated by a stream, or thunderstorm, or perhaps one even laughing at a flower and long to be able to experience the same thing. Our problem is not that we no longer possess the ability to be able to experience that beauty, but rather that we are unable to experience what is not bound by time.

As adults what we experience as beauty is often what is able to strike at the very core of our being. Because of sin and us existing in the state of a stranger, we long for what feels most natural. We feel this most when we are humbled, and when our perception of ourselves in the world is in correct proportion with the created order. Beauty is experienced when the witness becomes the least important part of the experience.

This past week as I grieved and my heart still ached beauty has been the last thing that has been on my mind. However, as I look back I am amazed. I have often thought that because we suffer it makes some of the sweet things in life so much sweeter. The deaths of those Taylor students allowed me to draw closer to God. The grieving has forced me to take a much closer look at the world around me. When we are suffering Wordsworth says that there are “soothing thoughts that spring/ Out of human suffering ;”( 183-184). I never understood that line until I experienced the suffering of people and myself this past week. It is the suffering that allows us to see what life was truly supposed to be. The thoughts that spring from suffering are those of the world as they should be. Suffering has come into this world because of sin. Though in a post fall world, suffering is natural, we understand that it is not the ideal. This past week I was forced to look for that ideal, and what I found was simply God. Suffering causes us to lose our ideal innocence of childhood which we also see as a loss of the ability to experience pure, untainted beauty. This suffering, however, when it forces us to look toward God also forces us to try and look at the world through His eyes. Doing this allows us not to see a flower as simply pretty but allows us to see how it reflects the beauty of God. These are the “soothing thoughts that spring/ Out of human suffering;/ In the faith that looks through death,/ In years that bring forth the philosophic mind.” ( 183-186) Yet there is more that we can experience as a result of this suffering.

Last week was our conference track meet. At Taylor this meet is the pinnacle of the track season. After the recent deaths, I was struggling to find enough motivation to run to the best of my ability. I was asked if I was ready to run Friday night and my reply was, “I will get it done.” I went out on the track and ran as fast as I possibly could, before I had left the track surface tears were welling up in my eyes. I then proceeded to weep for almost 20 minutes, completely overtaken by emotion. The following day, at the conclusion of the meet, the conference teams gathered around us in the infield, and in the rain laid their hands upon us and prayed for us. That single act is probably one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. I was only able to experience that because of the suffering that had already happened. The thing that made that so beautiful was the fact that each person there was going against the grain of their fallen nature, and ministering the love of Christ.

When I look at children I see them looking at ordinary things “appareled in celestial light”.(4) I sometimes am jealous that it is that easy for them to see and experience the feelings that come with beauty. Now, I can look back to this past week and realize that although it may not be as “natural”(effortless) for me to experience this ordinary beauty, when I manage, it is on a deeper level. Beauty, as I understand it, has changed from my thoughts of materialistic beauty, to more of an aesthetic view in which beauty allows me to experience God. Through the suffering of the last week the “shades of the prison-house”(67) have been pulled back which has allowed me to truly come to beauty, and allowed me to once again see ordinary things adorned in “celestial light”. Only through my recent suffering have I come to understand these words of Wordsworth with which I close.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Beautiful Ten

The Beautiful Ten

Recently Father Brown tagged me and asked that I make a list of what I perceive to be the ten most beautiful things. After much deliberation I have decided upon the below. If you need more background information please check out Father Brown’s post Beautiful Ten. He will gladly explain all there within.

As is stated in the rules to make this an official post I must post the rules. So here they are:

1.You cannot list abstract ideas (i.e. love, truth, etc.).
2. You cannot list people (i.e. Tom Cruise).
3. You must have experienced each item on your list. If you’ve never seen Paris in the spring, then you can’t list it.
4. No commentary is allowed. Avoid the urge to explain why you think such-and-such-a-thing is beautiful.
5. If you post a list, you must invite at least one other blogger to come up with his/her own list. (There is no limit on how many people you invite to join you.)
6. When you post your own list to your own blog, you must include these rules.

And so I would like to tag a man by the name of revdrron and another man who I think has passed away HDW.

And now with no further adieu I present to you Brother Bardia’s Beautiful Ten.

The Beautiful Ten

10. A ten mile run in which I push myself to exhaustion and then keep going.

9. Canoeing down the Mississinewa River on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

8. William Wordsworth’s Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

7. A distant thunderstorm on a cool summer night as the sun is setting.

6. The embrace of two friends as the emotion becomes too much and they are moved to tears.

5. Redigar Chapel filled to capacity with Taylor students singing Come Thou Fount.

4. Watching a grown man moved to tears as he watches his little boy walk away into life.

3. A man and a wife in their mid fifties, when you can see that they are more in love now then when they were married.

2. Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

1. Holding a new born baby in your arms and looking into its eyes minutes after birth.

A Gospel Response

The other day as I drove my vehicle down the road listening to the radio, I was horrified as I listened to the news casts. It concerned a young couple that had filed a “wrongful birth” lawsuit. A “wrongful birth” lawsuit attempts to accuse obstetricians of malpractice if they fail to make a note of any birth defect that could have been identified through ultrasounds before the third trimester, giving the parents the option for abortion. This repulsed me morally, humanitarianly (concern for he well being of humans), and in how many Christians respond to this. I will deal with each of these separately and then conclude by describing how, as Christians, we should deal with this issue.

Let us first examine some of the logistics of “wrongful birth” lawsuits. These lawsuits stem from parents feeling that somehow they have been denied a right and thus feel that they should receive some form of compensation. Many of these lawsuits take place years after the birth when the defects begin to show themselves. This puts many doctors in difficult positions as it would be very difficult to produce evidence 10 years after the fact that would show beyond a reasonable doubt their innocence. Subsequently, many of these lawsuits are made upon evidence that is very subjective. Dr. Jim Shwayder, the Director of Ultrasound Medicine at the Denver Health Medical Center, offers the following incite on this topic in an interview with 60 Minutes.

This comment sheds light upon a case where they thought they had seen an abnormality that could be a sign of spinal bifida, a birth defect that can affect mobility as well as brain functions.

“We actually labeled this as a possible abnormality. Well, this is in fact a baby that has a great deal of hair, and when it was delivered the baby was perfectly normal,” says Shwayder. “What we were witnessing here was really hair that was free-floating in the fluid, creating what appeared to be a possible abnormality.”

The following concerns the warnings of spinal bifida:

“One of the things that's discussed here for instance is a slightly thickened neck fold. That's become a marker for Downs Syndrome,” says Shwayder. “But we also know that only represents about 45 percent sensitivity in detecting a Downs Syndrome baby. That means that over half those babies that have a thickened neck fold so not have Downs Syndrome.”

The difficulty of identifying and interpreting these signs from the ultrasounds seems to show how this situation could muddy rapidly. The statistics that show that even if these signs of abnormalities can be identified and interpreted there are still the issues of identifying what the defects could be and the probability that they would show up in the child add a great deal of difficulty to the situation. Whatever decision the parent makes must deal with their morality, so let’s go there now.

Let us look at the moral implications of such actions. In essence “wrongful birth” lawsuits are stating that they were denied evidence that would have led them to choosing to have an abortion. This whole idea contradicts the norms of a society they say should protect this “inalienable” right to choice. There is a certain value that is placed on human life. If one were to pole the general public on whether or not it is morally acceptable to kill another human the overwhelming response would be, yes. This is fleshed out in our very own criminal justice system. We have jails and death rows full of murderers whom society has deemed unfit to function “normally” within the written and unwritten social conditions to which we, as humans, are expected to adhere. (I understand that this next statement is a generalization and may have flawed logic within it. If it does please tell me I want to know that.) Killing a human is not wrong because we view the killing of anything as wrong, we kill livestock and vegetation everyday to live, rather it is deemed wrong because one has decided that they posses the authority to decide whether or not another human has the right to live. May I suggest that this is the very thing being done through abortion? If a woman thinks she has the right to deny life to her child then she also must condone that the murderers on death row had the right to exercise choice over the life of their victim. Is she crying for their freedom? I think not. However, since these lawsuits must occur after birth let us go now to humanitarian issues.

The majority of these cases surfaces after the child begins to develop physically, mentally, and emotionally, some of these children being around the age of ten. In some cases the children suffer from extreme retardation and have little understanding of the world around them. However these are not the only cases. May I use the example of a child named Ryan Powers. As a nine year old boy his case was settled out of court. Looking closer at Ryan I am horrified. He was born with spinal bifida which caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down. He is perfectly fine mentally and received straight A’s on his last report card in a Catholic school. What sort of message are we, as a society, sending this young man when we allow people to tell him that his life is dispensable simply because he is not “normal”. The very people that say their rights are being violated because they weren’t given an opportunity are turning to their children and saying you should have been denied the opportunity. I fail to see how some one who is proactive about their commitments to social concerns can turn and spit in its face. Are we as a society so concerned with our own “normality”, convenience, and emotional stability that we are able to refuse those same “rights” to others?

I am also appalled by the Christians response to this. We have become obsessed with trying to rid this world of the consequences of evil. Evil seeks to destroy beauty in its most precious forms. As humans we recognize this and as Christians seek to correct the problem. So what do we do? We organize protest, some plant bombs in abortion clinics, others simply orate the disgusting heart of someone who would think that they have the right to choose if their child should live. We fulfill our biblical command to hate sin. In fact we hate these sins so much that our energy in the church goes into addressing these issues on Sunday morning. Pastors deliver messages chalk full of horrifying statistics that illustrate the extent of the issue. They spend time explaining why God hates this abortion and why you should too. However, as a Christian I fear we are missing the point.

Abortion, I believe as a human and a Christian , is wrong. I believe that partial birth abortion is wrong as well. And as soon as we destroy these we must deal with pornography, masturbation, lying, gossip, failing to love some one, and dare I say taking hotel towels. The point is this, if our effort is focused on destroying sin, where do we start? What sin is the worst? In an eternal sense they are all on the same level, each refuses us the right to eternal communion with God. Therefore a starting point is subjective, and, if on the off chance we were to succeed in destroying sin, we would have to conquer evil, and if that happens where is the need for a sovereign God. Our focus must not be on destroying evil, God will accomplish that through Armageddon (not the movie). Our duty, as Christians is too do everything the is humanly possible through divine strength, to prevent evil from destroying the image of God. So what is our reaction?

I believe as Christians our efforts should not be focused on destroying the action but the human condition that aided in the manifestation of the sin. I am a firm believer that the answer to every problem in this world is an understanding of the Gospel. It repulses me that as the body of Christ our time, effort, and resources are spent educating believers about the sinful actions of the world, claiming that we are doing Christ’s work. As I read the Gospel accounts of the apostles I find no account of Jesus sitting around educating his disciples about the sins of the world and how many are committed each day. His time was spent teaching His disciples how to practically live out the Gospel each day. Many of the people that fill the pews at 11 a.m. Sunday morning have no idea how to practically show the Gospel to a non-believer. They think it is all about evangelism, words. Although those help there is no greater picture of the image of God (Gospel) to the world than the Christians life. If we fail to practically live out he Gospel then we have failed to carry on the work of Christ. Our efforts must shift from educating our pew fillers about the sins of the world and start teaching them the Gospel. If we understand the Gospel we understand our own human condition and the fact that without the Grace of Christ we share the same fate as that of the plaintiff in a “wrongful birth” lawsuit. The Gospel must be the heart of every message preached. It must be the picture of every church. It must be the picture of every Christian. It must be our response to “wrongful birth” lawsuits, pornography, lying, stealing, masturbation etc. The natural human response to act with anger towards the perpetrators of the sanctity of life is not only ineffective but sinful.

Lord God,

I thank you, more deeply than language allows me to describe, for the saving blood of your son Jesus Christ. I thank you for extending your gift of eternal life to me. I pray now Lord that you would begin to work in the lives of those who have not yet encountered your Gospel. I pray that my life would be an effective picture of the working beauty of you Gospel, and pray that your children would begin to see how living out the Gospel is the most effective tool in preserving the beauty of your image. Amen, and Amen.

Sweet Beginnings

My first post shall be rather short. I just wanted to drop a friendly little hello to all of you who have stumbled upon my blog. I am flattered that you have decided to stay long enough to read even this much of my first post. I consider myself very blessed to have the opportunity to share this blog as well as my thoughts with you, my (hopefully)faithful readers. Again I want to thank you for spending a few moments with Brother Bardia today. I would just like to take a few short moments now to tell you all a little bit about what my goals are with this blog.

Here at Before His Face our goal first and foremost is to present the Truth to you in a concise manner that is also entertaining and will encourage you to keep reading. I have posted this blog mostly to give myself the opportunity to take the thoughts that often weigh on my mind and organize them so that I can better understand the world around me. My goal is to offer Biblical insight on current issues as well as issues that I myself have questions.

You may be asking why the pen name and the blog title. It is very simple in C.S. Lewis's book Till We Have Faces he has a rather morally upright character that possesses both wisdom and self control. The book also addresses many questions concerning love and beauty as well as truth. The last few lines of the book address where these answers are found and where they end. The answers to questions simply come to us before the Face of out Lord and Creator Jesus Christ. Words themselves are only useful in battle in which they combated only through more words. It is the goal of Brother Bardia to take his questions as well as the questions of his readers before the face of Christ in which all wisdom and knowledge resides. In doing that I hope to be able to bring Biblical answers to this blog in a relevant manner that will be refreshing, entertaining and thought provoking. Until the next post, I am praying for you that God would open your hearts and that He would put the words in my mouth that He would want me to publish.

Amen.