by Lara d'Entremont
I never picked goldenrods for my bouquets. In spring and summer, this was easy; I found beautiful flowers of purple and pink each time we went for a walk. But as fall began to lurk in my backyard, goldenrod became one of my few choices.
I stood with my hands on the stroller staring at the rows of goldenrod on the side of the road. Would I rather have an empty pitcher in my bathroom than have those flowers in my home?
In elementary school, I took up a hobby of picking bouquets of wildflowers for my mother. While she worked on training the young horse, I ran around outside the fence gathering flowers for her. Irises, ferns, daisies, and, yes, goldenrod. One night as I proudly handed my mom my latest creation, my father scoffed. “What are you doing picking that old ragweed for? Go find something better.”
I never forgot those words. As a little girl, I took them to mean that I didn’t have an eye for beauty like my father did, and that I had failed yet again—just like when I struggled with math, picked up my mother’s accent, was too slow to understand his horse-riding instructions, and my anxiety made me “act the fool.” Choosing ragweed for a bouquet was yet another way I didn’t match up, so I decided I’d never pick it again—that was at least one “fault” I had control over.
After that walk on the road, I saw a picture someone had shared of a vase full of goldenrod, and its simple beauty captured me. At that moment, my mind tied off a loose thread. I’ve done a lot of work to re-tie and weave what my father tore apart in my mind and, in that moment, I drew together more of those loose ends.
One of the questions I had to answer: Who defines beauty? Is beauty simply in the eye of the beholder? Or, is there something definite about beauty so that we can collectively declare this is beautiful but that is not?
Is Beauty Subjective?
My four-year-old son thinks that everything small and tiny is cute. A puppy, a kitten, an itty-bitty toad, a mosquito, and even a red spider the size of a pen tip are all “so cute.” As someone with a fear of spiders, I disagree—just because it’s small doesn’t mean it’s cute.
Like my toddler, who reduced the definition of cute to anything small, I fear we have reduced our definition of beauty to what can only be seen with our eyes or causes a feeling within us. I wonder if we’ve compromised—that we settled for something less than true beauty in our desperate pursuit of it. The psalmist declared, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4 ESV). If the pursuit of beauty should lead us to God, is it possible we have forgotten His definition of beauty?
In The Picture of Dorian Gray (a novel by Oscar Wilde published in 1890), the word beauty is often mentioned, but not in its true sense. Dorian Gray is a young, rich, and beautiful boy who fears growing old and losing his charming good looks as an older friend convinces him that youth and beauty are all that we should desire in life. In a moment of grief over this realization, he wishes for a painting to absorb all his blemishes—from both aging and from sin—while he remains young and handsome.
When this wish comes true, Dorian throws all wisdom, prudence, and virtue away and pursues what he defines as beauty and happiness, while the portrait of himself grows uglier and more grotesque with each passing day. To distract himself from guilt, shame, and fear of being found out, he fills his home with “beautiful” things, spending his immense wealth on whatever fancies him for that year. This pursuit of beauty leads him further and further away from any kind of virtue or goodness. While Dorian remains young and attractive on the outside, his portrait grows viler and uglier each day, reflecting the true state of his soul.
Is what Dorian Gray and his friends define as beauty truly beauty? Could the pursuit of beauty lead to corruption? The world will raise up its own definitions of beauty, like it did for Dorian Gray. We can choose the kind of beauty that leads to discontentment, greed, and other vices, forming us into something grotesque and ugly, like the portrait of Dorian. Or we can choose to run after beauty that is also true and good, and let that form us into Christ-likeness.
The Inseparability of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
Truth, beauty, and goodness have been considered transcendent, objective realities for hundreds of years. The concept can be traced back as far as Plato and Aristotle in some form. Christians have since grasped this saying, considering it to be part of the attributes of God that are reflected in creation, especially man and woman. While truth, beauty, and goodness all rely on one another, truth must always be the foundation, because things can appear beautiful without being true or good
Our definitions of truth, beauty, and goodness must always begin in Scripture. I’ve read “beautifully” written heresies and watched the world twist an idea to appear good when it was far from it. Consider the world’s claim that to be beautiful is to look young—dye or pluck every gray hair and smooth out every wrinkle. Another example is how some theologians eloquently deny Jesus’ perfection, distorting the wonder of the gospel. These may have the appearance of beauty and goodness, yet lack truth.
If we set truth as our foundation, there we can see beauty and goodness more truly and clearly. This isn’t to lessen beauty and goodness, but to hold them to the highest standard that God intended for them. We dilute beauty and goodness when we don’t hold them to the standard of truth—because to be good and beautiful, they must first be true. And truth is not ours to decide, but to find in God by what he’s revealed in his Word and his natural world.
There’s nuance in this. Dorian Gray is a beautiful novel, not only for its message but also for Wilde’s witty and gripping prose. Yet many over the decades have declared this novel one of grotesque sin due to its content of murder, drug use, carousing, selfishness, and sexual immorality. What those critics have missed is that Wilde’s book, despite the fact that his own life much resembled that of Dorian Gray, is an indictment on such darkness (albeit a hypocritical one), and that cannot be missed as Dorian’s portrait takes on the ugliness and horrors of Dorian’s lifestyle and heart. Sometimes beauty looks like entering the darkness to show how vile this world can be on this side of Genesis 3 to show our need for a Savior.
In discussing objective beauty, a friend of mine said, “I dislike yellow flowers; I don’t think they are pretty, and I won’t have them in my home. But because they are made by God, I know they are beautiful.” We all have preferences (which is human and good), yet objective beauty always remains the same. In a similar way, some passages of Scripture aren’t as clear as others, and we must do our best to interpret them in light of what is clear, such as the gospel and doctrine of God.
Ultimately, beauty must direct our gaze out from ourselves and towards God and the virtues he calls us to. As Vigen Guroian writes in Tending the Heart of Virtue, “St. Augustine speaks of a form of love that he calls frui, a Latin word. The value of this love is not in any use to which its object be put. It is, rather, a love for the sheer pleasure or delight an object brings and the transcendent beauty that reaches one through it.” He says the absence of this kind of beauty likewise creates a longing within us for it, but “in the end, this love and longing set the individual on a ‘road right out of the self’” and straight to God himself.
Do we desire beauty because it leads us to God? Is the beauty we are seeking the kind that even could lead us to God, or is it all simply vanity like what Dorian Gray pursued? Beauty must be selfless—it’s not about drawing attention to ourselves, earning praise for our lovely homes or well-styled closets, but bringing glory to the most beautiful Person of all. This isn’t a kind of self-loathing where we never think of or care for ourselves, but rather a turning from pride. At times pride draws us to desire fleeting or external beauty so that we can impress those around us. Yet the pursuit of true beauty should lead to worship of the Most Beautiful.
The Pursuit of True Beauty
When my husband and I first got married, we lived in his parents’ summer camp. My sister-in-law and her husband had lived in it previously, and we often joked that it was like living in a space shuttle with its tinfoil-like insulation covering the walls. The floors were painted plywood. It was perfect for a camp, but Pinterest left me feeling discontented. I ogled at the beautiful, white kitchens and hardwood floors of others. I knew I should find my contentment in Christ, but I also longed for a prettier home.
Throughout that year, I took for granted the beauty of nature just outside my door.
We lived on a dirt road in a low-populated part of our community. We were encased in trees on every side, but those trees opened to the river that roared only a few meters from our deck. In the forest behind our home, an old rock wall built years ago stood covered in moss and lichen-like castle remains. A tree with a dizzying amount of rings towered back there as well. Across the road to the part of the river that raced under the bridge, trees stretched over the flowing waters and fields of tall, golden grass swayed in the breeze.
I searched for beauty behind a computer screen and wished for what the world at that time had declared beautiful. Meanwhile, God’s timeless, hand-crafted beauty beckoned me from outside the space-ready walls of my home.
That was around six years ago. I miss that home sometimes—and wish I could sit out on that deck again. I now live in our third home. I still don’t have the bright white kitchen cabinets.
One recent day, when that discontentment gripped me again, I stepped outside and crossed the road to the old railroad tracks. I jogged down the flower-brimmed hill, past the sagging apple trees, across the tracks, and through the winding paths by the seaside to the shoreline. I walked along the paths where the bramble and wild roses waved at me in the wind. I breathed in the salty air.
That day, I refused to miss out on the beauty God has put around me this time. I decided that discontentment would no longer keep me from witnessing God’s goodness and creative hand.
As we walked these trails as a family again, I stopped my husband on the side of the road and asked him to pick some goldenrod for me. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t question. He plucked the goldenrod and placed it in the bottom of our stroller, and I put them in the pitcher in the bathroom. I’ve learned that my dad doesn’t know everything, and he definitely doesn’t get to define beauty. Beauty is defined by God, and he created this world and called it good—and that includes the goldenrod that grows on the side of the dusty roads.
Photo by Olli Kilpi on Unsplash
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