Art and Beauty

A good friend and I went to see the Stuttgart Ballet perform "Swan Lake" tonight. It has been a while since I saw "Swan Lake" -- I know it's been performed several times by the Hong Kong Ballet, but unfortunately (or is it fortunately?) I missed all of them. So this was the first time in a long while since I had watched a classical ballet piece. And it didn't disappoint -- the choreography was inspired, the dancers were talented and the dancing was beautiful. It was amazing to watch how the same steps, by the same dancer, could convey two different characters with two completely different sets of intentions and emotions.

In a book that I have been reading recently, "The Case for a Creator", by Lee Strobel, and one of the pieces of evidences put forward is that of the human consciousness. One of the illustrations is this: supposing we could somehow characterize every action of a bat, and build the perfect model of how a bat behaves. Then we could make a computerized bat that would act exactly like a real bat. It might even fool real bats. However, there is no way that we could ever find out from this bat, what it's like to be a bat. How bats think and feel, in other words.

In the same way, I think that the fact that we can appreciate beauty and emotion has got to be a piece of evidence for the case of an intelligent Creator. How else could this be explained, but for the fact that somehow, we were programmed to love beauty, to recognize it, and to cherish it.

As Christians, we believe that we were made in the image of God. Therefore, what we love must be a shadow of what He loves as well. And since He created us, I suppose that He must have made us to be lovable by Him. And yes, the Bible tells us that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made".

Isn't that a lovely promise to have, especially as we face a new year, and wonder what's ahead of us? When the future seems pointless, as it does sometimes, and we wonder if we are simply human hamsters running on a treadmill, going nowhere with a life that's pointless? Surely, God, who made us to love, who made us beautiful in His eyes, wouldn't do that to us?