How Beauty Compels Us to Pursue Justice

I expect that you would be hard-pressed to find people who would say that they don’t care about justice at all. No one says, I’m a happy supporter of injustice. We might not agree on what justice looks like in every situation, but none of us want to experience personal injustice in our relationships. And none of us want to be on the receiving end of unjust systems and structures.

I dare that to some degree we are all passionate about justice. The reason that justice matters is because of beauty. More particularly, the reason justice matters to us is because we were created by and for beauty.

A year ago First Things published a video by poet Dana Gioia titled, “Why Beauty Matters.” And, among other things, he said this,

Without beauty there is no practical way to change the world. No universal means of communication and inspiration that will suffice. No equally powerful way for humanity to know and love what is good and true.

That’s a big claim. But I think he’s right. All beauty in the created world has God as its source. God is, in himself, the Beautiful One in his triune life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck put it,

The Trinity reveals God to us as the fulness of being, the true life, eternal beauty.

God is the beautiful one who created the world in and for beauty. What does this have to do with justice? I’m glad you asked.

The Story of Beauty

I don’t know how you’ve thought of the creation account in Genesis 1 to this point. But I want to tell you that the Bible begins with the story of beauty in its literary form and content. Here’s what I mean. One facet of beauty is harmony. Things being well ordered; things being the way they ought to be. The Hebrew OT uses the word shalom to get at this notion of harmony, wholeness, proportion and right ordering. Essential to beauty is bringing order out of chaos. Setting things right. And after the first verse tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the second verse gives us a problem statement in need of a solution.

Genesis 1:2 ESV

2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And the literary pattern of Genesis 1 is God forming and filling, bringing order and harmony in poetic fashion. This is the pattern of the creation account. A poetic story of beauty, brining order and harmony out of chaos by forming and filling on parallel days. And when God is done, everything is as it ought to be. There’s no disorder. There’s no disharmony. There is shalom, peace and well-being. There is beauty. And one of the ways we know this is because of a second aspect or facet of beauty that keeps on showing up in the text. A second aspect of beauty is pleasure or delight. And not a self-centered delight, but a de-centered delight. We find this sense of delight repeated in the passage seven times with the word "good.” The Bible keeps saying that when God saw what he created he saw that it was good. It was good. Over and over and over again until we hear on day six that God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. What we are hearing is God delighting in the creation of the world. What we are hearing is God’s pleasure in the created world. Pleasure and delight are an aspect of beauty.

Why do we care about justice? It’s because we were created by and for beauty. We want there to be harmony and order and right relationship in the world. We want things to be the way they ought to be. When you find people passionate about environmental issues and the ways that we go about destroying our world it’s because we were created by and for beauty. And when we see order and harmony created from a chaotic situation, when we see justice done what happens? It gives us joy! It gives us pleasure and delight! Because we were created by and for beauty!

Sin, our greatest disorder as human beings, has jacked up the entire cosmos. As a result of the pervasive nature of sin the gruesome aspects of the human predicament, the unjust aspects, are often more prominent to our eyes than the glorious aspects. But the Bible doesn’t begin with the fall, death, depravity and injustice. It begins with a more true reality about the world and humanity than our sinful condition. That truth is we image God, who is eternal beauty, and who specializes in brining order out of chaos. Beauty, as Dana Gioia says, is our connection to the essential harmony of creation.

The Story of Beauty’s Restoration

The Bible begins with the story of beauty. And what unfolds in the history of redemption after the fall is the story of beauty’s restoration. Maybe you sang the hymn Crown Him With Many Crowns on Easter Sunday this year. When you sang the third verse and melodically voiced these words about our resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ,

Rich wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified

what, if anything went through your mind? The marks of our sin, of our unrighteousness and injustice are indelibly marked on the glorified body of our risen and ascended Lord. Those rich wounds, still visible in glory, permanently fixed to his body are not gruesome. They are beautiful. The scars he bore for our injustice have been transformed and explode in the beauty and majesty of Christ.

At the fulcrum of beauty’s restoration is the Jesus’s taking on himself our injustice. As the writer to the Hebrews reminds of God’s New Covenant promise through the prophet Jeremiah that he would remember our sins and our lawless deeds no more. Isaiah tells us that he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him (Isa 53.2). But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us shalom, and with his wounds we are healed.

Divine justice was satisfied at the cross of Jesus Christ, through which we receive restoration and renewal into the beautiful image we were created to be. And we are called into this same pursuit beauty in our world. You see, because the cross and the resurrection secured an eternal redemption. And that redemption was not just about saving souls. It was the securing of the renewal of the entire cosmos. The new heavens and the new earth will be the perfection of beauty. As Jesus says in Matthew 13:41, all sin and law-breakers will be removed.

And the coming kingdom has broken into the present world. And as kingdom people, renewed by and for beauty, we pursue it now. As artist Makoto Fujimura puts it in his book Art + Faith,

The body of Christ provides the Christian ecosystem for teaching the New Creation, and this can happen if the church once again becomes a place of making, the heart of beauty in the world, and a witness to mercy.

We were made by and for beauty. Which means that we were created to image God in bringing order out of chaos, seeking and working for shalom to the glory of God. All will not be made right; every injustice and wound will not be healed until the Lord returns. Yet, by being renewed in knowledge after the image of our creator, we are invited to pursue justice now, trusting that he will give us glimpses of glory along the way.