Breakpoint - Seeking Beauty and Finding God

0:00What can a break point a daily look in an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth? For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. A recent BBC podcast told an incredible story about a young pianist who found God through her music. Though she now goes by her baptismal name of Eleanor, Yuri Wang grew up in Communist China. The stringently atheistic education she received there emphasized the importance of hard work, and that reality only consisted of the physical world. She learned technique, not about transcendent concepts like beauty, much less the God behind beauty. It was on an educational trip to Italy that Eleanor encountered the beauty of Christian architecture, and also the worshipful attitude of people at prayer. Most of all, she was moved by the beauty of Gloria, by composer Antonio Vivaldi. She was confronted in the musical work with phrases like Lamb of God and Son of the Father. According to the BBC article, Eleanor wanted to know more. What do these words mean? Why had composers been inspired by them for centuries?

1:00In answering her questions, a local priest pointed her to the Christian faith. In a profound realization, especially for an artist, Eleanor concluded that the simplistic narrative of her upbringing could not explain the beauty that she had encountered in the world. When asked why people are touched by the presence of God in music, she had this to say, because in music, you no longer feel the passage of time or space. Often the moment when you're moved by beauty is a symbol of eternity. Many people were touched by this feeling, because it's a kind of beauty that no language or image can fully describe, end quote. And it was, in part, the ugliness of the worldview in which Eleanor was raised, that helps explain why this discovery was so profound for her. As Azganese has said, contrast is the mother of clarity. Consider, for example, the brutalist architecture expressed an endless grey structures of formerly communist nations, and still in China, though some may describe the style as bold and ambitious, as a style that wears on the human soul, souls that were made for more, like so much modernist

2:00art or architecture, as well as the Marxist worldview overall, brutalism communicates that the individual does not matter, that the material world is all that exists, and that appeals to beauty and transcendence, or mere activities of self-indulgence. Compare that to the Christian vision, creation reflects God's artistry. He did not need to create the world, much less fill it with such delightfully unnecessary beauty. As GK Chesterton equipped, it's possible that God says every morning, do it again to the sun and every evening, do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike, it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. And God created humans to image him as his sub-creators. We do not merely consume, we imagine, we invent, we innovate, and in doing so, we fulfill the first mandate from our creator to make something of his world. As Hans Workmacher put it in his book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, quote, quote, cultures the result of man's creative activity within God-given structure, so

3:03it can never be something apart from our faith. All our work is ultimately directed by our answer to the question of who or what our God is, and where for us the ultimate source of all reality and life lies. Well, this is why, just as it's so tragic to dismiss beauty, it's just this tragic to reduce beauty to mere entertainment. As Chuck Colson asked so many years ago, does God value beauty for beauty sake? It seems that he does. Consider the two columns Solomon set up before the temple. He decorated them with a hundred pomegranates fastened upon chains as God commanded. These two freestanding columns supported no architectural weight, had no engineering significance, as Francis Schaefer writes. They were there only because God said they should be there as a thing of beauty. Whether a piece of music or a beautiful sunset, humans are moved by beauty. At the birth of a child or an act of athletic artistry, we wonder. Beauty points us to what is transcendent about reality and what is transcendent about us,

4:04and it points us to the presence and nature of God that can penetrate even the most stubborn, personal, and cultural defenses. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Before I go, I want to say thank you to Elaine of Pensacola. Thanks for being a Cornerstone Monthly Partner of the Colson Center. You helped make this episode a Breakpoint possible. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Paggett. At Breakpoint's a helpful part of your daily world view diet, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources like this, the live like a Christian in the Cultural Moment, go to Breakpoint.org. Calling all listeners who serve the church. Join us May 28th in Knoxville, Tennessee for a special church leadership summit, preceding the 2026 Colson Center National Conference. Our theme is forming courageous disciples. The rapid fire pace our culture is changing can be disorienting, but it's also one of the greatest opportunities for the church, featuring Osginess, John Stone Street, and Carl Truman. This event will help you equip your church to see this moment clearly, believe they are

5:07called to it, and courageously act as agents of renewal in it. Enter today at colsoncenter.org-slash-church-summit.