True Beauty
I have always savored the months ending in “r.” The weather begins to turn cooler, the lawn doesn’t require as much work, high school and college football games are in full swing and the wonderful holiday season edges closer with the anticipation of spending more time with family and friends.
Many people in our neighborhood are decorating for the first big event of the fall season—Halloween, and some are pulling out all the stops. One neighbor around the corner from where we live has three huge skeletons, at least ten feet tall, standing vigil on his front lawn, surrounded by tombstones and an assortment of other ghoulish figures. Several of the yards look like cemeteries with dozens of grave markers, and even a few bony hands reaching up from the ground ready to snag an unsuspecting trick-or-treater, all in fun, of course.
About the only thing my wife and I do for Halloween is leave the front porch light on so the little children will know that we are participating in the handing out of candy. We enjoy seeing the little ones with their costumes and painted faces. For the most part, the children dress up as princesses, a ghost here and there, a scattering of witches, Jedi knights, a few Darth Vaders, a couple of aluminum looking robots, super heroes and the like. Many of the kids know us and take off their masks after they've grabbed a hand-full of candy to make sure we know who they are, their excited faces radiant in the evening porch light. Halloween night doesn’t last very long, only a few hours, and soon the streets are empty again and the fun night comes to an end. The neighbors with the ten foot tall skeletons, however, leaves one of those things up until Christmas where the bony creature is transformed into a really skinny Santa Claus!
Originally, Halloween was a special church holiday on the liturgical calendar designed as a time to remember loved ones, saints and martyrs who had passed away. Remembering the dead gradually morphed into a more morbid festivity depicting ghosts, goblins, witches and other scary creatures. If you in some way dishonored these deceased souls, you were likely to be the victim of a trick, thus, the origin of trick or treat.
Some religious people feel uncomfortable celebrating Halloween, thinking that by participating in this monster bash they are somehow giving credence to the dark powers of evil. I’ve known a number of Christians who avoided the Harry Potter movies for just this reason, feeling that the J.K. Rowling scripts opened the door to the occult.
I watched all of the Harry Potter episodes, usually with one or both of our sons, and found them to be stories about courage, honesty, truthfulness, teamwork, friendship, family and love. The movies certainly don’t glorify the dark side, but, in fact, reveal how evil has no respect for life, love or anything that human beings hold dear. The Harry Potter movies, like the myths and fairy tales most of us grew up with, celebrate what’s best about the human race.
The reality of evil’s presence in the world, though, can hardly be questioned. We see it everyday in places like Ukraine, where Putin’s daily barrage of missiles on peaceful towns and cities lays waste to people’s homes and villages and dreams. Putin has touted this war as a war of liberation and millions of his citizens have swallowed his propaganda that the slaughter of innocent men, women and children is honorable and justifiable. Even one of the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has called the ruthless aggression by Russia “holy.” The U.N., on the other hand, has mounting evidence that implicates the Russian military in numerous atrocities. Yet, to many Russian citizens and other authoritarian-minded people, the war is not something sinister but rather an action that will help restore Russia to its rightful place as a powerful and respected world leader.
Distinguishing what is ugly and evil from that which is beautiful and holy can sometimes be difficult. Evil doesn’t often appear to us as a pitched-fork tail demon or an ugly gremlin or a hideous looking green witch or some other frightening creature. It would make life a lot easier if evil did show itself as something truly horrendous and sinister, but in my experience evil frequently enters into our lives disguised as that which is desirable and beautiful and good.
Think of when the Tempter came to Jesus in the desert and tried to dissuade him from following God’s path. Everything the Tempter put before Jesus had an upside—the relief of world hunger, God’s power visibly manifested and all the kingdoms of the world under Jesus’ dominion. What’s not to like about that? Jesus could have avoided the cross and solved a lot of the world's problems by yielding to the Tempter’s beguiling promises. But evil’s way is not God’s way and Jesus rejected each temptation because he knew that sometimes what appears at first glance to be beautiful can in the end be monstrous.
It’s the seemingly beautiful and apparently good things in life that make me pause, for I know how easily I succumb to the shallow and superficial. By seeing only the surface of things I have been misled more times than I can count, and I have learned that I cannot always trust what appeals to my senses or instincts or feelings. True beauty, beauty that deepens the significance of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God, can be masked by seeing only what appears on the outside. The old adage that a book can’t be judged by its cover is true, and neither can we give a thumbs up or down on another human being with only a skin-deep understanding.
Jesus, for instance, was said to have been an unattractive man, and, according to the prophet Isaiah, his physical appearance was even repulsive, but if a person listened to him, heard the tenderness of his message, got beyond his appearance by observing the compassion of his actions, the beauty of God would have shown through. I wonder how many people turned away from Jesus because they looked only on his outer self and never took the time to look more closely.
One of my favorite fairy tales growing up was the story of Beauty and the Beast. Most of us remember the story of the beautiful girl who was forced to spend time with an ugly, repulsive creature. As the story unfolds, she observes his kind heart, his gentle and loving ways, and she begins to see beyond the ugliness to recognize the beauty within. At the conclusion of the story, the girl’s love for the ugly creature transforms him into a handsome prince, and they live happily ever after.
It’s a powerful story that belies deep layers of truth about human nature. We are often allured by outward beauty or charm and quickly fall under its spell. Conversely, we view that which doesn’t meet our cultural standards of beauty and conclude that the person or thing is undesirable or even evil. We creatures of flesh and blood are easily fooled because we see only with our eyes. To really see, we must look beyond the mask, beyond the superficial, and look as far as we can into the nature within—only then will we begin to know true beauty.
