Beauty and Counseling (Part 2)

To which of these are people more likely to expend their time, attention, and money:

An amateur’s portrait of Elvis painted on black velvet, or an original self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh?

The discography of The Chainsmokers, or that of Wolfgang Mozart?

 A strip mall in any town USA, or Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France?

Granted, many people might stop and smile at the Elvis portrait. Some Elvis aficionado might even want to hang that painting in the living room to complement the orange shag carpet. But the last time one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits sold, it went for north of $70 million. Velvet Elvis might go for $70.

As for The Chainsmokers, even if you loved one of their songs, do you honestly think people two hundred fifty years from now will still be playing it the way Mozart’s are played in that same span of time today?

And if you drove by your local strip mall and then were able to make it to Paris and drive by that majestic place of worship, which of the two is more likely to be torn down and razed in the next twenty years? Or if one catches fire and is seriously damaged, which one is more likely to be invested in and repaired for the sake of its representative beauty?

It’s true, beauty doesn’t require a lot of money. There may be a tenant or two in that strip mall who has an eye for detail and has designed a simple yet beautiful storefront and web site. But what about beauty that’s stunning and captivating? Can we place beauty on levels of magnitude? One way the Christian Scriptures point to magnitude is through repetition.

For example, when Isaiah is given a vision of Jesus in all his glory, Isaiah sees angelic beings called seraphim calling out, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory” (6:3). The three-fold repetition of “Holy” indicates that Jesus’ holiness is not just exceptional but super-superlative holiness. No one and nothing else come close to the holiness of Jesus.

In contrast, the Apostle Peter says, “for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pt. 1:21, NKJV). Yes, there are holy men of God, but we will never see a created human being referred to as “holy, holy, holy” in Scripture or elsewhere.  

At the same time, the Bible clearly portrays human beings as exceptional among their fellow creatures. Jesus, in comparing people with the birds of the air, asks rhetorically, “Are you not worth much more than they?” (Mt. 6:26). Matthew goes on to say that people have, “much more value” than a sheep (12:11-12). It is not a diminishment of the value or beauty of a bird or a sheep to say that a human is of more value in God’s eyes. God cares so much for the sparrows that he makes sure to feed them; he’s aware when one falls from the sky. We, too, should care for fellow creatures. But not in the same way we should care for our fellow human beings.

The Creator is clear about human exceptionalism right from the beginning. Amongst all the creating God has done, when it comes to the human creature, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27, ESV). Did you catch the three-fold repetition of the word, “created”? Everything that exists outside the Godhead has been created, but God “created…created…created” humankind. Humans are God’s super superlative creations.

I may say more about this in the next edition of this newsletter, but there is a movement to diminish and destroy the human race in preservation of everything else. Part of me gets it: ever since the Fall in Genesis 3, there have been bad actors among us. People have done despicable and destructive things to each other and the created order.

I suspect those who are down on humanity have succumbed to the same temptation that counselors and therapist do: make self the focal point of one’s story. It’s an easy thing to do. People are the most powerful creatures on earth, both for good and for evil. People are an endless well of fascination worth looking into. As God said himself, humans are the pinnacle of his creation.

Metaphorically speaking, we should value fellow humans in the way we would study van Gogh’s self-portrait, or repeat listening to Mozart, or go through all the effort and expense to repair Notre-Dame after that horrific fire in 2019. This is the work of Christian counseling, and Christians say people are totally worth it. But why?

Christians have a Redeemer, and his name is Jesus. Remember Isaiah’s vision of the exalted Christ in Isaiah 6? Later, when Isaiah foretells Jesus’ project of redeeming people, Isaiah writes this regarding Jesus: “To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory” (61:3, NLT; cf. Luke 4:16-21).  

When people come to me for counseling, even if it appears some part or all their life is on fire or burned to the ground, I’m thinking beauty for ashes. Their life, their marriage, their family, their relationships, all of it, is totally worth the time, the trouble, the expense, to redeem it. When I pray for my clients at the start of each day, before the first one shows up, this is the vision, the motivation, and the hope worth working toward.

As this calendar year nears its end and some of you think about year-end giving, if you’d consider financially supporting my work of beautifying what is broken, I’d be grateful.

Because the Christian faith does not deny suffering in this life, but neither is it allowed to have the final word.