I thought about the kind of art that affects me deeply, whether it’s a single line from a book, a particularly amazing meal, a homemade font, a musical score, a film. What do they hold in common? What makes them “successful” to me? I’ve found that the best way to put it is that “good” art sends me into a current of awe-inspired wonder that starts and ends at the same places: first at humans, then God.
Every attempt to approach originality is really an act of imitation. We were made in his image, after all…with him being the ultimate Creator, what else can we do but frantically, desperately find ways to leave bylines wherever we can? To tinker with old things, and with them, mimic newness? To look upon something we’ve made, and see that it is good?
We’ve been placed within a realm (an expansive one, but a realm all the same) with all the necessary tools in our hands, and we have only to make sense of them, to rearrange them according to the designs already painted onto our souls. The fact that we can do this, and do so beautifully and boundlessly, inspires a particular sort of gratefulness. That we’re limited (even the best chef can’t actually create a tomato, nor the artist the leaf he paints), and yet still limitless is a paradox that confounds and exhilarates me.
I know it’s not the type of evidence that can be backed by charts and graphs and paleontological findings. But for me, the existence of beauty and our unnecessary but very real awareness of it is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God—a God who knows, understands and loves humans deeply.