The Sons of God Saw that the Daughters of Men Were Beautiful: An Introduction

I have five daughters. Together with the loveliness of my wife, I am surrounded by beauty. I frequently have suggested to me the idea that my work in child-rearing - as opposed to raising boys - is less burdensome while the girls are young but attended with additional challenges as they begin to change into their adulthood. Perhaps that is because the inner person has developed sufficiently to show through the budding woman, whereas, before, the remaining innocence of the disposition allows us to believe that the pristine loveliness of little girls really does evince a pristine heart.

The Word of God tells us a different story.

So we go to the Scriptures, helpless, because we know we who are ourselves sinners cannot prevent the piling up of the iniquity of the flesh by fleshly means.

And what is it we read there?

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.¹

But the woman was deceived, not only on account of the fact that the serpent who spoke to her was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made, but because her heart believed what her eyes saw more than she believed God:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate.²

The beauty she saw became elevated in her heart, surpassing her devotion to the Word of God and becoming an object of devotion in its own right. And so, in Adam, all die.

This is the first difficulty: The beauty of creation, even in its unspoiled state, while certainly given for the benefit of man by his God, could not lead them on its own to the knowledge of God. In fact, even in its unspoiled state, the beauty of the produce of the Garden could be perverted into a dreadful weapon against that very knowledge of God.

Having, then, started afresh at the beginning of the Scriptures with my family, I have been struck anew with a sense of bewilderment at why many who profess themselves to be my brothers in the Lord insist that such things as the following should necessarily pertain to the worship of our God:

Culture. Redeeming culture. Creating culture. Creating space. Creativity in worship. Aesthetics in worship. Theology of aesthetics. Arts. Patronizing the arts. Arts in worship.

Take the following quotation for an instance:

I’ve always dreamed that we could have doors that are more aesthetically pleasing and let you know that you are actually going into a place of worship, a sanctuary where you are going to meet with the Lord.³

This statement was made by a local pastor in a recorded address to his congregation. It unashamedly teaches that the beauty of the place of worship can lead one to a deeper knowledge of God. Yet it is plain from barely the beginning of the Scriptures how upside-down such sentiments are.  The fact that my daughters are aesthetically pleasing does not let me know that all is right with their hearts; how much less does the beauty of God's Church correspond to the aesthetics of the building in which they meet?

A final note about Adam and Eve: It was only after the fall that they paid any attention to their own outward beauty.  So, to those who are burdened by their own outward appearance to the world, whether individual or corporate, I ask,

Who told you that you were naked?⁴

Above All:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.  And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.⁵
- John, the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved

Footnotes:

(1) Genesis 2:15-17  ESV
(2) Genesis 3:6  ESV
(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUc_j8ZklHE, time index 01:35.
(4) Genesis 3:11 ESV...He said, "Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"
(5) 1 John 2:15-17  ESV