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Debased Art

The Lord is clearly interested in beauty. Some form of the word is used 76 times in the Bible. We are told that God "hath made every thing beautiful in his time" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). He so highly exalts the proper concept of beauty that He often associates it with holiness (Psalm 29:2; 96:9; 110:3). Unfortunately, men tend to pervert beauty as they do all that they touch. God reminds us that outward "beauty is vain" (Proverbs 31:30) and human "beauty is a fading flower' (Isaiah 28:1). Men corrupt beauty and make the "beauty of a man" a focus for idolatry (Isaiah 44:13). Eventually, man's perverseness causes his "beauty to be abhorred" (Ezekiel 16:25). The very concept of what is beautiful is no longer recognizable.

Recently, an art gallery in the United Kingdom received an exhibit from the Royal Academy. Unwittingly, the stand for the exhibit (made up of a block of stone and a bone-shaped stick) got separated from the sculpture of a human head which was to be placed on it and the pieces were judged independently. The sculptured head was rejected. The base was thought to have merit and was accepted by the gallery. So, too, we have rejected our Head (Ephesians 5:23) as worthless and have exalted the base things of this world as things of great merit.