Several newspapers recently carried reports of a study of how babies and adults responded in similar ways to Van Gogh paintings.  Stone the crows!  I didn’t realise babies aged between four and nine months could be art connoisseurs.

The report told how pairs of paintings were held up in front of the babies and the focus of their eyes recorded for each pair of paintings.  When adults between the ages of 18 and 43 were then asked which of the same pairs they preferred, it was usually the identical one as had held the attention of the babies.  Psychologists at the University of Sussex in the UK – where this experiment was carried out – have been debating the implications of babies and adults mostly favouring the same paintings.  No doubt the debate as to why this is so will keep the experts busy for a long time.

There are two things about this that I can’t help but wonder about.

First of all, is there something inherent in human nature that makes us recognise beauty when we see it?  Already some folk have concluded – on the basis of this survey – that this is indeed so.  One newspaper even went so far as to report: “These findings suggest that aspects of artistic preference may be hardwired from an early age.”

That raises a huge question.  If we are hardwired from infancy to recognise beauty then who did the hardwiring?  That’s got to be a great dilemma for the atheistic evolutionist.  How did this ability to choose beauty get into our DNA?  If evolution is simply the product of time plus chance then we are left with a riddle as to where our love for beauty ultimately came from.  The Bible – in contrast – teaches us that we were made by a Creator God.  So the wonderful design that is the human creature, came about because there was a Designer – the eternal God who made all things.  What’s even more important is that this God made us in His image and likeness.  It was God who did the hardwiring.  There is no way in which an appreciation for beauty could merely be the product of time plus chance.

But there is an even bigger question... the question of beauty – in and of itself.  How do we decide what beauty is?  Beauty is really just one aspect of what are often called ‘ultimate values’.  These ultimate values are things like goodness, truth, justice –and of course – beauty.  Where did these ultimate values originate?  Good question!  There has long been a debate between the advocates of nature versus the supporters of nurture.  Did we pick these values up from our parents and from our environment in infancy?  Or were goodness, truth and justice hardwired into us along with beauty?  There is a further debate that has raged for centuries about whether beauty is inherent in an object – or whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  That debate is not going to be settled any time soon.  Lots of questions!  Not too many answers!

Again it may be helpful to turn to our Bibles.  Long ago that very wise man, King Solomon, wrote that God made all things beautiful in its time.  That is at least a strong hint in the direction of beauty finding its ultimate source in God.  More importantly the Bible shows us clearly that beauty is an attribute of God.  The Psalmist had one great longing and that was to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Ps.27).  So, it’s easy for me as a Christian to come to the conclusion that all beauty comes from God – either directly or through his inspiration of the artist and the craftsman.  But this same God has also created his human creatures with an appreciation for beauty.

The fly in the ointment is that there is also a devil... and as a consequence of his efforts to mess with God’s good creation, we now live in a fallen world where beauty is no longer as dominant as it once was and where our appreciation of beauty has become distorted.

But that leads us to the gospel and the good news about Jesus.  The Lord Jesus Christ gave his life on a cruel cross – not only so that we might be forgiven and to get our souls into heaven when we die but also to restore this whole disordered and fallen world.  There is a new world coming where beauty will once again dominate.

John Westendorp