A Christian Vision of Beauty, Part Three
Albert Mohler
Friday, November 18, 2005

The Christian vision of beauty not only tells us why the world is beautiful--but not quite. Secondly, the Christian worldview explains why the face of a child with Down's syndrome is more beautiful than the cover girl in the fashion magazine. The unity of the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real calls us to look below the surface and to understand that the ontological reality of every single human being is that we are made in the image of God. The imago Dei is the beauty in each of us, and the rest is but of cosmetic irrelevance.

Just as we, in our fallenness, are likely to see the fallen aspects of creation as beautiful, we are also likely to try to validate ourselves in an artificial humanism of worshiping the creature. When we look at our fellow human beings, or frankly, when we look in the mirror, we are likely to be led astray by prevailing concepts of prettiness and attractiveness rather than to gaze into the mirror or to gaze into our neighbor and see one made in the image of God. The imago Dei is the complete and transformative category here, and without it we are left with nothing but the superficial. The imago Dei explains why the child with Down's syndrome is far more beautiful in herself than the cover girl in the fashion magazine. The rest