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The secret of beauty
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Commencer à lireLongueur: 245 pages4 heures
- Éditeur:
- united p.c.
- Sortie:
- Oct 8, 2014
- ISBN:
- 9783854382331
- Format:
- Livre
Description
Cultures differ widely in their standards of beauty but the response to beauty is universal. Every human is drawn to beauty. Something within us gets excited and satisfied, reposed, when we experience love and beauty. Beauty, love and sex, are mysteriously interwoven but often cause much pain. Some fundamentals need to be grasped in our hearts to enjoy beauty to the full.
Informations sur le livre
The secret of beauty
Longueur: 245 pages4 heures
Description
Cultures differ widely in their standards of beauty but the response to beauty is universal. Every human is drawn to beauty. Something within us gets excited and satisfied, reposed, when we experience love and beauty. Beauty, love and sex, are mysteriously interwoven but often cause much pain. Some fundamentals need to be grasped in our hearts to enjoy beauty to the full.
- Éditeur:
- united p.c.
- Sortie:
- Oct 8, 2014
- ISBN:
- 9783854382331
- Format:
- Livre
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The secret of beauty - Tertius Venter
Contents
Legal notice
Dedication
Scriptures are taken from
Foreword
1 The Beginning Communication
2 Something Gone Awry
3 The Beauty and the Beast
4 How Do We Find Meaning and Enjoy the Richness of Beauty and Sex?
5 Non Sexual Relationships and Friendships
6 My Own Sexuality
7 The Mystery and Meaning of Beauty
Sources
The Author
Legal notice
All rights of distribution, also by film, radio, television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic media and reprint in extracts, are reserved by the publisher.
The author is responsible for the content and correction.
© 2014 united p. c. publisher
ISBN Printed Edition: 978-3-85040-896-7
ISBN e-book: 978-3-85438-233-1
Cover image: Tertius Venter
Jacket design, page design and typesetting: united p. c. publisher
www.united-pc.eu
Dedication
To Trudi, my dearest wife of thirty-three years. God thought it good to use our marriage as a sacrificial lamb.
‘The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from...’
CS Lewis
‘The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.’
Proverbs 20:5 (NIV)
‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’
Socrates
Scriptures are taken from
The Holy Bible, New International Version®, marked NIV, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
The Message, marked The Message, Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, marked NLT, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Amplified Bible, marked AMP, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Foreword
The Power of Beauty.
‘‘There are people in my school who don’t like me because I have a cleft lip and palate. God knows why, I don’t know, I don’t think I will ever know and I don’t really want to know.’’ From Tiemens et al., Experiences of Adolescent Girls with Cleft Lip and Palate.
Every human is drawn to beauty. A night sky can thrill, so can an exquisite orchid, a Mozart concerto or a lovely face. What is it that triggers delight in people? Or saddens the heart when gazing at imperfection?
Rapid advances in science are disclosing with accelerating frequency the breath-taking beauties of the universe, both in the macrocosm as in the microcosm. The human heart seeks beauty and perfection all the time and in awe when it finds it. Something within us gets excited and at the same time satisfied, reposed, when we experience the beauty and perfection of a sunset, a mountain, a flower, a pretty person.¹
We are in awe as we gaze at the beauty and perfection of creation. No half perfected species exists, no haphazardly organized galaxy, no molecule with its atoms, its neutrons and electrons not perfect. Brokenness observed simply breaks the heart, disturbs the soul, make you stare at what you do not want to see; destroyed nature, disease, a face malformed.
Robert Augros and George Stanciu marshalled evidence to show that ‘all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth’. Beauty (or perfection) is where science and theology meet;¹ One Creator of science and logos.
The human heart is delighted by love, beauty and perfection; an inner connection with our Maker. These yearning, these inner truths, drive our lives.
While the various cultures of the world, past and present, may differ widely in their standards of beauty, the response to beauty is universal and spans all time. Psychologists have amassed considerable evidence that society places a great amount of importance on appearance. Various studies show that attractive people have more success in obtaining everything from dates to jobs to favourable jury verdicts. It was found that infants respond more positively to attractive faces than to unattractive ones, and prefer faces with soft curves to those with sharp angles² - inner truths written on their hearts. Research also demonstrates that attractive men and women tend to have higher paying and more prestigious jobs. Teachers tend to be less harsh when disciplining attractive children, while both students and teachers perceive good-looking children to be smarter and more likely to succeed.³
Beauty and perfection delights the heart, imperfection disturbs the heart. Love delights the heart, so does doing the right thing, doing good, Hate disturbs the heart, so does doing wrong. It all points to our Maker who is love, perfection and beauty. An often unconscious connection to the character of His perfection and beauty that draws us mysteriously closer to our origin, to the reason for our existence. Does this explain the universal drawing of the human heart to beauty and explain the aversion it has for the imperfect.
This book was written to explore the importance of beauty in our world, how to find it. To explore the reasons why beauty is so intertwined with sex.
Beauty and sex, love and communication are all mysteriously and intimately interwoven. To understand the deeper meaning of beauty demands a careful understanding of the obvious as well as the veiled implications of sex.
We look at questions like why sex
and why the way it is
, why is sex is so closely linked to beauty
and attempt to arrive at credible answers to some of humans’ deepest questions. Our quest is to find answers to the deeper meaning of beauty, of life itself, of our souls’ want and need for communication.
Does God perhaps want to tell us something through the particular way He created sex? God could have created sex, communication, and procreation totally different, radically different to what it is. The infinite imagination of God’s limitless ability to do as He pleases allows for an unimaginable and infinite number of ways sex could have been created—even procreation without sex. But it is exactly as it is. Or did the god, mr. millions of years (this god, the post-modern object of worship denying Intelligent Design as the foundation of all that exists, denying the uncaused Cause, the God of the Bible) randomly design
sex through evolution purely for the survival of the species? Surely asexual reproduction would have been far less complicated as it has evolved
in many other living organisms on this planet. But what about relationships, beauty, and love?
If sex is from God, it must be sacred as God’s Word tells us that He is holy?⁴ He made man, saw that it was good, and gave the command to fill the earth. It is in reality the continuation of the epitome of His creative activity—man in His image—and He gave humans the ability and joy to create
more people for Him and to satisfy our human hearts with love and friendships. He would certainly not have created unholiness in any shape or form to accomplish this. God is love⁵ and God is beauty.⁶ He created us primarily for friendship, fellowship, and communication with Him.⁷
Why then does sex so often seem to be so far from holiness, causing so much hurt in people’s lives? Why can it be so loveless and ugly? Beauty destroyed. Why is it sometimes so void of any meaningful communication?
If sex is indeed from God, embedded in love and beauty, could it perhaps be a reflection of what our relationship to Him was meant to be and therefore enormously sacred with a vitally important message, a profound and pressing message from God to man to understand Him?
The potential for limitless hurt and so often destruction of lives caused by sex can easily raise questions about a loving God and about creation itself. Are the hurt and pain perhaps the inevitable consequences that will follow if we do not treat sex as sacred and with absolute respect? The quest for physical beauty, which is really a quest for being desired, for acceptance, so often hurts lives far more than adding to the fullness of being alive when the place and priority of beauty is misunderstood.
Whether we believe in God or not, the consequences of our actions are built into creation and are inescapable to every human living on this planet. We can thereby so easily miss true Beauty which we explore in the chapters in this book.
And if we do treat and enjoy sex wholly and purely in the way it was created for, will it necessarily bless us with a partner in whom we can delight in a lifelong love relationship—physically and spiritually experiencing love and beauty to its full? Will we by design experience intimate communication with a loved one on a new and unique level, understand more of what it means to be alive, the richness of a unique bond between two people, intimate communication, and oneness that will fill lives with meaning and enjoyment far beyond the physical, with the added blessing and delight of children, fulfilling our experience as humans born to this earth?
Did God design relationships, beauty, and sex to perhaps give us a better understanding of Himself, of His love, of His character, and of our purpose for being born? Did He design these to give us a better understanding about the meaning in life and death? He is such a vast God. Are these to help us understand Him? Do we need human experiences close to the
heart to unlock the secrets of what Real Beauty entails? What is it that makes us beautiful? Really beautiful. It can never be the plastic surgeon’s skills in the quest for a perfect body, a perfect face, neither makeup nor a tantalizing smile that only manages to hide the true needs of a human heart. I have so often seen the confusion in lives of these misplaced longings for beauty, for acceptance, a craving for the ever evading, for the mysterious deep desires of the soul.
And I see true natural radiant and serene beauty on the face of a spirit who found God.
References
1.The Evidential Power of Beauty. Thomas Dubay.
2.Langlois et al (1987)Infant preferences for attractive faces: Rudiments of a stereotype? Developmental Psychology 23, 363-369.
3.Goldstein, R. E. (1993): Esthetic Dentistry-a health service ? Journal of Dental Research. 72 : 641-642.
4.I Peter 1:16
5.I John 14:6
6.Psalm 50:2
7.Genesis 3:8, 2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23, Genesis 6:9, 1 Corinthians 1:9, 2 Corinthians 13:14
Lover
You came
gently softly
suddenly
filled my life
changed my thoughts
my heart
the mystery
of a tender touch
my spirit’s deepest need
the exact cord
slowly awaken
the dawn
new
bright
beautiful
unexpected perfection
of sacred feelings
stirring my inner being
emotions
new
uncalled for
out of control
making me feel alive
who are you
and why
you fill my very being
with who you are
beauty
softness
gentleness
my soul longed for
each day
it would grow
you overwhelm my heart
and when I see you
I see me
as if we were always one
bound for this time
to fulfil
and complete
meant in the lives
of you and me
one
our love unyielding
growing
in meaning and depth
we never knew possible
beauty abound
a faculty so new -
for us to comprehend
more of Him
The Lover of my soul
MCMLV
The LORD God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.
Genesis 2:18 (NIV)
1 The Beginning
Communication
Communication means life. Privation of communication, death.
We were created for love and beauty. Deep yearnings of the human heart.
We were created man and woman, male and female, that is. It could have been different—just humans, asexual with asexual reproductive capabilities, like some of the organisms on this planet indeed reproduce. Imagine a world with only one kind of human—everybody exactly the same—no sexual differences, no sexuality. How different would love, beauty, and communication have been? No need for two people to find each other, love each other, to delight in each other, and be intimately and mysteriously drawn together in love, and in a unique and unequalled expression of communication, reproduce. And all the consequences and complexities of the two sexes, but also the delights of love relationships as we know it and that are so much part of our lives, wiped out, never existed. Could have been. And one of the biggest mysteries of this life and so many books, including this one, would never have been.
There are people who believe that the two sexes came to be purely through numerous unguided coincidences, through billions of inconceivable random actions and reactions, unguided mutations over millions, or even billions of years. Why then two sexes, and not just one, or perhaps three or six? Or did it specifically happen so that we can experience, indeed comprehend, more of the meaning of life on a deeper level and live life to its fuller designed potential and significance and thereby understand the reason for our existence better? Was it exactly and purposefully designed, even over billions of years, as it is from the beginning—two people, male and female—and not merely happened through unguided random activities over these billions of years, so that we can have a glimpse at the character of the Designer?
Sex is between two organisms, male and female, at a particular time, and even so between two people at a particular time. And communication is pivotal in this process to bring these living beings, or their seed, together, whether plant, animal, or human. Only one factor separates us humans in this respect from the plant and animal world: love, a deep heart yearning to connect with someone else and more so spiritually than physically. In man, love, or the yearning for love, and therefore for acceptance, is the central denominator in communication, whether it is in mere interaction with another human or in intimate sexual love. With no love, nor at the least goodwill and its inherent iotas of love, communication has the potential to be very strained.
From the most primitive forms of life (though not all) to complex man, male and female, we were created. Most groups of organisms sharing our planet, and certainly the vast majority of animal and plant species, reproduce sexually: communicating, fusing, procreating—the cycle of life itself. But loveless except in man.
Communication, however, rudimentary and basic it might be in some forms of life, is central in procreation. Without communication, be it in the most basic forms in plant life or so complex and intricate in man, life on earth would not have been as we know it. Communication is vital to create the right circumstances for fusion, resulting in new life and thereby renewing and securing the continuation of life on earth.
Why is love pivotal in human communication and has no role whatsoever in any other living organism on earth—not even the highest form of primates? Is it perhaps because we as humans are the only living organisms created in the image of the Creator Who is love Himself? ‘Then God said, Let Us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
’¹ He did not merely create love, but He is love—God is love.
² Nor did He merely create beauty—beauty that is so much a part of love, so much a part of communication, of being human, and so much a part of human sexuality. God, the inventor and creator of beauty, is beauty Himself—perfect in beauty, God shines forth.
³ Man is enormously elevated above all animal life in communication, in beauty, and in love. Mr god, mr. millions of years, it seems a bit hard to explain this vast gap of love and language between the highest form of animal life and man—the average language in the most primitive population groups on earth has up to 20,000 words with its complicated grammar sentence structures versus animals with extremely limited communication skills in comparison. We were created in His image—in His image of love, communication, compassion, kindness, friendship, perfection, and humbleness, serving all that is of God and God Himself. And our hearts yearn for these attributes knowing ‘instinctively’ the value of these elevated truths – characteristics of God Himself and our mysterious, often subconscious, connection to our Maker. The reason we as humans have the ability to particularly communicate on such an elevated level, so vastly more advanced than the communication skills of any member of the animal kingdom, is to be able to communicate with God, so we can understand Him, communicate with Him, love, and adore Him. The word image
that is used in His Word comes from the Greek word eikon and means likeness, image, or portrait,
also related to the word eikenai, be like, look like.
(Compare the icons, Greek eikon, on your computer or smart phone). In His image, we are representatives of Him. No animal has even the faintest sense of his Creator. He cannot communicate with Him, neither love Him nor adore Him. Animals are not created in His image. They have no sense of God.
A unique and very distinctive human characteristic is communicative sharing. One of the most important developmental and uniquely human milestones in a baby, as early as ten to twelve months of age, is when he or she starts pointing to something, drawing your attention, and sharing what he or she is seeing and experiencing. And throughout our lives, we communicate and share our inner feelings by pointing to the beauty of a sunset, to a picture that we have taken of a memorable moment. After creation, God said that all was very good, and because we were created in His image, we can share with Him the magnificence of His making. Mr god, mr. millions of years, have you ever wondered why a man and not an elephant, nor any other creature in the whole of the universe would appreciate the beauty of a rose? The ability to communicate and the heart’s need to communicate, to connect purposefully and on the intended human level, are interwoven into the very fiber of our being. We cannot exist without it. Humans cannot function on the communicative levels of animals. We are very different from even the most advanced
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