Scars and Redemption

So this past Sunday, at my church, Kaio, Mr. Matthew Dunkerton a close family friend and awesome guitarist ;) talked to me and some other people about Beauty. This might sound like a random topic, but in reality I think as Christians it is important to realize how central beauty is not only to us, but also to God. By this I mean that God initially created everything for HIS glory, but sin has marred the beauty of creation. By creation I mean not just grass and flowers and trees, but human beings, and slugs, and predators, and human sexuality, and music, and culture, and community. God created all these things beautiful. (Yes in their own way slugs are beautiful.) But Christians basically have the belief that sin has scarred and stained this beauty.

One thing that Matt reflected on, and that I continued to think about, is how we as Christians can truly comprehend beauty and even redeem the scarred things of the world. His example, is how some music may be used for completely vulgar reasons, like how some bands choose to write lyrics about hate, and self-hate, suicide, cutting, murder, perverse sexual acts, things that are very against God. But still even with this, we as Christians can appreciate and even thank God for how the chords fit together, we can thank Him for how tight a rhthym sounds. Or what a great fill that drummer just played. We can redeem that music and thank God for creating the people that had the creativity to bring about that great music. It is still important to keep ourselves from sinning because some things can actually cause us to stumble. Like sexual lyrics and things that may depress us, but a lot of things can be appreciated about that music. Something that I thought about is how some Christians have amazing stories of how they came to accept Christ as their savior. Some of the people that are Christians now have truly been redeemed from lives that had no purpose, and were leading down a path that would have been truly painful in the end. Like release from addictions to drugs, to sex, to feelings of helplessness and depression. While these things are bad the overall story is truly redemptive and we can give glory to God for the work He has done in these people's lives. Even the Bible is a great story of redemption and beauty. For me, this explains why some of the most gruesome and violent and perverse stories are included in the Bible. We can see through these stories that humanity was truly evil in the Old Testament, yet God chose to favor the nation of Israel and through it redeem the world. Even now, we can see that humanity is evil, yet God chooses to continue to reach out to people everyday with His redeeming mercy, he spares us from punishment that we deserve, then He showers us with His grace, he gives us gifts that we didn't deserve. I can definately apply this in my life. And I hope that seeking beauty and redemption from the scars of sin is something that I will be doing for the rest of my life.

In Christ,
Michael