(Read Part 1)

Apparently, “beauty” is at the bottom of the American-values totem pole.

In 2025, Gallup found that beauty was the least popular American value out of a list of 23 options, sinking below attributes like “wealth” and “achievement.” What does this say about our culture? Is beauty a dying virtue? How do we cultivate a better appreciation for God’s creative work?

There are two major reasons why Christians don’t value beauty enough. In part one of this series, we looked at one common reaction to beauty — namely a distancing for fear of sinful abuses. This view recognizes the allure of beauty and quickly resurrects barriers to protect itself from “worldliness.” In this article, we’ll look at the second flaw, that beauty doesn’t really matter: that it’s impractical, extra, and a waste of time and resources.

Few people will admit that beauty is non-essential. But many of us Christians have wondered along with the disciples in Matthew 26:8 (my paraphrase), “Why did this woman waste expensive ointment on Jesus’s head? Aren’t there better uses than smelling good for the next few hours? Couldn’t the perfume have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor?” We shake our heads in confusion when Christ looks up and says, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.”

What did Jesus understand about the woman’s actions that we and the disciples find hard to rationalize? Is there a place for beauty that practicality, or even charity dare not touch? And how do we defend the esoteric nature of beauty in a world obsessed with pragmatism?

Poet Luci Shaw recounts this humorous story of her uncle Max, a New Zealand apple farmer, in her essay “Beauty and the Creative Impulse.” “Hearing that a new book of my poems had just been published he asked me, with genuine bewilderment, ‘But — what good is a poem? What earthly use is it? Why can’t you say what you want to say in a straightforward way people can understand?’”

Why indeed? Why burn brain calories scouring the online dictionary for the perfect literary word, or burn money on a wall hanging that’ll end up in a garage sale? And for goodness’ sake, why speak poetically when you can just state the obvious?

Shaw continues, “Years later, I think I know how I could have answered him — that poetry, and any art, says something in a way that nothing else can, and that something that art communicates is so qualitatively different that it demands a radically different expression. Where linear, logical thinking may produce prose with a specific function —information or historical record or critical analysis or entertainment or instruction or narrative — poetry and art select and reflect on a small slice of human experience and lay it out there, a gift to anyone who is willing to look at it, savor it, and enter into the artist’s experience. The poet communicates experience in images and forms so precisely tailored, so personal, so multileveled that the insights go far beyond bare facts or mere usefulness.”

In other words, art reaches the soul in a way very few mediums can. C.S. Lewis put it this way, “That is one of the functions of art, to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.”

Perhaps an indifference to beauty indicates a lopsided view of what “being human” means. While arts and beauty may seem unnecessary in a strictly pragmatic sense, such a view cannot provide an equivalent to the qualitative advantage beauty offers. In my previous article, we examined a study that evidenced humanity’s subconscious wiring for beauty. It should not surprise us, therefore, that physical health and qualitative activities (i.e., enjoying music, admiring paintings, creating art) are linked.

For example, the simple act of listening to or making music has been associated with “statistically and clinically significant changes” in health-related quality of life, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of 26 studies in 2022. In another scientific review, Heather Stuckey and Jeremy Nobel assessed peer-reviewed research on the topic of arts and healing from 1995 through 2007. They conclude, “Despite methodological and other limitations, the studies included in our review appear to indicate that creative engagement can decrease anxiety, stress, and mood disturbances. … Use of the arts in healing does not contradict the medical view in bringing emotional, somatic, artistic, and spiritual dimensions to learning. Rather, it complements the biomedical view by focusing on not only sickness and symptoms themselves but the holistic nature of the person.”

In other words, we need both form and function in our lives. Pitting beauty against utility or utility against beauty is like choosing between air and water. We need both for human flourishing.

And now, may I flip the question? If God has given you the time and ability to make beautiful things, wouldn’t it be a waste not to devote time and energy to developing that skill? If you’ve been given the chance to paint little windows into heaven, or poetically depict the reality of life, or rekindle someone’s imagination through story and song, what is holding you back?

Being a Christian artist doesn’t mean the work must be “religious” by nature. Christian artists are free to marvel at the glories of heaven or wade through the sickness and evil of a sin-scarred world. French philosopher Jacques Maritian, in his essay “Christian Art,” articulates it well: “Do not separate your art from your faith. But leave distinct what is distinct. Do not try to blend by force what life unites so well. … [I]f the beauty of the work is Christian, it is because the appetite of the artist is disposed with regard to such a beauty, and because in the soul of the artist Christ is present through love.”

In other words, Christian art is “Christian” by nature of the redeemed artist and their worldview, not by subject material. Admittedly, the topic of Christian art can’t be given justice in this paragraph, but suffice it to say that Christian art is more than Bible verse paintings or worship music. God’s entire creation is available canvas as we wrestle through themes of joy and grief, healing and debilitation, good and evil.

Even if you wouldn’t consider yourself “creative,” the pursuit and appreciation for beauty is still for you. Puerto Rican art director Angel Acevedo summarized it well: “The very first action we’re given in the story of existence is an act of creation; bringing something out of nothing. For us, it’s a reminder that creativity is an innate gift; a timeless superpower everyone carries ready to be activated. We believe that spark originates from the imagination of our Creator.”

Shaw elaborates, “Though we cannot produce something out of nothing, as God did, we can combine the elements and forms available to us in striking and original ways that arise out of the unique human ability (designed and built into us by God) to imagine, to see pictures in our heads. And beyond that, to remember things from our past that no longer exist, and mentally invent (imagine) things that have as yet no reality, to hear sounds and rhythms and recognize patterns, and to translate them into forms which will strike a chord in the hearts of other human beings.”

Even as American culture designates beauty as the least important value, let’s recognize it as a God-given blessing to be pursued. If you are an artist, continue to develop the skills God has blessed you with and challenge yourself to share your work with others. If you don’t fall in the art camp, consider ways of supporting and encouraging artists in your life. (You’d be surprised how encouraging it is to be simply complimented on a piece of work or a snippet of poetry or a line of song).

And of course, let’s all take time to appreciate the greatest Creator of all. Pay attention to the colors of his sunsets, to the sound of happy conversations with friends, to the narrative and poetry he’s recorded for us in his word. The world needs more beauty. Let’s do what we can to show them the source.