Can you imagine a world without beauty?

Try to imagine a world in which in which every building looks the same, every song sounds the same, every meal tastes the same, every interaction feels the same, every plant smells the same.

A world without beauty would be a world of sameness. It would be a world without any significant form, which really isn’t a world at all, or at least not a world we can imagine. If a world without beauty could exist, it would be exceedingly dull and suffocating.

A beauty-less world would make life unbreathable.

Why then do we often treat beauty as optional? Why do we approach beauty as marginal or tangential to issues of health, flourishing, spiritual formation, community, and worship?

One reason is that sometimes we have a flimsy view of beauty. We think beauty is whatever is pleasant or nice, whereas in reality, beauty often has bite and grit and can elicit fear as well as comfort.

Another reason is the tendency to view beauty as relatively powerless in the process of transformation. Beauty may soothe, but it doesn’t save. Not everyone treats beauty this way, but tragically, it is more common for us to treat beauty like perfume than like oxygen for our lives.

If beauty is perfume, then beauty is there to adorn my life rather than sustain it. It’s what I might allow myself to enjoy once I’ve figured out necessary and serious things like truth and justice. If beauty is perfume, then judgments about beauty are limited to personal preference and set on a shelf as a luxury for the privileged.

But beauty is far more than that.

Beauty is oxygen for our lives rather than perfume for at least five reasons.

First, beauty is oxygen because it’s necessary, not trivial or optional. Beauty forms our desires, imaginations, and attachments. Beauty brings meaning, healing, and hope. And if God is beauty, then beauty is an essential feature of the world God created and whatever we make as those who bear God’s image.

Second, beauty is oxygen because it’s everywhere, not just in places, situations, or aspects of culture we deem pleasant or nice. Beauty is there in sunsets and storms, butterflies and black holes, healed wounds and empty tombs.

Third, beauty is oxygen because it’s a gift. Just as we didn’t do anything to deserve the life-giving presence of oxygen, so we didn’t do anything to deserve the life-giving presence of beauty. We take it in, day after day, and whether we realize it or not, beauty is sustaining our lives.

Fourth, beauty is mysterious and spiritual. This departs slightly from the metaphor because we have a solid scientific understanding of oxygen as a chemical element. On the other hand, there is a certain mystery to how this earth has the perfect amount of oxygen in the atmosphere for breathing beings to flourish. Might the Spirit of God hovering over the waters have something to do with it? Similarly, how is it that we live in a world with so much beauty? Might it have something to do with how God breathes out beauty by the Spirit and how we breathe it in as oxygen for our souls?

Fifth, beauty is oxygen because it’s dangerous and must be handled with care. Talk to divers and they’ll tell you about the danger of getting too much oxygen, which poisons the body.

Similarly, for beauty: there’s only so much we can take. God let Moses see a glimpse of his beauty, but only his back, because the full brunt of God’s beauty is lethal for mere mortals. Beauty must be handled and approached with care, but we need it more than ever.

We need beauty as oxygen because there is so much in life that makes it hard to breathe.

Life has always been difficult, but we live in an age where being people of faith, hope, and love has unique challenges.

In this so-called secular age, it is increasingly difficult for people to believe in a transcendent source of meaning beyond ourselves and our world. Philosopher Charles Taylor has called this the “buffered self.” In addition, our world is a mess, and most of us carry trauma from various experiences that make it hard to breathe and to hold onto hope. We’re battered people. And with all the busyness of life and all the pressures and invitations to achieve and consume, it can be hard to discern what truly deserves our attention. We find ourselves adrift and bored in the sea of endless—and often meaningless—choices.

I believe beauty is oxygen for buffered, battered, and bored people.

Beauty is oxygen for people who struggle to find meaning beyond the self, coming like a fresh breeze into the suffocating atmosphere of “me, myself, and I.”

To encounter beauty of any kind, whether in creation or the arts, is an opportunity to experience a radical unselfing. While encounters with beauty can have deep emotional impact, beauty is far more than therapeutic. It moves us beyond self-centeredness, liberates us from illusions of control, and can bring us into transformative encounters with a transcendent God who draws near within our material world.

Beauty is oxygen for people who struggle to find and maintain hope.

True beauty is not sentimental and can be found in dark and cracked places. In a time of racialized violence, environmental crisis, and growing inequalities, the beauty of the arts and creation can bear witness to a weighty, anchored hope, one that does not evade the reality of evil and injustice. Beauty can awaken us to see things as they currently are while also giving glimpses of how things could and will be. These visions activate our individual imaginations and collective will for costly action within situations of oppression, suffering, trauma, and injustice.

Beauty is oxygen for people who struggle with boredom and find little to love with abandon.

Beauty allows us to breathe deeply within ordinary times and spaces. Rather than moving from one meaningless day and season to another, we can be filled with wonder when we are alert to the beauty of creation and the glory of ordinary things. Through the beauty of worship, we can learn and embrace our role in the drama of God playing out within the mundane, where the story of each day is caught up in the cosmic drama of loss and renewal.

Beauty is calling, and it is strong enough to save the world.