Beauty Will Save the World

Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

by Brian Zahnd

Review posted August 12, 2024.
Charisma House, 2012. 234 pages.
Review written July 27, 2024, from my own copy.
Starred Review

In this book, Brian Zahnd makes the case that Christianity - as Jesus taught it and lived it - is inherently beautiful. Christianity as we practice it today, when we meld it with power and politics, not so much.

As I began reading, I glanced at the copyright page and realized he wrote this book before the age of Trump. I wondered if it would have changed if he wrote it today. Then today - the day I finished reading the book - Brian Zahnd posted this Tweet:

Christian

It was originally a mild derogatory term for the first followers of Jesus who sought to be Christlike.

Humble
Merciful
Gracious
Gentle
Forgiving
Compassionate

It had nothing to do with seeking political power.

It still has nothing to do with seeking political power.

So I don't think the intervening years have changed the author's perspective. I do think the message has become more important.

Here's how he explains in the middle of the book that to follow Jesus, we shouldn't be after the kind of power the world seeks:

Our first priority as the church is not to make all these things happen in the world through political action, but to be a prophetic witness to the hope of a world remade according to Christ. Every redemptive action - political and otherwise - must proceed from our faithful witness. In the midst of a hateful, violent, and idolatrous world, the church is to be an enclave of love, peace, and holiness. To be a faithful church, the church must be distinguished by holiness. Not holiness as puritanical moralism, but holiness as otherness - we are to be other to the values of this present darkness. Christian holiness is not based upon a certain set of rules but upon the fact that we are from another time. If we approach holiness as a legislative issue, we are prone to get it wrong. And even if we are not wrong in our judgment, we are likely to be ugly about it - haughty, condemning, and condescending. Holiness is not that. Holiness is not moralism. Holiness is not legalism. Holiness is not puritanical rule keeping. Holiness is otherness. Holiness is prophetic untimeliness. Holiness is the transcendent beauty that comes from belonging to the redemptive future. Holiness is a preview of the world to come. Holiness is a picture of the beauty that is to be. To live now according to the beauty that shall be because the future belongs to God is what the psalmist means when he calls upon us to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." We are holy when we are other. We are holy when we transcend the dominant paradigms of present corruption. We are holy when we are from the future.

He finishes up the book by going through each one of the Beatitudes, the heart of Jesus' greatest sermon, which teaches the church how to be a shelter from the storm.

It is first of all vital we understand that the Beatitudes are not platitudes. They are not commonsense sayings. They are the very opposite. The Beatitudes are often paradoxes and deeply counterintuitive. The Beatitudes are subversive to the established order - they are the subversive values of the kingdom of God. The Beatitudes are the counterintuitive wisdom of God that turns the assumed values of a superpower culture on its head. The Beatitudes are the antithetical ethos to the superpower mantra of "we're number one!" The Beatitudes are deliberately designed to shock us. If we're not shocked by the Beatitudes, it's only because we have tamed them with a patronizing sentimentality - and being sentimental about Jesus is the religious way of ignoring Jesus! Too often the Beatitudes are set aside into the category of "nice things that Jesus said that I don't really understand."

More about the Beatitudes as countercultural:

It's also helpful to understand that the Beatitudes are not advice or instructions or qualifications. They are nothing like that. They are not dictates or laws; the Beatitudes are announcements. Jesus is proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of God, and with the Beatitudes Jesus is announcing who it is who is going to be most blessed with its arrival. Jesus is telling us in whose ears the gospel of the kingdom is going to really sound like good news. It is an unsettling fact that the inauguration of the kingdom of God brings a radical change to the accepted order of how the world has always been run. The Beatitudes announce that change. This is why Jesus says things like, "The last will be first, and the first will be last." It is at this point that those accustomed to confessing they are "number one" should squirm.

What Jesus is announcing in the Beatitudes is a radical reordering of assumed values; some will hear it as good news, while others will be threatened by it. Those for whom the long-established order has been advantageous - the winners in the game, the top dogs - are not really looking for things to change; they have a vested interest in the status quo. This is going to place Jesus at odds with the power brokers of the age - then and now. After all, it wasn't the poor and marginalized who conspired to crucify Jesus; it was Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate - those who had a powerful stake in the present arrangement. But for the losers in the game - those scraping the bottom of life's barrel, the marginalized and forgotten, the left out - what Jesus announces is indeed good news.

Reading this book gets me thinking about whether the way I live out my faith is beautiful or not.