{"id":9368,"date":"2025-01-05T23:51:34","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T03:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9368"},"modified":"2025-01-05T23:51:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T03:51:34","slug":"is-it-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9368","title":{"rendered":"Is It Beautiful?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Zahnd1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Zahnd1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9369\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Zahnd1.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Zahnd1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Zahnd1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Zahnd1-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Zahnd1-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We need to constantly ask ourselves, &#8220;Is this beautiful?  Is this thought beautiful?  Is the attitude beautiful?  Is this action beautiful?  Does it reflect the beauty of Christ and the cruciform?  If finger-pointing isn&#8217;t beautiful, then we should abandon it.  If politically based protest isn&#8217;t beautiful, then maybe we can do without it.  If the common man doesn&#8217;t recognize what we do in the name of Christ as beautiful, we should at least reexamine it.  If a particular doctrine doesn&#8217;t come across as truly beautiful, then we should hold it suspect.  Someone may raise the question, &#8220;Can beauty be trusted?&#8221;  I believe it can, as long as we make the critical distinction between the shallow and faddish thing that our modern culture calls &#8220;image&#8221; and the absolute value that our ancestors have always understood as beauty.  We can rightly evaluate our faith and practice in terms of beauty for this very reason:  The Lord and his ways are beautiful.  &#8220;He has made everything beautiful in its time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Brian Zahnd, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/beauty_will_save_the_world.html\">Beauty Will Save the World<\/a><\/em>, p. 31<\/p>\n<p>Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We need to constantly ask ourselves, &#8220;Is this beautiful? Is this thought beautiful? Is the attitude beautiful? Is this action beautiful? Does it reflect the beauty of Christ and the cruciform? If finger-pointing isn&#8217;t beautiful, then we should abandon it. If politically based protest isn&#8217;t beautiful, then maybe we can do without it. If the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,56,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beauty","category-jesus","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9370,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9368\/revisions\/9370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}