Beauty Will Save the World

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In today's world we have technology convenience security and a measure of prosperity but where is the beauty?</strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>For thousands of years artists sages philosophers and theologians have connected the beautiful and the sacred and identified art with our longing for God. Now we live in a day when convenience and practicality have largely displaced beauty as a value. The church is no exception. Even salvation is commonly viewed in a scientific and mechanistic manner and presented as a plan system or formula.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Beauty Will Save the World</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> Brian Zahnd presents the argument that this loss of beauty as a principal value has been disastrous for Western culture and especially for the church. The full message of the beauty of the gospel has been replaced by our desires to satisfy our material needs to empirically prove our faith and to establish political power in our world--the exact same things that Christ was tempted with and rejected in the wilderness.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Zahnd shows that by following the teachings of the Beatitudes the church can become a viable alternative to current-day political commercial and religious power and can actually achieve what these powers promise to provide but fail to deliver. Using stories from the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and from his own life he teaches us to stay on the journey to discover the kingdom of God in a fuller richer more beautiful way.</span></p>