Beauty and theology

Creation and destruction. Beauty and ugliness. We worship Creator-God, and when we create, we live out the fact that we are made in his image. On the flip side, when we destroy, we undercut the very purpose for which we were made--by turning ourselves into vandals, we in some sense work to unmake ourselves. When our agenda results in destructions, when our actions result in ugliness, when our theology results in discord, something needs to be reexamined. The call of the Kingdom is to shalom, a word that gets translated "peace" but actually gets at harmony--when everything fits together into one whole thing of beauty.