This fall, we’ve had more rainy October days that I remember ever having before. It’s pouring now, though for a few hours this morning we enjoyed a blue sky and sunshine. I grabbed my camera before my walk and took a picture of our neighbor’s glorious maple tree.
That tree takes my breath away when I pass by, and it makes me think about a mystery I once read. One of the main characters, a good guy married to the amateur sleuth, was an agnostic scientist. He believed in Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory and was a strong proponent of evolution. Within the confines of his utilitarian, scientific beliefs there was no room for beauty. The theories he subscribed required only characteristics that enhanced survival, such as speed, strength, adaptability, and easy reproduction.
But every time he looked at the brilliant October blue sky and the blaze of autumn colors, beauty smacked him in the face and assaulted his carefully constructed beliefs. Beauty forced him to acknowledge that the existence of a beautiful God would explain the existence of beauty.
When life gets hard and doubts about the existence of God overwhelm me, I think about that book. I don’t remember what the mystery was or how it was solved. All I remember is the agnostic scientist and his question.
What about beauty?
