Can Beauty Come From Judgment

Can Beauty Come From Judgment?

Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

As some of you know my wife and I took a recent vacation to Colorado and then on to the Grand Canyon and back home to the great state of Texas. When we first announced this many people told us of the beauty of both places and the how they love to see the majesty of God in those places.

I do not know at times if it is a blessing or curse, but I tend to think a bit differently then some folks. I am not a mountain man as I abhor snow. I do not even like to see it on a postcard. Hills and such with trees on them speak life to me whereas the highest peaks are normally bare rock sometimes buried under snow and that speaks death to me. The Grand Canyon is just a big hole in the ground. I guess having been in Europe and Asia and around the country has me to where a lake is a lake, a river is a river, a mountain is a mountain. The grandeur or wonder is gone for me.

The trouble is that we have all grown up living in a garbage can and we have found things in the pile that like crows we find shiny. You say, “Hey, God created this world! It is beautiful!” Well, yes and no. This is not the world and universe that God created. We are now in the world and universe that sin created. He does not say anymore that it is very good because it is very bad.

Keith Green once said during one of his concerts that “If God created the earth in six days and it is taking Him two thousand years to create our homes in Heaven, we're livin' in a garbage can, Man!” He is right in two ways. Indeed, six days versus two thousand years should mean some awesome construction going on. Yet again, it may well have been completed long ago. He is waiting for the last resident of Heaven in this age to be saved so the time may not be about construction but of salvation.

He is also right because of the Fall and especially the Flood, we are living in a garbage can that has been kicked over and spilled all over the universe.

Isa 55:

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

These verses have many applications in our lives, but what does God see when He looks at the earth and universe? He sees sin, death and destruction. None of that was in the universe He created. Indeed, nothing here is like what He created. It may be similar, but in a mutated, weakened, and dying form.

Even our blue sky is thought to have been pink before the Flood. A fellow in Glen Rose, TX has done experiments with pink light. Insects in a pink light atmosphere actually grow larger and live longer. So God is not a Tar Heel fan because the sky He created was not Carolina blue. Oxygen levels and other atmospheric conditions were far different than now.

Imagine what creatures looked like if they lived longer and grew larger. The Komodo dragon lives 20 years and grows a foot a year. What if it lived one or two hundred years before the Flood? I do not want to meet the 20 foot version let alone the two hundred foot model.

If the sky was pink, was the water blue? What other plants might be a different color under a pink sky? Nutrients in the earth were greater. How tall did the redwoods grow? Was your favorite bush a tree? The changes are noticeable in the fossil record for many creatures are extinct and yet some have remained almost the same through the millenniums. Dragonflies are nice to look at now, but ones with wingspans of two feet might be menacing.

What did people look like? What was considered beautiful back then? Beauty standards have been extremely different over the centuries by the numerous cultures. What did Adam and Eve look like? Were they fit and trim as we see it? Did they look like bodybuilders? We know their were groups of people who were quite tall and mighty. Too bad, there was no FaceBook back then.

Gen 7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

The flood waters were 22.5 feet above the mountains. We do not know how tall mountains were before the flood, but with the breaking up of the earth to allow the subterranean waters to come up and the crashing down of the ice barrier above the earth there had to be violent upheavals and changes in tides as well as volcanic action and buckling of the crust which certainly increased the size of mountains and the depth of valleys and canyons. The erosion factor is mind boggling.