Beautifully Hideous

Here’s a thought that originated with C.S. Lewis:

What if all the beauty around us (sunrises, sunsets and the stars) is really just ugly? Think about it. If beauty were truly beauty would we move on from it? Wouldn’t we sit and stare for undeterminable amounts of time simply because we are beholding beauty? There would be no need to run from grandeur to grandeur in search of resplendence because resplendence would be found at the first grandeur.
But as it is we grow weary of one spectacle and thus move to the second and third each time the scene growing more ‘beautiful’ and us growing harder to please. So now the Grand Canyon must be replaced for the Alps and the snow covered Rockies for warm beaches.
The reasoning behind this thought is simple: these good things are not the thing itself. The beautiful beauties are hideous comparisons and dull replacements for what one truly longs for. If one were to behold all splendors and marvels this world contains one would be left wanting, this is sure.
Beauty will forever captivate us but will never capture us. We are not simply flesh and blood; we are not simply animal. Half of one may be held in awe of the Alps but the whole of one will never be. For how can the immaterial be captured by the material?
The soul is what I speak of, why should it fall in love with a mortal thing? Indeed the soul will last forever but the mountains will cease to be along with the beaches. And is not the soul the ‘seat of a man’? So it would be reasonable to conclude that whatever one’s soul falls in love with then the whole of one will fall in love with.
If this were true, then this thing that captures the soul must needs be radiant. It must sparkle and shine more than any soul. It must indeed be more resplendent than the sun. It must be truly beautiful. For only then will the immaterial soul be captured by that immaterial beauty, and only then will the dull replacements be seen as gorgeous representations of how much more beautiful the thing itself is.
“He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Heb. 1:3)”