Hospitable Leaders Create Beauty
Why Hospitable Leaders Create Beauty
If you had the ability to create something beautiful that doesn’t presently exist, what beautiful reality would you create?
Whether or not you think of yourself as creative, because God made you in His image, you are capable of creation. “But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. 3) When we create a beautiful thing, we somehow understand that its origin is in the spiritual world, and we instinctively give God the glory.
Sometimes the beautiful ‘thing’ we create is not a painting or a piece of music: it’s an experience. Matthew tells an enchanting story in his gospel about something beautiful that happened to Jesus just a few days before His death. He was enjoying an unhurried dinner in the company of His friends, reclining at the table as was the custom, when a woman came to Him with an elegant bottle of very expensive perfume and lovingly poured it on His head—an act of extravagant worship.
Instead of being impressed by the reverent generosity of this woman, Jesus’ disciples were indignant.
They said the costly perfume had been wasted on Jesus, that it could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor. Aware of their negative response to this gesture, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” He told them that this perfume had been poured on His body to physically demonstrate what He had been trying to tell them about His imminent death and burial, and that this woman’s act would be used to help tell His story all over the world.
I’m struck by the fact that Jesus celebrated the woman for doing this lavishly beautiful thing—pouring expensive perfume on His head—rather than what would have appeared to be the most useful thing—giving money to the poor.
Clearly He cared deeply about the poor, and throughout His ministry repeatedly emphasized our responsibility to take care of those in need, but in this case He counted this extravagant act as a good deed. Some translations of this passage render “she has done a beautiful thing” as “She has done a good work,” or “She has done a good deed.” The word translated “good” or “beautiful” here intimates that what is beautiful is good. And from this story, we also get a hint that beauty can prove useful—especially in telling God’s story.
“There are times when doing a beautiful thing—even an extravagant and expensive beautiful thing—is the best way to do a good and useful thing.”
Beauty is integral to hospitable communicative environments. Beauty creates a climate that opens people’s hearts to more than what can be physically sensed.
Abraham Heschel said that beautiful art, for instance, “introduces us to emotions which we have never cherished before. . . . Great works produce rather than satisfy needs by giving the world fresh cravings.”
Beauty causes us to wonder. It points us to God and good.
Some of the greatest minds in history make the point that we are more receptive to what can be communicated about God in the presence of the beautiful. French physicist and theologian Pascal said that “every man is almost always led to believe not through proof, but through that which is attractive.” C.S. Lewis explained part of his journey to faith as a longing “to find the place where all the beauty came from.”1
An environment infused with beauty is an environment where people are more likely to pay attention to whatever is being communicated. I think this is not only true regarding God but anything true and good. We can invest in beauty in any leadership context knowing that the people we are leading are more receptive to our efforts to influence them in an appealing setting.
1 C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (San Diego: Harvest Books, 1980), 74.
Photo by Gemma Evans on Unsplash
Adapted from Live Ten (Thomas Nelson) and The Hospitable Leader (Baker Publishing Group) by Terry A. Smith. All rights reserved.
What are your thoughts on the importance of beauty? Drop a comment and share them with us.
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