Thanks for sharing your heart so openly. It is interesting to hear how you see design. I have a question. When you speak of great design is that different than addressing my sense of aesthetics regarding a product?

Gary

Aesthetics is just one aspect of design. For a design to be a good or great design, it must have balance three essential components - aesthetics, function, and cost. Or to put it in a familiar vocabulary, form follows function follows finances. This is one of the key differences between design and the fine arts.

Take the 4,000.00 dollar table - the aesthetics have to be very good to warrant the 4,000 price tag. If the aesthetics are only worth 500.00 but it cost 4000.00 to produce, its a poor design. If the aesthestics are such that people will pay 4000.00 for it and it cost 500.00 to produce, you not only have a great design, you have a profitable one. In design, the aesthetics have to work with the costs.

The aesthetics also have to work with the function. It doesn’t matter if the table has great aesthetics if its legs don’t support it. It also doesn’t matter how much it costs if the legs are different lengths with the result that things placed on the table slide off. No one is going to pay anything for a table that doesn’t work, that doesn’t perform the function it is intended to perform.

Thus, in design, it is the bringing together of these three elements - form, function, and finances - that make for great design. It is why one can find great design not only at an exclusive design center, but also at a Target store.

In short, I don’t have the answer yet, but I’m looking. Here is where I’m at in my pursuit - both the questions and few answers:

On beauty, should not those who are closest to the Creator, who have the Creator living inside them - the Creator of beauty itself, be the most reflective of beauty, have the most insight into beauty, be the most persistent seekers of beauty? And thus, should not the places we have, whether our homes or our “churches” be the most beautiful?

And on the other hand, how can one let a child die of hunger to pay for a higher ceiling or more beautiful windows or more comfortable seating?

But then, how much different is this from when the woman poured perfume on Jesus’ feet and the disciples argued the money go to the poor? Jesus rebuked not the woman, but the disciples.

There’s a tension here that Jesus chose to leave as a tension. Jesus contextualized the situation. For that particular time and place the spending of money on a thing of beauty was preferable over giving to the poor. How one interprets this example to apply today is hard, however, as Jesus is not with us in the same sense.

We have a saying in my church “It’s not either/or, it’s both/and”. I think beauty and things of beauty are to be a part of every believer’s and every churches’ life. And I think caring for and helping the poor and disadvantaged is to also be. The question is not which, but what is the balance? If I have a dollar to spend, how many cents goes to the poor and how many to beauty?

In Mathew 25, Christ says how we treat the poor and disadvantaged will determine our eternity. The implication being that one cannot be a true believer and not help the poor. One could argue Christ does not make the same implication for beauty, but is not helping the poor a thing of beauty?

Thus I think beauty is not just in how we paint, or design a church, or play an instrument, but is also how we see the poor and how our life “plays” the poor.

And, contrary to a pervasive belief, beauty does not always cost more. What’s more beautiful, a formal royal garden or an alpine meadow in full bloom stretching as far as one can see? What’s more beautiful, an orthodox church where every surface is painted with a Biblical story or an all white simple shaker meeting house? Different people will answer these questions differently. A Russian would say the Orthodox church. A gardner could say either. Cost is not the determiner of beauty. And different people will define beauty differently.

There is a beauty in the simplicity of evangelical churches …if that simplicity is permitting beautiful things to happen for the poor. A fear I have is that we have simply replaced the biggest pipe organ in town boasting rights with the biggest audio/video worhsip service production boasting rights.

I could go on. As, for me, it’s a question with an answer in-progress, I’d appreciate hearing what others think on this.