Since we are made in the image of God, there is a place for us to
appreciate things for their aesthetic qualities even when there is no
immediate utility value involved in doing so. For example, when we set
the table nicely with flowers and candles, this has no functional value
in terms of eating, but it has aesthetic value that adds richness to our lives.
Similarly, the value that literary works have for us as believers
does not depend on our ability to wrest from them specific lessons we
can apply in our lives. Indeed, to engage with books on a purely
aesthetic level is already to be operating under the canopy of
the Biblical worldview. We do not have to discover a Christian message
in a work of literature before it becomes Christian, any more than we
need to do story problems about the dimensions of Noah’s ark before math
becomes Christian. Beautiful literature, like math, is already
implicitly Christian because of what it is in itself.
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