Why Beauty Matters — For Your Marriage, too!
Two years ago on January 12, Sir Roger Scruton passed away from cancer.
Wait, what? Who is that guy? Isn’t this a marriage ministry company? Why are we talking about a random English lad?
Sir Scruton is an absolutely incredible figure in our modern history. We’ve never met, but a single sixty-minute documentary of his completely rocked my world as an undergraduate student. And I went to a great Catholic university, so it’s not like what he said was particularly radical to my way of thinking. But something about the way he explained things made me want to become something of an advocate alongside him.
Even old at the time, I watched his 2009 documentary Why Beauty Matters (originally aired by the BBC) because he was coming to give a lecture series at my university. A Christian and a philosopher, he says:
But our world has turned its back on beauty. And because of that, we find ourselves surrounded by ugliness and alienation. I want to persuade you that beauty matters, that it is not just a subjective thing, but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need, we find ourselves in a spiritual desert.
I want to show you a path out of that desert — it is a path that leads to Home.
We know this. As Christians, we know that all things created by God are beautiful.
Beauty matters. Your wedding matters. Beauty in your wedding matters.
And it doesn’t have to be in the way society or trends want it to be. Your wedding is beautiful insofar as it honors your relationship and it honors God. That can be in a small, intimate COVID wedding of six with your priest and two witnesses, or in a 250 guest wedding where you shout to the whole world and party until dawn.
The beauty of your wedding can set a tone for the beauty of your marriage. It can signify that you honor your relationship with each other — that it is something to be elevated, nurtured, and celebrated. It can show everyone that this lifelong covenant that you are entering is a little glimpse of a reflection into the love of God for his people. The beauty of your wedding shows that God is beautiful, his love for us is beautiful, and his desire for us to share that perpetual, faithful love with another is beautiful.
So be beautiful.
Covenant wants to help.
Contact me if you need anything.
xoxo,
Marissa @ Covenant Co.
love@covenantco.org
I find myself rewatching this documentary regularly and always find some new way he worded things that completely takes my breath away. If you feel so inclined, the full video is linked above.
