Nature and Grace in the Public Space

Our Headmaster, Chris Baker, gave a lecture today and spoke about how modern secularism has separated nature and grace. He went on to enumerate the consequences in art, architecture, and music. My class and I saw the fragmentation that has resulted but also a kind of broken beauty that peaks through and resonates at times with the glorious ruin that we are. He also showed the stark contrast between modern art and that of the Renaissance, which still largely retained clear delineating lines, order, and realism.

This led me to think about the relationship between nature and grace. Since the fall we have been in dire need of special grace for salvation while a common grace, where God "sends rain on the just and the unjust," has continued to preserve us despite periods of terrible drought. There is also drought that cracks the cultural landscape, when we, as a society, lose touch with special and common grace. Nature here does not refer merely to the natural world of rocks, trees, and animals but all of creation including human nature and culture. Nature is what is natural as distinct from grace which is supernatural. Grace replenishes and rectifies nature so that we can envision its redemption. But when we try to isolate nature from grace in order to secularize society, we end up with ugly consequences.

Chris pointed out that when we began to lose God's input in art, images of man and landscapes began to smudge. Clear lines blurred and we were left with impressions, surreal bits and pieces, mere cubes, expressions of painful interior experiences, and even machine like depictions of man.

Let me paraphrase Chesterton: The separation of nature and grace does not leave us with the natural but with the unnatural. O' Lord give us grace in our personal lives that we may transmit it to a society in need of you.