[Note: Originally posted July 2011.]

Whenever I speak at conferences or churches about the nature of the arts, I inevitably get bogged down about one third into my presentation.  Some daring soul near the back of the room will raise his or her hand—often a young person or college student—and ask a brutally honest question: “Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?”  And that’s when the firestorm begins.

Many intelligent and inspired people far smarter than I have written volumes on the subject of beauty over the centuries.  So to attempt to speak on the subject of beauty is, by definition, to talk over one’s head.  I myself have written briefly about this issue in my previous book, Imagine That, and blogged and spoken on this issue a number of times.  Which is to say that I attempt to speak of things great and transcendent.  So these firestorms…