For Christ’s Sake, Look Around

Verum, Bonum, Pulchrum and the Worship of Paying Attention

There are three old Latin words I have become rather fond of: Verum. Bonum. Pulchrum.

Truth. Goodness. Beauty.

They sound wonderfully impressive when said together. Preferably in a room with high ceilings, old books and enough timber panelling to make you feel as though somebody ought to be smoking a pipe. They are also remarkably practical.

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have wrestled with the relationship between truth, goodness and beauty. Christian thinkers came to see these things as intimately connected with the nature of God and with the world He has made. Reality bears His fingerprints. Truth tells us something about Him. Goodness reflects His character. Beauty awakens us to His glory. Or as the apostle Paul penned it, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Romans 1:20a).

Increasingly, I have come to believe that learning to recognise these things is an expression of our worship of the Lord. Worship involves what we do with our attention. It involves the ways we learn to see, understand, enjoy and participate in the world God has made. As disciples of Christ, we are learning from Him how to inhabit reality. The mind belongs within that discipleship. So do imagination, curiosity, creativity, craftsmanship and delight.

Verum — Whatever Is True

When reflecting on truth, two ideas immediately come bounding into my mind: truth is true and knowable, and all truth claims are disputed. Those two convictions create an enormous playground for thought. If truth exists and can genuinely be known, then seeking it is worthwhile. If every significant truth claim is disputed somewhere by someone, then the pursuit requires curiosity, patience, humility and discernment.

This naturally leads me to wonder how a person can know what truth is and, assuming truth’s existence, what its purpose might be. Jesus said of Himself that He is The Way, The Truth and The Life. For a disciple of Christ, truth therefore has a profoundly personal character. Understanding and seeking truth is part of understanding and seeking Christ. Whenever I genuinely ask, What is true here?, I am turning my attention toward Him.

That question can take us almost anywhere. It can take us into Scripture and theology, but it can just as readily lead into philosophy, history, psychology, economics, mathematics, literature, music, architecture, astronomy or the natural sciences. It might place Augustine beside Aristotle, Lewis beside Nietzsche, or Ecclesiastes beside Schopenhauer and ask us to listen carefully to the questions each is raising. It might lead us into a conversation about consciousness, artificial intelligence, education, political philosophy, comedy, storytelling, architecture or why certain pieces of music can move us before we understand anything about their composition.

The world becomes extraordinarily interesting when truth is something to discover. Someone has spent forty years studying a corner of reality I have barely noticed. Someone has asked a question that has never occurred to me. Someone has found patterns in mathematics, music, language, human behaviour, ecosystems or history that reveal another small portion of how things fit together. As a disciple of Christ, I have good reason to be interested, because John tells us that all things came into being through the Logos, and Paul tells us that all things were created through Christ and for Christ and that in Him all things hold together.

That gives curiosity a wonderful theological foundation. Why does music move us? Why do human beings make stories? Why does mathematics describe the physical universe with such elegance? Why do children seem constitutionally incapable of accepting a first answer to the question why? Why do certain ideas appear repeatedly across cultures and centuries? Why does a joke work? Why do we decorate rooms, bury our dead, build monuments, write poetry and stare at stars? The pursuit of Verum teaches us to become students of reality, and for a disciple, reality is endlessly worthy of attention because it belongs to Christ.

Bonum — Whatever Is Good

If Verum invites us to ask what is true, Bonum turns our attention toward what is good. What makes a good life, a good friendship, a good meal, a good marriage, a good education, a good story, a good organisation or a good city? What makes courage admirable? Why does generosity have such an attractive quality? Why do faithfulness, hospitality, patience, craftsmanship and wisdom seem to carry a kind of weight that we recognise even before we have found the language to explain them?

Paul’s words to the Philippians fit beautifully here: whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy—think about these things. I love the expansiveness of that invitation. The life of the mind becomes a search for things worth contemplating, practising, cultivating and enjoying. Discipleship involves learning to recognise goodness when we encounter it and then asking how we might participate in it.

Goodness appears everywhere once we learn to notice it. It is present in a teacher who prepares carefully because the students in front of her matter, in a tradesman who takes satisfaction in work done properly, in friends who prepare a table because they want others to feel welcome, in a musician who patiently practises until a piece finally sounds as it should, and in a parent reading the same story for what appears to be the four-hundred-and-seventeenth time while still attempting all the voices. These are modest things, yet much of the goodness of life seems to arrive through modest things.

Bonum also awakens imagination because goodness naturally invites cultivation. We begin asking what could become more fruitful, more generous, more thoughtful, more joyful, more faithful or more enjoyable. How might this room become more welcoming? How might this organisation serve people better? What would make this meal more memorable? How could this conversation become richer? How might I become a better friend, teacher, parent, leader, neighbour or craftsman? A disciple learns from Christ and then participates in the life He gives, bringing care, creativity and wisdom into whatever has been entrusted to us.

Pulchrum — Whatever Is Beautiful

Then we come to my favourite-sounding word of the three: Pulchrum. Even saying it makes one feel approximately eleven percent more educated. Beauty has a curious power because we often recognise it before we can explain it. A piece of music reaches us before we understand the composer’s technique. A mountain range interrupts conversation. Light moves through stained glass and changes a room. A sentence in a novel makes us stop and read it again. Someone arranges a garden, paints a wall, plates a meal or frames a photograph with such care that something in us simply recognises that this is good to behold.

Scripture is filled with this kind of attention. The heavens declare the glory of God. The tabernacle is designed with colour, texture, precious metals, embroidery and craftsmanship. The Psalms delight in mountains, trees, rivers, animals, stars and seas. Jesus points toward lilies growing in a field and asks His listeners to consider them. That phrase has always struck me as wonderfully generous: consider the lilies. Look at them. Notice them. Give them enough attention to receive what they reveal about the generosity and splendour of God.

Beauty invites holy enjoyment. A painter explores colour, a musician follows a melody, a filmmaker arranges light and movement, a chef brings flavours together, an architect shapes a space, a poet changes one word because the right word matters. Human beings make beautiful things because we have been made in the image of the Creator. There is worship in taking something seriously enough to make it well, and there is worship in receiving beauty with gratitude when someone else has made it well.

There is also something liberating about remembering that enjoyment itself belongs within discipleship. A sunset does not need to become a lesson before we are allowed to enjoy it. A symphony does not need to justify its existence by becoming useful. A rainforest can simply be magnificent. Bread can smell wonderful. A garden can be delightful. A story can make us laugh. Beauty reminds us that creation is gift, and gifts are meant to be received with gratitude and pleasure.

The Worship of Paying Attention

Verum, Bonum and Pulchrum have increasingly become, for me, ways of paying attention to God and to the world He has made. They give me three remarkably fruitful questions to carry almost anywhere: What is true here? What is good here? What is beautiful here? Those questions can accompany us into Scripture, a university lecture, a workshop, a gallery, a kitchen, a boardroom, a cinema, a garden, a podcast, a conversation with a friend or an argument between philosophers who died several centuries before we were born.

They also make discipleship wonderfully spacious. Jesus calls us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. I suspect we have only begun to explore what loving God with the mind might entail. The mind can attend, remember, analyse, imagine, question, compare, discern, contemplate and wonder. It can study a biblical text, explore a scientific discovery, wrestle with a philosophical argument, appreciate a novel, examine a painting, learn a language, understand a culture or spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to understand why Bach can do what Bach does.

For a disciple of Christ, these are not excursions away from worship. They can become expressions of worship because all creation belongs to Christ and every genuine encounter with truth, goodness and beauty gives us another opportunity to recognise, enjoy and participate in His world. A disciple can study mathematics with wonder, architecture with curiosity, psychology with discernment, history with patience, art with delight and theology with devotion. The boundaries of our curiosity can keep expanding because the lordship of Christ already extends beyond them.

This is one reason I want to remain a student. There are too many things I do not know, too many books I have not read, too many people from whom I can learn, too many disciplines I barely understand and too many beautiful things I have not yet noticed. Discipleship itself assumes that posture. A disciple is a learner, and learning requires the wonderful admission that someone may be able to show me something I cannot yet see.

Perhaps that is part of what Verum, Bonum and Pulchrum offer us: a posture toward creation characterised by curiosity, gratitude and joyful attention. We seek truth because Christ is Truth. We pursue goodness because we are learning the life of Christ. We create and enjoy beauty because the world already bears the marks of a Creator whose imagination seems inexhaustible. In each case, our attention turns outward toward something greater than ourselves and, ultimately, toward the One through whom all things came to be.

There are books waiting to be read, songs waiting to be heard, conversations waiting to be had, questions waiting to be asked, meals waiting to be shared, places waiting to be explored and things waiting to be made. There is always more to learn about this extraordinary world and the God whose glory keeps appearing within it.

For Christ’s sake, look around.