The Beauty of the World: A Fingerprint of God

The cherry blossoms are out.

Every spring, crowds gather around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., to take in the fleeting wonder of pale pink petals drifting against a deep blue sky. The trees bloom, the photographers snap, and for just a few weeks, the city stops and stares.

Jane and I didn’t endure the traffic and the crowds this year, but we’ve seen them before. Plus, there are plenty of cherry blossoms around us where we live. There’s also a beautiful cherry blossom tree right out in front of our church. That’s good enough for us. But…

Why do we care so much?

Why do people fly in from around the world to see trees bloom?

Why do we stand in silence before waterfalls or cry at a piece of music?

Why does beauty move us?

This article kicks off a series I plan to do this year exploring the evidence for God’s existence. And beauty—whether in nature, art, or music—is often overlooked in that discussion. We talk about cosmology, morality, and logic (and we should). But beauty may be one of the most accessible clues to the divine.

Beauty That Serves No Purpose

From an evolutionary standpoint, much of what we call beauty is unnecessary.

You don’t need cherry blossoms to survive. Or sunsets. Or songs that make you cry. Many of the most beautiful things in life offer no survival advantage. Yet…

We long for them. We seek them. We create them. And we mourn their loss.

Beauty is, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, gratuitous and unnecessary. And yet…

Our appreciation for beauty is strangely universal.

All cultures appreciate beauty in some form—in stories, paintings, sculptures, poems, gardens, or music. All people, in every era, have encountered something beautiful and instinctively known: This matters.

But why?

The Argument from Beauty

Christian thinkers such as Peter Kreeft and C.S. Lewis have long argued that beauty is a signpost. It doesn’t prove God’s existence in a rigid, mathematical sense. But it sure points to a Creator.

The idea is simple: beauty makes the most sense if there is a source behind it—a transcendent Creator who is Himself beautiful and who created a world capable of reflecting that beauty.

Why would a cold, indifferent universe care about symmetry or color or harmony? Why would atoms produce awe?

If the universe is purely material, there is no objective beauty—only chemical responses and personal preference. But we don’t live that way. We act as if beauty is real, meaningful, and even sacred.

“God hath made every thing beautiful in his time.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11 (KJV)

Beauty, in this view, is a whisper of our Creator. A fingerprint left behind. A quiet message that says, This isn’t all an accident.

The Cherry Blossoms Preach

As I write this, the cherry blossoms are out. The sun glows through the petals. Children laugh on the paths. Couples take photos under the trees. Strangers pause, unhurried.

It is, in every way, unnecessary.

And yet it speaks.

Beauty invites us to worship. Not in a forced or superstitious way, but in a natural way. When we see something beautiful, we instinctively want to share it. Point it out. Reflect on it. Preserve it.

Beauty turns our eyes upward.