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    Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity
    Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity
    Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity
    Audiobook6 hours

    Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

    Written by Brian Zahnd

    Narrated by David Cochran Heath

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    About this audiobook

    In today's world we have technology, convenience, security, and a measure of prosperity, but where is the beauty? For thousands of years, artists, sages, philosophers, and theologians have connected the beautiful and the sacred and identified art with our longing for God. Now we live in a day when convenience and practicality have largely displaced beauty as a value. The church is no exception. Even salvation is commonly viewed in a scientific and mechanistic manner and presented as a plan, system, or formula. In Beauty Will Save the World, Brian Zahnd presents the argument that this loss of beauty as a principal value has been disastrous for Western culture, and especially for the church. The full message of the beauty of the gospel has been replaced by our desires to satisfy our material needs, to empirically prove our faith, and to establish political power in our world--the exact same things that Christ was tempted with and rejected in the wilderness.Zahnd shows that by following the teachings of the Beatitudes, the church can become a viable alternative to current-day political, commercial, and religious power and can actually achieve what these powers promise to provide but fail to deliver. Using stories from the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and from his own life, he teaches us to stay on the journey to discover the kingdom of God in a fuller, richer, more beautiful, way.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChristianAudio.com
    Release dateApr 23, 2018
    ISBN9781545903391
    Author

    Brian Zahnd

    Brian Zahnd is the founder and lead pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. Known for his theologically informed preaching and his embrace of the deep and long history of the church, Zahnd provides a forum for pastors to engage with leading theologians and is a frequent conference speaker. He is the author of several books, including When Everything's on Fire, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, A Farewell to Mars, and Beauty Will Save the World.

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    Reviews for Beauty Will Save the World

    5/5

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    • 5/5
      Thank you for pointing towards the cross in Christ’s way a world of crosses.
    • 4/5
      Brian Zahnd does an excellent job at extrapolating the many beautiful qualities of the life and message of Christ and examining them in light of how they relate to believers and our interaction with the world in which we live. My favorite chapter was the last one, "A Shelter from the Storm" in which he carefully examines the Beatitudes of Jesus. This chapter, along with the entire book will challenge your faith, especially for those Christians who are caught up in the systems of this world. Zahnd does a great job contrasting the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of this world and shows the huge difference between them. A person can ultimately choose to live contently in the kingdoms of this world and all that it has to offer, or live in the beautiful kingdom of God, void of violence, greed, ugliness, and power. So, what is the beauty that saves the world. The beauty that saves the world is the cross.Some of my favorite quotes from this book are:Instead of angry protesters shaking our fists at a secular culture, we should be joyful singers transforming the secular with the sacred.Christianity as the ongoing expression of the Jesus story lived out in the lives of individuals and in the heart of society is a beauty that can redeem the world.The cross is the beauty of Christianity because it is at the cross that we encounter cosuffering love and costly forgiveness in its most beautiful form.When we lose sight of the subtle beauty of the cruciform we become seduced by the power, prestige, and pragmatism of politics.Christ persuades, not by the force of Caesar, but by the beauty of love.True morality consists in how well we care for one another, not what sort of behaviour we wish to impose on one another.If Christ can transform the Roman instrument of execution into a thing of beauty, there is hope that in Christ all things can be made beautiful.Ultimate truth is not power enforced through violence, but love expressed through forgiveness.The vision of God is always grossly distorted when viewed through the bloody lens of violent pragmatism and vehement nationalism.The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the Father's validation and vindication of His Son.