Beauty Is Your Destiny: How the Promise of Splendor Changes Everything

Philip Ryken

Reviewed by: Tyler C. Detrick

Beauty Is Your Destiny: How the Promise of Splendor Changes Everything, by Philip Ryken. Crossway, 2023. Paperback, 200 pages, $17.99. Reviewed by OP pastor Tyler C. Detrick.

There is beauty around you if you’re willing to see it. In Beauty Is Your Destiny: How the Promise of Splendor Changes Everything, Philip Ryken aims to “awaken a deeper desire for beauty that will lead to lives that are more holy, more joyful, more hopeful, and more just” (xi). In this pursuit, Ryken enlists help. He quotes generously from poets and scholars who have expressed both the beauty and ugliness of the world in words that are particularly poignant. The result is a volume beautiful in its own respect—refreshingly helpful and hopeful.

Ryken’s work is helpful. He moves past vague descriptors, teaching us to see the wonders we’ve overlooked. Readers will find a brief reflection on aesthetics proper in chapter 1, in which Ryken rescues art from subjective preferences by grounding beauty in the objective standard of God’s own attributes. “Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder, with a capital B,” he writes (4).

Ryken begins with the glory of God in the Trinity and then unfolds the beauty of creation, human beings, sexual purity, the crucifixion, the church, and generous living. An apologetic aim is obvious throughout: Ryken challenges unbelievers with the problem of seeing beauty everywhere but not being able to recognize its source: “How frustrating it must be to receive the gift of beauty and yet be unable to acknowledge it properly” (51).

Yet Ryken reckons with the ugliness of this world. Far from sugary sweet, this book is at times painstakingly honest about the evils in this fallen world and the struggles of Christ’s church. This realism gives credibility to Ryken’s work and offers a strong appeal to the gospel when he points in chapter 7 to the crucifixion of Christ as the place where ugliness and beauty meet.

This book excels in practical application. Ryken insists throughout that beauty must manifest itself in tangible, sacrificial action. He challenges his readers to commit to sexual purity, even if that means lifelong celibacy. He summons Christians to intentional hospitality. He contends that simple acts of sacrificial kindness are works of profound beauty. This emphasis on intentional deed—lacking in many discussions of aesthetics—is another reason why this work is so helpful.

Beauty Is Your Destiny is also refreshingly hopeful. Ryken explains that God is moving history toward a breathtaking conclusion in which believers will behold true beauty in the face of Christ. We endure evil for a time, but “beauty is our destiny” (4).

I walked away from each chapter renewed in the knowledge of the God who has made beautiful things. I found myself looking at creation with fresh eyes, countering the ugliness of this world with a hope that God is recalibrating all things in Christ. Are you dismayed today by the ugliness of death, the madness of the world around you, the confusion within Christ’s church, and the unmortified sin in your own heart? Ryken’s book will offer you help.