If you’ve flipped through pop radio stations the past few months, chances are you’ve heard “Beautiful Things” by TikTok star and American Idol contestant Benson Boone. While most love songs tend to deal straightforwardly with one of two experiences — either the joy of being in love or the pain of the break-up — Boone’s song tackles a more complex experience: falling in love with someone but being terrified of losing them. And the realities of God and faith are at the center of this great anxiety.
In the first verse, Boone croons:
For a while there, it was rough
But lately, I’ve been doin’ better
Than the last four cold Decembers
I recallAnd I see my family every month
I found a girl my parents love
She’ll come and stay the night
And I think I might have it allAnd I thank God every day
For the girl He sent my way
But I know the things He gives me
He can take awayAnd I hold you every night
And that’s a feeling I wanna get used to
But there’s no man as terrified
As the man who stands to lose youOh, I hope I don’t lose you
Then comes the build-up to the power-packed chorus — a half-screamed, half-sung prayer:
Please stay
I want you, I need you, oh God
Don’t take
These beautiful things that I’ve gotPlease stay
I want you, I need you, oh God
Don’t take
These beautiful things that I’ve got
Please don’t take
Boone goes on in the second verse:
I found my mind, I’m feelin’ sane
It’s been a while, but I’m finding my faith
If everything’s good and it’s great
Why do I sit and wait ’til it’s gone?Oh, I’ll tell ya, I know I’ve got enough
I’ve got peace and I’ve got love
But I’m up at night thinkin’
I just might lose it all
It’s a catchy song, and a fascinating one. One could read it simply as the lament of a lover burned one too many times in the past, or just of a particularly pessimistic person waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I think it’s hitting on something far more universal and profound: the fragility of the good and beautiful things in life, and our desire to cling to them and ask — or even demand — that God let us keep them.
An experience of the saints
Three great saints and spiritual masters were acquainted with the exact same experience that Boone is singing about, but came out on the other side with a profoundly different perspective.
Augustine
The first is Augustine, whose Confessions is startlingly relevant for today’s millennials and Gen-Zers. Contrary to popular belief, Augustine wasn’t a body-hating dualist; on the contrary, rejecting his Manichaean past, he appreciated the beauty and goodness of created things: “There is an appeal to the eye in beautiful things. … This life we live here below has its own attractiveness, grounded in the measure of beauty it has and its harmony with the beauty of all lesser things.”
He especially understood the delights of love and sensuality, which held him in their thrall right up to the edge of his conversion. But he also understood the great temptation to turn these lesser things into God. “These lower things have their delights but not such as my God has, for he made them all.” Having clung to different people and experiences, Augustine realized his restless heart still ruled him, and that only God — Beauty itself, who had played second fiddle to these beautiful things — would satisfy him: “Late have I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and new; late have I loved thee!”
Boethius
The second is Boethius, whose Consolation of Philosophy sums up the best of Platonism and Stoicism for the Christian world through the mouthpiece of Lady Philosophy. Boethius was executed on charges of treason after a flourishing career in politics.
Written as he awaited execution, the Consolation is especially attuned to the grip that wealth, honor, pleasure, glory, and power have on us — and the great fear we have in losing them as the wheel of Fortune turns. When we inherit great wealth, we are anxious to hold onto it: “The riches that were thought to make man self-sufficient instead cause him to need some outside protection.” When we step up into power, we are awash in troubles: “What is this power, then, which makes men fear so greatly when they possess it?” It’s the same with relationships and the pleasures of the body: “The appetite for them is full of anxiety. … Pleasure flees, and with tenacious grip hurts hearts, stricken by the sting.”
Boethius saw that we want to adorn ourselves “with the beauty of inferior things,” but it’s a losing game. “The greatest and most beautiful thing of all” is the highest Good itself, which is blessedness, and this “must reside in the most high God.”
“If you’re in control of yourself,” Boethius wrote, “you will possess what you would never wish to lose and what Fortune can’t take away from you.”
Ignatius of Loyola
Last but not least is St. Ignatius of Loyola. The young Íñigo had a passion for life as a soldier and all that went with it — a dueling sword, fine clothes, and beautiful women — but after a cannonball injury to his leg, he underwent a radical reorientation of his life toward God. Before that, we can imagine the young solider — not overtly irreligious, but certainly happy to have God serve him rather than the other way around — praying in the manner of Benson Boone: “Don’t take these beautiful things that I’ve got!”
But after his conversion, Ignatius would compose the polar opposite prayer in his Spiritual Exercises known as the “Suscipe” — Latin for “Take”:
“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it. All is yours; dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me your love and your grace, for this is sufficient for me.”
Augustine the former playboy, Boethius the former politician, and Ignatius the former fighter: All three knew well the temptation to cling to the good things of life that come our way, but wisely saw that this can only lead to anxiety and frustration.
All things must pass—and spiritual maturity isn’t in casting aside those things as evil, but in loving them only for the sake of and in reference to God, who indeed gives all and can take all away (Job 1:21). And where prayer was concerned, the first lines of Boone’s chorus sufficed: “Please stay / I want you, I need you, oh God … ”
And today we celebrate...