What do you find beautiful? For me it's a salmon or a steelhead in my net. For others it may be a song or a baby or Mozart or a painting.

How does beauty affect us? It arrests us and stops us in our tracks. It widens our eyes and opens our mouths. It amazes us, stuns us, and moves us.

But have you ever wondered where that sense of beauty comes from? How is beauty beautiful? In Chapter 6 of Telling a Better Story, Josh Chatrow answers this question using 'Story Apologetics' or 'Inside-Out Apologetics.'

INSIDE THE SECULAR STORY

The secular story about beauty and our sense of beauty is:

• They're just a by-product of evolutionary history that helps mating

• Beauty is just a chance collection of atoms, and our sense of beauty is just the product of uncontrollable brain neutrons. Neither point to anything higher or deeper.

Questions to ask this narrative include:

• Can you find something beautiful if it's just an accident?

• Is our wife or child still beautiful if just a random collection of atoms.

• Are acts of charity beautiful if they're the result of chance and natural selection

• Can this story explain our longing for beauty.

OUTSIDE TO THE CHRISTIAN STORY

• Beauty exists because God is beautiful and all that is beautiful is from him.

• God created everything beautiful and the perfect sense of what is beautiful.

• Sin has ruined much beauty and damaged our sense of beauty.

• The remaining beauty points to God.

• The longing for beauty is a longing for God and for him to re-create everything beautiful.

• Christians create beauty to point to our beautiful creative God.

• Creating and admiring beauty are ways to worship God.

How is beauty beautiful? Find beauty in our beautiful God and expose his beauty by worshiping him and beautifying his world in our callings.