The devastating fire that caught on Notre-Dame de Paris in the evening (CEST) of 15 Apr 2019 is probably one of the saddest moments for many in the year, or quite a long time in human history. When I watched in internet videos that the spire collapsed, the later destruction of the roof, and the aerial view of the burning cross-like fire in the cathedral, my heart have been breaking, and the night felt like one of those with difficult relationships.

Indeed, I am not a Christian but mostly atheist and firmly agnostic. But I have visited many religious buildings — the ancestor’s shrines and temples of local faiths in my hometown, Buddhist temples in Tibetan region, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and many other Christian churches (such as Hagia Sophia¹) in European continent. Quite some of my happy childhood memories are about going to the ancestor shrines, kneeling with lighted incense and telling my wishes to my ancestors or deities or buddhas, waiting eagerly to eat the votive food on the table later at home. In the recent years since I have been able to travel independently, the enjoyment comes from the appreciation of the arts, cultures, histories, and ideas of design of religious buildings. The world has two types of ‘churchgoer’, the first type being pious or habitual Christian believers; the second mostly tourists that have no better choices to spend their time in a foreign land, for often a church, or any religious building, exemplifies a great summary of what a culture can best offer, as (obviously) in many religious traditions, the best arts and crafts are used to decorate religious building for different purposes. And that, for any art lovers, is simply great.

But churches and many religious building shows something more marvellous. Religious buildings and many other iconic architecture, along with religious or non-religious arts, are great living records, expressions, achievements and proofs of our ideas, and crucially, our faith in our ideas. An atheist may say that religious buildings are built upon superstitions — or more neutrally, ‘unproved beliefs’, and hence their constructions are a waste of resources and time. But it is in such committed action per one’s beliefs that we can see human beings’ bravery, for the builders are ready to face the potential ultimate failure — that their endeavours are deemed unfounded and ultimately fruitless (for what they had aimed for). But such bravery is not limited to the builders of religious buildings; by exercising such bravery, human beings have, or would achieve at least two great things: the beauty in actions, and the beauty out of actions. The beauty out of actions is of course what we can see, listen to, read — the visual arts including architecture, the music, and the literature, etc.

What I mean by ‘beauty in actions’ is, perhaps in one sense, similar to the beauty one can perceive in dancing, which is the beauty of acting, movements, and the execution of agency in that particular way. It has been quite a long time — perhaps since the birth of capitalism and the pursuit of a certain realization of communism, that people favour calculating the maximization of positive results — positive per whatever standards they set. But being utilitarian in every bit of life is to be a calculator governed by economic laws. A good utilitarian is a good calculator, or a supercomputer of flesh at its functional best. It is a great achievement, but one may question if this is an achievement as a human being and of human agency.

The beauty in actions is perhaps, in another sense, more similar to the excitement we can feel and the beauty we can perceive in sports, in that endeavour for being faster, higher and further, and the skill that athletes have to perform such endeavour (sometimes in the danger of potential death). For believers, the truth value of beliefs is a matter of life and death. Not concealing one’s beliefs out of the fear of this death, but rather, exemplifying and supporting them, is a fair (if not great) example of struggle for the survival of our mental and spiritual world. Such struggle is the source and an essential element of human life.

The beauty in actions then is the beauty of human life. Religious buildings, in this regard, are not merely certain kind of architectures. They are the physical extension of our mind and spirit over the ruthless nature, and so religious buildings are spiritual by themselves even without the existence of God or deities. The destruction of a church is not a fall of a God or religion, but a fall of human spirit.

Last modified on 2019-04-20