As Gene Edward Veith has said in The Gift of Art, "Beauty is an appropriate end in itself--the garments [for the tabernacle] were to be made for beauty. The inventor of color, of form, of texture, the author of all natural beauties, values the aesthetic dimension for its own sake. According to the clear statements of Scripture, art has its place in the will of God." . . .

The tragedy is that so many Christians, in their revulsion at the perverse aspects of such art, shun all art, even that which may spring from a God-honoring imagination. . . . The other "Christian" alternative is a conservatism that responds only to kitsch, a sentimental art of the Hallmark greeting card variety that cheapens true sentiment, turning it into sweetness and light or mere moralistic propaganda--no teeth, no guts, no muscle, no reality. No real Christianity, either, if we consider the Creator's work as our powerful, radical model.

Luci Shaw, "Beauty and the Creative Impulse"