The Beauty Paradox​
​By Stephen Reedy

I was a kid being lectured about detachment from materialism while sitting in a gorgeous church filled with expensive stuff. My angsty child-brain fumed at the paradox: Why do religions renounce physical indulgences yet dedicate huge resources to their fancy buildings?

The irony continued…

We were told that giving to the poor was the epitome of spiritual living, yet the church spent obscene amounts of money on its decorative upkeep. These funds could have easily fed many families, many times over.
I wondered if this was an isolated phenomenon unique to my side of the Abrahamic belief system spectrum. Alas, it was not. The Eastern faiths also had it going on! I visited Buddhist temples, witnessing renunciate monks living amongst gorgeous golden architecture and magnificent statues the size of barns. The same applied to the sacred sites of seemingly every belief system, including the lost cultures of the ancient Egyptians and Mayans with their elaborate pyramids... 

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