What may be known about God is plain to us, because God has made it plain to us (Romans 1:19). “Ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?” (Job 12:7-9).

All design is born of a purpose, and the purpose of the world’s design is to reveal God. We know this because He has told us so in His Word, which is the other half of His creation. Nature, in all its splendor, is incomplete apart from a biblical reference point, and unless it is seen through the eyes of Scripture, it can only be seen dimly.

This is well stated by James Jordan in his book, Through New Eyes: “When we look at the stars, we imagine millions of suns very far away from us. There are Cepheid variables, double stars, neutron stars, galaxies, and quasars. In the Bible, however, stars are given as ‘signs and seasons, and for days and years’ (Genesis 1:14), ‘because the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork’ (Psalm 19:1). While the biblical perspective does not invalidate telescopic investigation of the starry heaven, could it be that we are not seeing all we should see when we look at the stars? Do we need new eyes?”

The vision of secular science is poor, and the consequences of its faulty worldview are serious. Denying God, it has blinded itself to His revelation in nature, and limited its view to half-truth: it can see the world’s form, but not its function. It understands how things work, but not why they work—that knowledge can only come from their Designer. Truth comes from the Spirit of truth (John 16:13), and in His light we see light (Psalm 36:9).

Because design requires a designer, and the perfect design of nature cannot be denied, secular science is faced with a dilemma: to grant nature’s design, it must acknowledge God, and to claim it is an accident, it must deny reality. Its solution is to defy logic and hold to both premises by worshiping nature as a self-created god. Thus, it has “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). We have paid dearly for embracing this blindness, letting our eyes be dimmed to the full glory of God’s creation. But by focusing on both halves of the art of God, we may again see its beauty.

The visual design of God’s art uses line, shape, form, texture, color, and pattern to convey its message. Moving from simple to complex, each adds a new dimension to its predecessor, giving more information to the overall design.

Before looking at the elements in God’s earthly design, however, we must consider His design of the Bible. It is the key that unlocks our understanding of the full art of God.