Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it's subjectively determined.
What seems unremarkable to one person could stop traffic to someone else.
I would add that exterior beauty -- like icing on a cake -- isn't
absolutely essential.
However, just going by my own spiritual experiences, the love I had for God was definitely reinvigorated upon having a beautiful image associated with Him. Up to that point, I knew He was beautiful on the inside, and that would've been just fine leaving it at that. But when I became
really convinced that He's just as gorgeous on the outside, it was like a B-12 shot in the arm.
I mean, in theory, He's likely the most gloriously beautiful entity one will ever lay eyes on, no doubt. That's probably why we can't see Him, because if we did our eyes would pop, and who has time to clean
that all up?
But believing He's physically beautiful
in theory and having a concrete image of beauty with which to associate Him are completely different experiences.
Just think of what an impact worldly beauty has on the heart. People can fall in love with each other based just on good looks alone. Now, why on earth would I let mere mortal beings have
that kind of an advantage and not God? Such attraction benefits mortal relationships, why shouldn't it be permitted to benefit what should be
The Most Important Relationship, the relationship with God? Why omit it based on some sterile, sanitized, churchy-saintly insistence upon seeing through the glass darkly and only darkly? Personally, I'm not much into such voluntary blindness.
If an image helps, I say go for it. God is the Author of all appearances, so whatever beauty you find has His watermark on it and was His beauty all along. He's just lending it out to folks.
"Know that all beautiful, glorious, and mighty creations spring from but a spark of My splendor." -- Bhagavad Gita 10:41
Just my 2.5 cents on
that whole ball o' wax.