“Your beauty… should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit…” (I Peter 3:3,4).
“If I could only be as beautiful as the models I see on TV!” “I’d sure like to fit into a size 42 suit again!” “I wish that I were as handsome as so-and-so!” “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride and kings would walk!”
Seldom does anyone ever look in the mirror, at least past age 35, and not utter a few sighs. But have we gone overboard in the quest for the perfect body, the perfect face, the perfect exterior, at the cost of disregarding integrity, moral wholeness and inner strength and beauty?
Now this is not to suggest that you ignore the importance of recognizing that your body is the handicraft of the Almighty. The gift of life comes with specific instructions that you are not to abuse your body and destroy what God has wrought, whether it is through obesity, drugs, or overwork.
Historians point out that the culture of the Greco-Roman period had parallels to ours today, especially during the fall of the Roman empire. Society and culture had placed great emphasis on physical perfection at the very time moral and spiritual decay was causing the collapse of the Roman empire. Take a look at the ruins of a Roman city and see how extensive were the Roman baths, and the gymnasium where athletes gathered, flaunting their masculinity and vying with each other for the attention of beautiful women.
It was to people of that culture that Paul directed some pointed remarks. He wrote to the Corinthians, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (I Corinthians 3:16,17). What’s he talking about? He likens the human body to the temples where pagan gods were worshipped, but he says that God indwells the human body, giving men and women a motive for moral purity and healthful living.
What bothers me is not the desire of men and women to practice good nutrition or keep their weight at a level which their hearts can handle, or to see that children eat properly and avoid junk food, which rots their teeth and hurts their health. That’s well and good. It’s also within the confines of what Scripture says we are to do, because God inhabits our bodies as His children.
“OK then, you may say, what’s your point?” Glad you asked! What troubles me is the artificial emphasis confronting us today, which says you are no longer important or worthwhile when the aging of life puts wrinkles in your forehead and writes lines in your face–that pushes aside the youth with glasses and teeth that need attention in favor of the child who is beautiful with fewer pimples–the mentality that says if your figure doesn’t mirror a Hollywood starlet’s you had better consider seeing a plastic surgeon or don’t go to the beach.
Frankly, I’m disgusted with the physical superficiality thrust upon us by the media, which creates vast measures of inferiority and forces upon us a value system which not only runs contrary to God’s intent and purposes but creates pain at every level of human life.
I hope you are able to accept yourself as a person of worth and value and realize that God’s acceptance of you as a person isn’t based upon your measuring up to a false standard which society has forced upon us. I can remind you to do what you already know you should do: reject the superficiality and veneer that says you aren’t important unless you fit in with the “beautiful crowd” and strive to be all that God wants you to be.
Resource reading: Matthew 11.
