Several Saturdays ago my two daughters
and I frequented the nearby Fantastic Sam’s for one of our periodic trims. We were the first customers to arrive that
morning: even most of the stylists wandered in after us. In general, these women are not the
carefully-groomed fashionistas that I typically associate with the beauty
business. Many sport messy pony-tails,
and some come straight from the shower, their damp hair resting limply on their
shoulders. After signing in at the
computer at the front desk, most of them snagged one of the magazines—Star, People, Cosmopolitan, Glamour—that littered the coffee table
near which we sat and plopped into one of the seats in the three long rows of
salon chairs, awaiting their first client and chatting with their fellow
employees about how they’d spent their Friday night. Snippets of the latest episodes of reality TV
shows drifted our way as additional patrons trickled in, pulling crumpled Val-Pak
coupons from their purses and back pockets, ensuring that their cheap haircuts
would cost even less. My younger
daughter, Marie, asked if she could read one of the magazines, too. I glanced at the cover on top of the pile—it
featured a shapely starlet draped in a shred of netting leaning on a man dressed
in expensive-looking tuxedo—and shook my head “no.” Charlotte’s
Web, which she had brought along, was a much better choice.
I was third to get my hair cut. As she parted and combed, Jamie, the stylist,
complimented me on my hair color.
“Is it natural?” she asked. I laughed.
“Yes, even the unruly gray hairs sprouting
on the top of my head.” She reassured me
I fit right in with the latest trend in hair color: gray.
“We’ve even had several girls in their twenties
go gray,” she commented, adding that the bizarre craze had been instigated by
one or two Hollywood celebrities.
Later that afternoon, as I made up
hamburger patties to grill for supper, Marie slipped out the kitchen screen
door into the backyard, predictably clad in her favorite “princess” dress-up
clothes. I did a double-take and then
snickered softly. Two big wads of
Kleenex jutted from the bust of her frilly top.
But my amusement soon gave way to pensive, teary-eyed reflection.
Marie is seven years old. Though she probably lives a fairly sheltered
life in comparison to many girls her age, she’s already computed the message
that the beauty of a woman can be measured by her outward appearance. Not long and she’ll fully enter the ranks of females,
young and old, who will be tempted to base their worth on the clarity of their
skin, the alignment of their teeth, and the size of their breasts. She and her older sister will fret that their
waists aren’t small enough, their hips curvy enough, their legs long enough. How do I know? They are, after all, their mother’s
daughters.
The events of that day prompted the
following reflections on beauty:
1) A
Christian is a lover of beauty.
The God revealed in the Bible is indescribably
beautiful. Reformed Christians quickly
define God’s grace as the undeserved favor He bestows upon those whom He has
saved. It is that, but the word “grace”
also denotes God’s beauty. His loveliness
is reflected in His creation. Consider
for a moment a superb piece of music, the intricate design of a butterfly’s
wings, or a glorious sunrise. Those
beautiful things move us, don’t they?
Just as you cannot study an exquisite painting or read a masterful novel
without wondering about its creator, so the beautiful things in God’s world
cause us to ponder His beauty. If that’s
not true of a person, Romans 1 teaches that his foolish heart is darkened, yet
he is without excuse for his denial of God.
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| Sean thinks spiders are beautiful. :-) |
2) God’s
beauty isn’t visible to the human eye.
God’s beautiful attributes are reflected in the
things that He has made, but He is not a physical being: the things that are
beautiful about Him cannot be beheld with the eye. If you’ve ever watched a
movie about the life of Jesus, perhaps you noted the handsome face of the actor
chosen to play the part of our Lord. Or
maybe you’ve seen a painting of what some artist thought Jesus might look like,
portraying Him with radiant skin, shining hair, and gentle eyes. The Bible teaches it was not Jesus’s looks
that drew His followers to Him. In fact,
Isaiah 53 notes that His outward form and physical appearance were not at all desirable. Rather, it was His word, gracious and
authoritative, that drew throngs.
Jesus was (and is!) the image of the invisible God:
Jehovah’s beautiful, spiritual attributes shine from Him. Does His gracious, authoritative word,
applied by His Holy Spirit, produce beautiful attributes in you?
3)
One’s God or god(s) dictate what he or she considers
beautiful.
Many of the
gods of our nation are people who are outwardly beautiful: sports stars,
models, actors and actresses. Celebrity magazines,
reality TV shows, and the Internet are like so many sacred texts divulging the
lives of these idols, influencing how many live, what they wear, and who they
aspire to be. Consequently, Americans
spend an exorbitant amount of time and money on pleasure-seeking, cosmetics and
cosmetic surgeries, hair care, and extensive wardrobes. The Christian, who belongs to the one true
and beautiful God, understands that He beholds not only our outward appearance:
he looks on the heart. He desires to see
in us the spiritual traits that make Him so lovely, attributes, like grace and
holiness. The reality that any person
finds grace in His eyes, that he or she is beautiful in His sight, is an
undeserved and unmerited wonder.
Who dictates how you live and how you adorn
yourself? The idol gods of our nation or
the one, only, true and beautiful God revealed in the Scriptures?
4) Our
outward appearance reflects the state of our heart.
That being said, the Christian doesn’t care only
about the beauty of his or her soul. We
understand that one’s outward appearance does reflect the state of his or her
heart. God has washed, sanctified,
and clothed our hearts in the beautiful robes of righteousness. We care for our bodies out of thankfulness: we wash them and give
thought to how we clothe and adorn them precisely because they are the dwelling
places of the Holy Spirit and dedicated to the service of our God. Never must we intentionally desecrate or
spoil His temple. While we could all
pick out a number of things we dislike about our faces our figures, we still
desire to reflect the beauty of our God outwardly as much as we are able.
We also care for our bodies and appearance out of
love for our neighbor. We guard our
thoughts, words, and actions out of love for others: we tend to our own
cleanliness and appearance so that our bodies don’t offend as well. Also, many assume that in order to be
attractive a woman must dress suggestively, but true beauty never intentionally
incites lust.
5) Maturity
= increased beauty.
We live in a culture that equates beauty with youth
and youth with beauty. It used to be
that girls looked forward to the day they could dress like their mothers,
letting down their hems and putting up their hair. Now it’s not uncommon to see middle-aged
women dressed like their teen-aged daughters, their hair dyed the same color,
their jeans purchased at the same “hip” store.
The aging process is a consequence of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin: it’s
a reminder that we’re dying, and that death is a just punishment for sin. But the natural progression in life should be
that as one ages, he or she also matures, and one’s appearance should reflect
that.
The same is true
of the spiritual life of the Christian.
We’re called to be adults in understanding (1 Cor. 14:20), and we’re
commanded to continually grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus
Christ (2 Pet. 3:18). The Christian
doesn’t want to remain a spiritual child, nor even a young adult! We want to reach the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13)! There is beauty to maturity. It’s not a sin to dye one’s hair or wear
make-up, but the signs of age shouldn’t dismay us. The Bible teaches that the beauty of the
elderly is their gray head. Why is that?
Because it indicates a measure of
godliness and wisdom that the young don’t possess (Prov. 20:29, Prov. 16:31).
6) Indescribable
beauty awaits.
When he lived as man on this earth, Jesus’ physical
appearance was very ordinary. But when
our Savior comes again on the clouds of heaven, He will be beautiful to
behold! The man whose “visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the
sons of men” will shine like the sun (Is. 52:14, Rev. 1:12–18). On that day, you and I will be made
beautiful, too. Like clumsy, earth-bound
caterpillars metamorphose into a breathtaking, feather-light butterflies, so our
bodies–whether still alive or long in the grave–will be remade into bodies that
are immortal and incorruptible. Nor will
our souls be soiled with the ugliness of sin any longer. And forever we will dwell in the presence of our beautiful Savior
and the ineffably lovely Triune God.
It was that beauty that David desired to behold all
the days of his life (Ps. 27:4). Is that
your desire, too? And do you desire to be found beautiful in
the eyes of the One who beholds all things, the God who sees and searches each
heart?
