Month: January 2021

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Is Everybody Beautiful?

Back in the eighties, we attended a large Presbyterian church with a television ministry. Television ministry isn’t my style, but this was Presbyterian. No strobe lights or smoke machines or healing services: it was music and preaching. The preaching was both edifying and compelling, and the music was directed by a dynamic choir director with impeccable taste in both classical and contemporary Christian choral works. My husband and I ended up in the choir (they didn’t even vet us!) and loved it.

The annual Christmas concert was a big deal that included singers from the local university (where our director headed the vocal music department). They were almost all youngsters, pert and eager. One of the young ladies, we heard, had been a finalist in that year’s Miss America pageant—a celebrity!

During dress rehearsal an overhead mic needed adjustment, and our Miss America finalist, who was sitting nearest to it, popped up out of her seat to do some tweaking. I was sitting a few rows back and toward the center, so I had a good view of the popping up and tweaking. And I clearly remember thinking, “What a pretty girl. What a beautiful, trim body. You did some good work there, God.”

I’m not accustomed to thinking this way about beautiful women—not that I’m especially envious (or not since high school, when one of my classmates was an actual model, with cool clothes).  I do notice beauty, as most of us do, but that was the first time I recall giving praise to the One who designed bodies to be beautiful. It wasn’t the last.

What brought this random memory come to mind is this article in Quillette: The Attack on Beauty. The body-positive movement, according to the writer, is teaching girls that there’s no objective standard of beauty, that the cover-girl ideal is a conspiracy to keep them down, and that everyone—or every girl—is beautiful just the way they are. The article was inspired by “Scars to Your Beautiful,” an Alessa Cara song with this telling refrain:

And you don’t have to change a thing,
The world could change its heart,
No scars to your beautiful,
We’re stars and we’re beautiful.

Got that? If the world doesn’t turn its head when you walk by, it’s because the world is screwed up, baby. You’re a star, and don’t you forget it.

If messages like this taught young girls to stand up straighter and face the world with confidence, in spite of bad hair or teeth, that’s one thing. But there’s no evidence they do. Instead, plenty of evidence that many girls substitute whininess, defiance, and/or destructive behavior for confidence, because they have been assured the world should respond to them in a way it’s not going to.

The writer of the article concludes that pretending objective standards of beauty don’t exist, and that everyone is a “star,” encourages a narcissistic state of mind, “the condition of being enamored with one’s idealized projection of oneself to the exclusion of reality and of one’s real self.” One’s real self could eventually turn into a decent person if it’s not obsessed with imaginary stardom. But if everyone is a star, no one is. If everyone is physically beautiful, then beauty doesn’t mean much. And we know that’s not true. Even the oversize models I see in poster displays at Penney’s have flawless skin and sparkling hair.

In That Hideous Strength, the last volume of C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, four of the female characters are trying on dresses for a celebratory banquet (after the bad guys have been defeated). Rather than each picking out her own gown, they collaborate in choosing the others, and somehow the colors and styles complement each woman’s personality. The dressing room has no mirror; they are not to rejoice in themselves, but in each other.

We can appreciate beauty in landscapes, buildings, and flower arrangements; likewise in Miss America contestants. All the more, perhaps, because it’s fleeting: “the grass withers, and the flowers fade.” Sophia Loren was a work of art; her efforts to preserve her looks have hardened them instead. All transient beauty points to the timeless, original Beauty who made our eyes to observe it and hearts to respond to it. And I think rejoicing in beauty, without envy, makes us all a little more beautiful.

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The Blessing of Enmity

Isn’t it funny how we can hear or read the same passage over and over—study it, ponder it, discuss it—and still recognize something new in a fresh reading? That’s what I discovered early this month as our pastor was preaching through the first chapters of Genesis. Do you notice anything odd about this:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Okay, sure, you’re saying. That’s the proto-evangelion, the first prediction of a savior to redeem what the man and woman have broken. That’s the ultimate offspring, but “enmity” also refers to Christ’s people and Satan’s people, or the redeemed and the unredeemed, or the saved and the lost, or however you want to put it. Though a bit cryptic, it fits with the rest of the story. In fact, it strikes the first note of a prevailing theme, immediately after the conflict develops. That’s one mark of superlative storytelling, incidentally—and what’s so odd about it?

Just the first four words: I will put enmity. God is creating that conflict himself, slapping it right down in the middle of human history.  We’re accustomed to thinking that Adam and Eve created the conflict through their disobedience, and in a sense that’s true. But God didn’t have to punish it. That is, he could have let it all go and Creation would have collapsed on itself, and good riddance. Failed experiment, or something.

Instead, “enmity” is introduced. Some versions translate the word as “hostility,” which is easier to say and perhaps more relatable, as we’ve all experienced hostile relationships. But enmity suggests something deeper—more than angry feelings or continual thwarted purposes. It’s an abiding repulsion between two parties, like reversed magnets. Some versions translate the word as “hatred,” and that’s closer to the sense, I think. God ensures that there will always be enmity in this world between offspring—not just Satan and Messiah, but those who are eternally lost and eternally found.

But, since we don’t know who those people are, and don’t even realize the enmity exists until our eyes are opened to see it, we can’t recognize it in this life. Except in one place—ourselves. We are born at enmity with God, but also with the offspring of Satan, in our own conscience. Is anyone totally lacking in morality? Is anyone perfectly content with who he is, or how she looks to others? Is any soul totally integrated with its own interior compass?

Some people are more anxiety-ridden than others but, in the words of the Paul Simon song, “I don’t have a friend who feels at ease.” We’re all born with a sense that something is wrong and, if we dare to admit it, Maybe it’s us. “Is it just me, or does it seem warm in here?” “Is it just me, or was something a little off about that statement?” “Is it just me . . . or is something really wrong here?”

I will put enmity . . . deep in the heart. And that’s a very good thing.

Because, if he hadn’t, we would have all made friends with the devil.

We’ve heard of people—even know one, possibly—who seem stone-cold evil. Though it’s presumptuous to judge anyone as beyond reach, we know those exist whom God has “given over” to their worse instincts. For them, there’s no struggle, no “enmity.” They’ve made their peace with the devil.

For the rest of us, the conflict will go on until it’s finally resolved. My internal “enmity” keeps me on alert and keeps me from self-reliance. One day, the magnets will switch poles and cling without equivocation, either to life or to death. For the one, pure love. For the other, pure hatred. But no more enmity. Until that day, though, I embrace what he has put in place.