By Nancy Leigh Demoss
This message is one our culture preaches to everyone and especially to girls and women, beginning in our earliest childhood. It comes at us from virtually every angle: television, movies, music, magazines, books, and advertisements. In nearly perfect unison, they paint for us a picture of what really matters. And what matters most for us all, they insist, is beauty--physical beauty. Even parents, siblings, teachers, and friends sometimes add unwittingly to the chorus: “darling” children get oohs, aahs, and doting attention, while less attractive, overweight, or gangly children may be the objects of unkind comments, indifference, or even overt rejection.
I believe that our preoccupation with external appearance goes back to the first woman. Do you remember what it was that appealed to Eve about the forbidden fruit?
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it” (Genesis 3:6).
The fruit had a functional appeal (it was “good for food”); it also appealed to her desire for wisdom. But equally important was the fact that it was “pleasing to the eye”--it was physically attractive. The Enemy succeeded in getting the woman to value physical appearance more highly than less visible qualities, such as trust and obedience. The problem wasn’t that the fruit was “beautiful”--God has made it that way. Nor was it wrong for Eve to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of God’s creation. The problem was that Eve placed undue emphasis on external appearance. In doing so, she believed and acted on a lie.
The priority Eve placed on physical attractiveness became the accepted pattern for all human beings. From that moment on, she and her husband saw themselves and their physical bodies through different eyes. They became self-conscious and ashamed of their bodies--bodies that had been masterfully formed by a loving Creator. They immediately sought to cover their bodies, afraid to risk exposure before one another.
The deception that physical beauty is to be esteemed above beauty of heart, spirit, and life leaves both men and women feeling unattractive, ashamed, embarrassed, and hopelessly flawed. Ironically, the pursuit of physical beauty is invariably an unattainable, elusive goal--always just out of reach.
Even the most glamorous, admired women admit to feeling less than beautiful. One of Hollywood’s darlings, Meg Ryan, says of herself: “I think I’m kind of weird-looking. If I could change the way I look, I’d like to have longer legs, smaller feet, a smaller nose.”
One might ask, how much damage can it do to place inordinate value on physical, external beauty? Let’s go back to our premise: What we believe about ultimately determines how we live. If we believe something that is not true, sooner or later we will act on that lie; believing and acting on lies leads us into bondage.
Each of the following people believed something about beauty that is not true. What they believed impacted the way they felt about themselves and caused them to make choices that placed them in bondage.
“By believing that beauty is external and physical, I have never felt that I was beautiful. I was ashamed of the scars on my back and legs. I just have one line down both my legs and back from scoliosis. I have a straight back, but I have always felt it cost me some of my beauty. Because I believed I was not pretty, I have been shy.”
“I believed that outward beauty (my body) was all that was valuable about me to anyone, especially men. I chose to take advantage of that to get the attention I so desperately craved. I became a sexual addict.”
“My older brother got all the brains so I knew I had to find my own thing. I started working out a lot at the gym and getting really big. But even that wasn’t enough. There are a lot of big guys there. So, I started using steroids. I’m obsessed about the size of my muscles.”
“I have a beautiful sister, whom I adore, but I am plain. I have always believed myself to be inferior and that I must perform to be accepted by others. I see the beautiful people get the breaks in life. I just accept that I won’t, and I am in bondage to my perception of my appearance.”
“All my life I have believed that my self-worth was based on my appearance, and of course I never looked like the world said I should, so I have always had a low self-worth. I developed eating disorders, am a food addict, and struggle in my marriage with the perception that I am not attractive, and that my husband is always looking at other women who are attractive to him.”
Comparison, envy, competitiveness, promiscuity, sexual addictions, eating disorders, immodest dress, flirtatious behavior--the list of attitudes and behaviors rooted in a false view of beauty is long. What can set us free from this bondage? Only the Truth can overcome the lies we have believed. God’s Word tells us the Truth about the transitory nature of physical beauty and the importance of pursuing lasting, inner beauty:
“Charm is deception, and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).
“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful” (1 Peter 3:3-5).
These verses do not teach, as some might think, that physical beauty is sinful, or that it is wrong to pay any attention to our outward appearance. That is just as much a deception as the lie that places an overemphasis on external beauty.
Nowhere does the Scripture condemn physical beauty or suggest that the outward appearance does not matter. What is condemned is taking pride in God-given beauty, giving excessive attention to physical beauty, or tending to physical matters while neglecting matters of the heart.
One of Satan’s strategies is to get us to move from one extreme to another. There is a growing aversion in our culture to neatness, orderliness, and attractiveness in dress and physical appearance. We as Christian men and women should seek to reflect the beauty, order, excellence, and grace of God through both our outward and inner person.
The fact is, if we devote our time and energy solely to staying fit, trim, glamorous, and youthful looking, we may achieve those objectives--for awhile. But the day will come when we will regret having neglected to cultivate that inner beauty, character, and radiance that are pleasing to God and last forever…
(Check out Nancy's website at http://www.reviveourhearts.com/)
This series is continued in my next blog…
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