Sunday, February 6th, 2005
As we approach Valentines Day, no doubt some of us who don’t receive cards or don’t have a date or significant other will be feeling downcast and perhaps be engaging in much soul-searching: “Am I really so unwanted? Will I ever find ‘anyone’, let alone ‘the one’, with ‘my’ looks??” We will probably be in much need of consolation at this time and one quote we may be reminded of is:
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Remember this one? This famous quote seems to be the definition of choice concerning beauty amongst those of us who prefer to take the moral high ground. Encapsulated within this quote is essentially the idea that: “you shouldn’t worry about being ugly because “someone” out there will probably find you beautiful… maybe…“
Of course I’m not saying that everyone who quotes this has this understanding of it on their mind but those of us of baser thought (and I’m thinking of myself primarily here) would certainly interpret it, consciously or ‘unconsciously’, in those terms and use it with glee at that, thinking that we are being nice to people… How awful! Although I accept that others will not be quite so vain as myself and probably interpret it differently, when understood in these terms, I can’t imagine a more conceited view of beauty. It is simply another take on vain-glory. Even if used in this way simply to reassure one’s own self, it is still a demonstration of self-pity and self-pity is just vanity turned inwards.
It was the ancient Greeks who had the courage (or audacity) to voice this conceited perception of reality in the oft-quoted phrase by Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things.” Much as I am proud of my Greek heritage, this is one of the most destructive ideas I have ever come across. Protagoras may have been a philosopher but this was no philosophical statement — it was a religious one. It is the glorying of man (over and above God); the religion of humanism. If it is the mind of man that is the ultimate measure of beauty and virtue then no wonder people, especially women, feel inadequate all the time.
God created this world, a beautiful world, and he made us beautiful — in his own image– with a wonderful capacity for goodness and creativeness and senses to appreciate and admire true beauty. By cutting ourselves off from the creator and source of beauty, we have not only distorted perceptions of true beauty, we have completely changed the laws of attraction. What do I mean by this?
A person is not only body, but also mind and soul (ask Joss Stone!) In chasing after outer beauty and disregarding inner beauty we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. The Bible tells us that man looks on outward appearances, but God looks at the heart. While this is primarily used to illustrate how good works do not make us good people (because none of us have never committed adultery or murder in our hearts), we can also apply it here to beauty. When we look only at the outward appearance (and we men are particularly guilty of this!) and fail to spot the inner beauty or ugliness in a person then we have changed the laws of attraction because what makes a person beautiful is the complete picture; both inner and outer beauty are just as important.
In fact, outer beauty sans inner equals ugliness, whereas lack of outer beauty plus mucho inner beauty equals hot chick!
What am I NOT saying here…? I’m “not” saying that outer beauty is not important. People have some kind of misconception that becoming a Christian means that you have to ignore outer beauty. This is a ridiculous notion – if God created aesthetic beauty, then that means he created it for us. He gave us eyes to appreciate it and quills to write about it (well, Apple Powerbooks in my case but saying quills is more literary!). However, he did not give it to us for us to abuse and exploit. While it would be silly to marry someone you wouldn’t want to have sex with — and everyone can see that — what we ignore is that it is equally silly to marry someone only, or even primarily, for their looks.
What does inner beauty look like then? Quite simply, we are all ugly and filthy on the inside. If all your and my deepest, darkest thoughts were to be played on a large video screen in the centre of town, you probably wouldn’t want to be around at the time… Well, I might be wrong about that – you may have never had ugly thoughts about anything or anyone – but I know myself and it doesn’t get uglier or filthier. Cleaning up our act won’t help either because we are still damaged goods. Think about it, if someone gets scarred in a horrific car accident or fire, the fact that they recover from the injuries does not restore their outer beauty, does it. It is the same with us – we have been horrifically scarred for life by sin and our beauty can never be restored (and there are no inner beauty nip ‘n tucks or facelifts available!). What we need is a completely new inner face; a completely clean mind and soul.
Jesus, when talking to a very ‘good’ and religious man, explained how no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless he is first born again. The man, Nicodemus (read about it in John, chapter 3, the Bible), was very confused, asking how a man can go through his mother’s womb again once he has already been born. You might likewise be puzzled as to how I envisage an inner beauty makeover when we need a completely new inner face. Can we go back again and live a perfect life??? Surely impossible! Well yes, but there IS someone who DID live a perfect life: Jesus Christ. We don’t know what he looked like but we do know that he was the most perfectly beautiful man ever to grace this planet. His inner beauty was flawless, his virtue unsurpassed and without a single blemish. When he died on the cross, in our place, he offered to us, along with eternal life and a relationship with God, this beauty as a free gift for all who would accept it. Those who give up their lives to follow him receive this beauty and, for the rest of their earthly lives, this perfect inner beauty manifests itself more and more, as the old face is “exfoliated” (for it has died) to reveal the perfect, beautiful, spotless face of Jesus behind it.
One day, Christians believe, Jesus will return and we will see ourselves as we really are, JUST LIKE HIM: perfect and beautiful in every way. And what a beautiful day that will be!
If you have reached the horrifying conclusion that what I am saying is that Christians are the only beautiful people in the world and everyone else is ugly, then congratulations, you have hit the jackpot! Without the beauty of Jesus, we can only ever use make-up and masks to cover up our inner ugliness, however beautiful we are on the outside, but we will ultimately be exposed as the ugly things that we are and only beautiful people will be allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven… people who are beautiful on the inside. And those people are only those who have put their trust in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross to exchange their life – and consequently their inner ugliness – with Christ’s perfect life and inner beauty.
What attracts you? Whose laws of attraction do you prefer? This world’s, where (what is considered) outward ugliness is thrown out to the dogs with no regard for inner beauty… or God’s, who has given us his own beauty so we don’t ever have to worry about or feel insecure about being beautiful… at the expense of the life of his own Son…
I’d like to conclude with the words of Maria from West Side Story. I can say this today because I have the beauty and joy of Jesus inside of me. (’Gay’ to be understood here with its original meaning of ‘joyful’). You can too…
I feel pretty,
Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty, and witty and gay!
Tags: Beauty, Provocative Thoughts
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Friday, January 28th, 2005
Altruism purports to be the best solution to mankind’s problems through the selfless giving of oneself and one’s resources to others with no thought of anything in return. You know, the whole: “If we could only be nice to each other…” What could possibly be wrong with that? Anyone who has seen the film, “Pay it forward”, can easily see that it appears to be the most ideal solution to cure malice, jealousy and greed in this world.
There is one problem that it does not solve, however. Pride.
Of course, on the surface of it, it seems like altrusim is actually a kind of selfless rejection of pride through the putting of others before ourselves. However, we only need to look at two of the institutions that put themselves forward as the flagships of altruism — the U.N. and the E.U. — in order to spot that something is terribly wrong with this system. The E.U. is willing to help anyone, as long as it supports everything that the E.U. stands for, while the U.N. picks and chooses what it helps and what it speaks out against based largely on politics and public opinion.
In principle, both bodies are fantastic ideas and should be leading the way in uniting humanity for the purpose of securing a peaceful and more agreeable future. Any sensible and logical person would put their trust in these institutions and bodies as holding future of the planet in their hand. There is one big problem, however. They are doing all this without reference to the owner of this planet, without reference to him, who created it and everything on it (including us). God made this planet and created us, humans, to be rulers of this planet under his authority. It was pride that led us to reject this authority and attempt to rule the planet on our own. The wholesale rejection of God continues today unrelentingly, despite his revelation of himself through the Bible and, ultimately, through his Son, Jesus Christ, who provided a way of redemption to restore the original relationship that existed.
By uniting together in continued defiance of God, whether under the flag of Naziism or under the altruistic flag of the United Nations or the European Union, mankind is sending a clear message to God. It is a message that hasn’t changed in 5000 years and it says: WE CAN DO IT WITHOUT YOU! THIS IS OUR PLANET! Sound controversial? There is actually little to separate the basic purpose behind Naziism and today’s altrusim – they both desire to achieve a better and greater humanity, they simply have a very different way of going about this. The whole German nation was convinced by the deception of the Nazis so what makes us think we would be any better? Having rejected the idea that humankind can be perfected through eugenics, we’ve now bought into the idea that it can be improved through politics and great ‘tolerance’, when the atrocities abound and increase every day. Ultimately, all we are trying to do is rule the world without God.
Underlying all this is pride, the original sin – it is recognised and described in Greek tragedy as ‘hubris’ (loosely defined as arrogance against the Gods) and it is the unpleasant (I would say, horrific) reality of the world today. Like it or not, we are building another Tower of Babel through such institutions as the E.U. and the U.N., which are both gaining increasing power today, as mankind seeks a solution to all the bloodshed and wars of the past century. The Tower of Babel had the same idea behind it – to unite all the peoples of the world together so that everyone could live in peace. They did this in defiance of God, however, aiming to reach heaven itself (“the sky’s the limit”!). If anyone remembers what happened with the tower of Babel, however, God came and personally put a stop to it. We should be scared, especially when the parliament building of the European Union is purposefully based on Bruegel’s painting of (yes, you guessed it) the Tower of Babel. When questioned about this, an E.U. official very simply and honestly explained why – “What they started, we will finish…”
God will not allow our rebellion to continue. I do not believe in conspiracy theories. What I do believe in is the sinfulness of man and the sovereignty of a Holy God. This is not our world, it is God’s. He will come and put a stop to our feeble attempts to ignore him and the punishment is far worse than we could possibly imagine, so I’m not even going to try and describe it.
The reason why Christians speak to other people about Jesus is because they have been shown love by God, who does not desire than anyone should be punished, and they are compelled by that love to tell this Good News to others, that anyone can receive the love of God through Jesus Christ and enter his kingdom as his child. The call of the gospel is very simple: repent (turn from sin) and believe (put Jesus Christ in charge). This is open to all, an invitation to join God’s Kingdom.
You ask, why on earth should he accept us back? But he has and he has made it possible through Jesus’ death on the cross, which has covered our sin, if we would put our trust in him.
The riches of God’s grace in giving us everything when we deserve nothing cannot be fathomed. To ignore this call would certainly be unforgiveable, irrational and fatal.
I close with the words of John Lennon. What a great artist… but what a foolish man (if he believed the words he sang). This summarises both altrusim… and man’s rebellion against God.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no country
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
living life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
It is only a dream and, left up to man, will never come true. God has given us (the) Truth, Life and Grace (the means to live now) through his Son, Jesus Christ.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Tags: Apologetics, Provocative Thoughts
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