Beauty treatment
Stop being ugly.
“The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” — 1 Samuel 16:7
My aunt passed away recently. A saying of hers I remember is, “Don’t be ugly.”
I imagine I was confused the first time I heard it. Ugliness is not a choice. You’re either ugly, or you aren’t. It’s just the way you’re born.
That doesn’t stop people from trying to alter the facts. Billions of dollars are poured into clothes, cosmetics, surgery, and hair care to make us less ugly. The results are mixed and temporary.
Eventually, I realized that my aunt wasn’t talking about outward appearance. She was talking about behavior. When you mocked or made fun of someone, you were “being ugly.” When you said vulgar or sarcastic things, you were told, “That’s ugly.” Throwing a tantrum, being disobedient, and acting selfishly were all behaviors that could get a kid called “ugly.”
She was right. According to God, ugliness and beauty don’t have anything to do with appearances. In 1 Samuel, he clearly says, “The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Worldly beauty is skin deep, but real beauty — and true ugliness — goes a lot deeper. It goes all the way to the heart. In Matthew 12:35, Jesus says, “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.”
In other words, despite what man thinks, you can’t be truly beautiful unless your heart is in the right place. And no one is ugly in the eyes of God unless they’re acting from a bad heart.
Consider this description of Jesus: “There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him” (Isaiah 53:2). There might have been nothing in his appearance to attract us, but there was clearly much in his behavior that drew and still draws millions.
What does this mean for us?
Of course, we should try to moderate our appearance obsession. Think about all of the energy we put into our looks. If you’re like me, it’s impossible to walk past a mirror without checking yourself. And have you ever put on a whole set of clothes just to take it all off and start over because you didn’t like how it looked?
I gather a little of that’s not so bad. It’s natural to want to look nice. It veers into a problem when we put more effort into our appearance than we do our hearts. If we were half as self-aware of the warts in our character as the blemishes on our face, how would it change us? If we spent as much time on our behavior as we do on our looks, how much better — and more beautiful — would we be?
If we really wish to be attractive, we should stop looking in the mirror and start examining our hearts.
Graceful Contemplation
The Unfading Beauty
He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires:
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.—Thomas Carew, 1640
Thank you for reading!
My aunt — a truly beautiful woman — passed away in March. It was a bittersweet occasion as we celebrated her wonderful life and joined together with many friends and family. I’m very sad for my stepmother (below), who is the last of her siblings — but she knows they will be reunited in God’s presence someday soon.
