What is Beauty? Pt. 1

To be a beautiful woman, you must be about 5'8" and 120 or fewer pounds, have perfect skin with a natural-looking tan, no fat rolls, no hairs out of place, perfect fashion sense, and the right amount of curves. If you fail in one of these areas, you are not good enough.

That is the kind of beauty that the fashion industry and Hollywood are looking for. And when they find a woman like that, they photoshop her to look even better. They fix the shape of her neck, the way her clothes lie on her, any unwanted moles or similar features, etc. All of this for the perfect magazine cover, so we all get the idea of what true beauty is.

*PAUSE*

 Notice that I used words like "not good enough," and "better." Those ideas must be lined up against some sort of standard. Who calls the shots? Taking away all the "middle men" and we get Satan. When he gets us to focus all our energy on one issue, to become depressed about our so-called shortcomings, and to spend time and money on the "perfection" he has designed, he has debilitated us as tools for God. It looks like Christian women in America need a standard of what true beauty looks like.

Have you ever read Proverbs 31:10-31? Beauty is only mentioned as a vain thing. Granted - physical beauty is, well,  a beautiful thing, but the real beauty is in a life that is lived to bless others. We cannot look like those women who dwell on magazine covers which say, in effect, "Ten ways to look like me (haha, you never can)." We should not be influenced by a culture that thinks more highly of a woman who has spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery, than a woman who has wrinkles, grey hair, less-than perfect fashion, and a matronly figure, but is full of wisdom and virtue.

More to come...