I have lately been wondering about beauty. All humans have some sort of concept of beauty, granted they will differ between different people but it is a concept that is there, no matter who you are.
We have different cultural examples here and there of what beauty is. The American example of course is that women should have a large bust but a comparatively small body and a man should be a chiseled piece of rock. And there are numerous other things.
But in embracing this idea, I had to ask myself "What is beauty?"
Because I don't think that beauty can only be appearance based but, at the same time if we want to say that immaterial things can contribute to the concept, there has to be a time and place where the physical ideas of beauty has to captivate us before we can understand the immaterial beauty.
I don't think we can understand physical beauty though without an appreciation of a immaterial or spiritual beauty. And if there is truly an immaterial beauty what do we gauge that by?
I think that we have to gauge beauty by what God says about man.
I remember a while back seeing a commercial about a group that was promoting positive self-image. And it was having people, especially young women, promising to see themselves as beautiful. And my gut reaction was "What are you saying is beautiful?"
And I've been stuck in this place. What is beauty? What does God say beauty is? What is finding worth in my Savior?
I think God would probably say that being beautiful is perusing conformation and transformation to His Image.
I find my beauty in Christ my Savior, who has presented me a chance to conform to the Image of God.
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2 comments:
Beauty is anything that God has created. Uglyness is a perversion of that original design. Where as a beautiful women can be beautiful if she holds herself modestly and is only revealing to her husband, that same woman can cheapen and make ugly that act by giving it freely or for profit.
God created us for his pleasure, for his enjoyment. When we worship anything else by giving it our attention or our hearts more than him, that is ugly and that is sin. When we worship Him in our lives, that is beauty.
Great thoughts! I can see where you wrestle with getting your mind around it. I do too. I was reading some John Eldridge lately and he was talking about beauty. Something he said resonated with me; that beauty is something deeply essential to who God is. I think that's true of both human beauty and other forms of beauty, like what we might see in a sunset or a waterfall or a full moon. Why is it that seeing things like that just takes my breath away sometimes? I think it's part of me suddenly connecting to who God is in how he has revealed himself through beauty. Beauty is a truth about who God is that cannot be put into words, but only seen firsthand.
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