Over the years I’ve posted a number of blogs about body image and how tremendously the images of women in the media shape our understanding of beauty. And while most of us realize that these images represent a tiny percentile of the entire human race–and likely an unhealthy, semi-starved percentile at that–it turns out these women don’t even live up to the images themselves.

Just check out this video released by the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty:

As shocking as this video may be, it documents a practice that is actually quite commonplace today: Airbrushing. The term “airbrush” dates back nearly a hundred years ago when photographs were literally airbrushed with paint to minimize flaws or change details. Today, this term refers to any kind of digital alteration of a photo.

The extent to which airbrushing can alter a woman’s physique, face, or any “undesirable” feature is quite remarkable. Just check out these airbrushed women:

Kim Kardashian is known for her beautiful curves, but they are noticeably minimized here. Apparently she was too curvy.

While Kim Kardashian was too curvy, Keira Knightly wasn’t curvy enough, as this movie poster clearly conveys. Which one is it, people??

And now, the one that takes the cake…

Gisele  Bundchen, international super model, is pregnant in this picture. But you wouldn’t know it. Why? Because they airbrushed out her pregnant belly!

Now I’ll admit there was a part of me that breathed a huge sigh of relief when I realized how thoroughly these beautiful women had been altered before appearing on the front cover of magazines. (and News Flash ladies–those six-pack abs you see on women who’ve birthed 3 children are often airbrushed and touched up as well!) It’s as if we’ve finally admitted that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. These women aren’t real–not on some ideological level in which we mean that real women don’t have time to look that way–but in a very literal sense. The images themselves aren’t real. Those women don’t actually look like that.

My relief, however, quickly morphed into something else entirely. I was deeply disturbed that our culture’s standard of beauty is literally unattainable. In what can only be considered reckless marketing, these magazines are selling an outright lie. We’re not just seeing the prettiest of the pretty–we’re seeing the touched up, doctored version of them. The Father of Lies has found his weapon, and we are the target.

How, then, are we to combat this onslaught? The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty created a second video that offers a really wonderful answer:

“Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” But don’t stop there. Talk to your friends, your family, younger women at your church, and most importantly speak truth to yourself. Our best defense against the lies of Satan is the truth of Christ. And our fellow soldiers in this fight are our sisters. So help them fight, but not by affirming them in areas that the world values, thereby feeding back into this culture of distorted beauty. Instead affirm them in the unfading beauty of their gentle spirit and the adornment of their good deeds. Affirm them in their modesty, their purity, their passion for Christ, their servant heart, and their hospitable kindness. Affirm them in those things which God calls beautiful, not the world. It’s not wrong to affirm women in their outward beauty, but we need to check our priorities. A pretty face is nice and all, but a woman who fears the Lord is truly worthy to be praised.

It’s been a couple months now since the controversy surrounding Carrie Prejean first blew up. Since then Prejean abdicated her Miss California throne and has been touring the Christian speaking circuit supporting traditional marriage and Christian values. I just watched a video of her appearance at Liberty University, and in it she is considerably more composed and articulate than she has typically been portrayed. You can check it out for yourself here.

Although Prejean’s interview was well-done and uplifting, I couldn’t help but get hung up on something. Over and over again the interviewers commended her unwillingness to compromise and her boldness to stand for Christ. Prejean herself challenged the students at Liberty to do the same. Yet every time she and Liberty’s chancellor discussed her strength under pressure and the importance of personal holiness in a worldly culture, one image kept flashing into my mind: The swimsuit competition.

I don’t know what Liberty’s dress code is, but I would be willing to bet they frown on women donning string bikinis, let alone parading around in one before millions of viewers on television. In fact, most church youth groups won’t even let their girls wear a two-piece bathing suit to camp.

But before jumping to any conclusions, I decided to do a little research. I found that Prejean did wear a skimpy bikini in the contest, but she was not the first professing Christian to do so. Last week the latest Miss America appeared on the 700 Club with evangelical Pat Robertson, and she talked about her faith in Christ and and the central role it played in her life. When I googled her name, a picture of her in a tiny black, barely there bikini popped up.

I tried finding photos of contestants wearing one-piece bathing suits in these competitions, but they were few and far between. In the process of searching I actually discovered that it was in the mid-90′s when the Miss America Pageant began encouraging participants to wear two-pieces instead of one. The organization highlighted the skimpier and less inhibited bathing suits in its promotions in order to boost ratings.

While I am not morally opposed to two-piece bathing suits (I own a few myself) I am bothered by 2 things about the nature of these competitions:

1. The Display Factor–these women aren’t just wearing the suits because they’re comfortable or to get a good tan, but to show off their nearly naked bodies to a watching audience. Displaying one’s body is the sole purpose of the swimwear.

2. The Face Factor–While there is some emphasis on personality, intelligence, and philanthropy, you don’t exactly see a lot of chubby girls up there. Try as they might to convince us otherwise, we all know that at the end of the day, a woman will not become Miss America on the basis of a great personality if she’s got a little junk in her trunk. That said, the pageant compares women on some characteristics that hold little value in God’s economy. In a culture of womanhood that is already so competitive, should we really be encouraging women to willingly subject themselves to it?

But what really concerns me more than anything else is the way Christian media outlets seem to eat this stuff up. In addition to Liberty’s broadcast, Prejean appeared on Focus on the Family and presented an award at the Dove Awards. Is that really wise? While some of these women do profess Christ in public and that is a good thing, does being pretty, Christian and famous automatically qualify someone as a role model for young Christian women? Even the young lady on the 700 Club admitted that she rarely goes to church because of her busy schedule. As a member of the Body of Christ, that is a significant problem, yet Pat Robertson nodded along with a sympathetic look that conveyed, “I totally understand.”

It may not be clear from my tone, but I do feel torn on this issue. After all, we need Christians EVERYWHERE–we need believers in the workplace, the government, Hollywood, etc. so that we can be salt and light to the world around us. But that doesn’t mean women should become strippers for the sake of reaching other strippers. The Miss America Pageant is not nearly that extreme, but it is a point worth considering.  Is it possible for a Christian woman to participate in a competition that compares her with others on the basis of their looks, shed their modesty as they stand before millions in a tiny bikini, and still be uncompromisingly faithful to God?

I’m not going to give an answer to that question, but I do know this–conservative evangelical institutions that are loud about modesty and personal holiness might pick their spokespeople wisely. Fame and visibility are the kind of qualifiers that will later come back to bite you.

This is an old post, but when I went to the gym yesterday and saw a dozen girls who were 10 pounds underweight killing themselves on the treadmill, and THEN I felt insecure about my own size, I decided it was time for this reminder. This is something that we women all need to hear on a regular basis…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Right now I’m in Atlanta hanging out with my 10 year old cousin, and we’ve been having a blast! We’ve gone to Stone Mountain Park, Lake Lanier Water Park, and last night we had a “Camp Rock” sleepover with one of her friends.

(In case you don’t know what “Camp Rock” is, it’s a movie that debuted on Disney last night starring the Jonas Brothers. And if you don’t know who the Jonas Brothers are, then you are hopelessly uncool and I’m afraid I can’t help you.)

My cousin and uncle live in a suburb of Atlanta that is so idyllic it makes me feel like I’m living in the 50′s. All the houses are perfect with nicely manicured lawns, all the kids are friends with each other, all the parents hang out together, and they all go to the same school (which also happens to be amazing–it’s nice and it’s safe and the teachers are wonderful). Oh, and everyone is pretty…even the dads.

And that’s exactly why I’ve always loved coming here to visit. It’s always been the kind of place I wanted to raise my family. However, I’m starting to wonder if it’s not quite as perfect as I always thought. I’ve started to notice something during this trip that I hadn’t noticed before. It first grabbed my attention a couple days ago at my cousin’s swim meet, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since…

I was standing near the pool waiting for my cousin’s race to begin, when I noticed three women standing in front of me. What caught my attention was that they all pretty much looked the same–thin, athletic, toned bodies, blond hair, manicured hands and feet, and cute outfits. From the back, they almost looked like teenagers–but they were in their late 30′s or early 40′s.

As I observed these women I started to feel a little insecure about myself. Not only were they in better shape than I am, but I wondered if I’d be able to make my body look like that after I’d had kids. These women didn’t look like they’d actually given birth to human children! They instead had the bodies of 18 year old girls.

Well I decided to start looking around at the other people nearby so that I would stop feeling so insecure about myself, but to my dismay I saw exactly the same thing. Actually that’s a lie–some of the women were brunettes. But they were all skinny, toned, and cute. There were a couple women who had, well, women’s bodies, but they were the exception to the rule.

At first I thought, “Is this what lies ahead for me? Does the quest for model-like bodies never end?” But then I comforted myself with the idea, “This probably isn’t normal. I bet it’s just this neighborhood. Surely there can’t be many communities like this one.”

I was wrong.

The next day my cousin and I went to the water park, and I saw more moms with breast enhancements than I ever thought possible. They were as skinny as rails and you could see the muscle tone in their stomachs. Again, not all of the women looked like this, but there were enough of them to be noticeable. After all, this wasn’t Los Angeles–this was an Atlanta suburb! What is going on here??

Well I think I found a possible explanation…

USA Today recently ran a story revealing that more and more women over 30 are struggling with eating disorders. It explains, “Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have long been considered diseases of the young, but experts say in recent years more women have been seeking help in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and older.” The article then cited the following distressing statistics:

In the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, Park Nicollet Health Services’ Eating Disorders Institute saw 43 patients ages 38 and older in 2003 — about 9% of its total patients. For the first six months of this year (2007), the institute has treated nearly 500 patients 38 and older, about 35% of its total.

The Renfrew Center, a network of treatment centers in the eastern U.S., said about 20% of the 522 patients treated at its Philadelphia center in 2005 were 30 or older. In 2006, about 13% of the 600 patients were in that age group.

Body image is no longer the concern of teenage girls alone. Women of all ages are feeling pressure to look a certain way and to fit a particular mold. And it’s no wonder! It’s not as though you spend years feeling a certain way about your body, and then suddenly wake up one day feeling fine. In fact, the pressure is bound to get worse as your body fights the effects of age. If you give in to your insecurities now, and if you believe the lies that society tells women about their bodies, then you are sentencing yourself to a losing battle.

Now it’s not as though I think that all women are doomed to be overweight once they have children, so we should embrace obesity. It’s important for us to take care of our bodies, eat healthy, exercise, and maintain our beauty as a gift to our husbands.

BUT, there is also a degree to which we should celebrate our bodies the way God made us. The fact of the matter is that having children requires us to sacrifice our bodies. We’ll get stretch marks and we’ll gain weight in areas we never gained weight before. Our bodies will bear the marks of bringing a new life into the world.

Yet those marks that we so despise are actually marks of beauty! God created the gift of life, and women get to serve a blessed role in that process, so whatever God calls good, we must also call good. Fight the message that our culture sends women to look a certain way. Take care of your bodies, yes, but rejoice in the journey of life, and all the sags, bags and bulges it brings along with it. Our culture may reject those signs of aging as being ugly and undesirable, but Scripture reminds us that “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

*In case you’d like to read the whole USA Today article that I cited above, you can check it out here.

As a minister to women, I frequently work with young ladies who suffer from eating disorders. Though I personally have never struggled with this particular issue, it clearly plagues a large percentage or our present female culture. It is almost indiscriminating when it comes to age group–women from the age of 11 to 50 are fighting their bodies as they listen to the voices of an unforgiving society.

That said, I was not at all surprised to learn that doctors have identified a new form of eating disorder. The disorder itself isn’t really that new, but only recently have we given it a name. It’s called orthorexia.

Orthorexia is a term coined by Dr. Steve Bratman, an individual who was heavily involved in the health food movement until he realized it had become an obsession. And that’s exactly what orthorexia is–an obsession with healthy eating.

Orthorexia entails a fixation with food that is so severe it can lead to malnutrition or even death. In its less harmful forms it is still all-consuming–the individual may avoid certain foods, such as those containing fats, preservatives, animal products, or other ingredients considered to be unhealthy. The orthorexic is so preoccupied with food that he or she orders their entire life around meals–they are constantly planning the next meal so as to ensure that anything less than pure and healthy does not enter their body.

To be clear, orthorexia is different from other eating disorders with which we are more familiar. As Bratman describes, “Anorexics seem to always think they’re fat. Orthorexics know they’re thin, but they want to be pure.”

And in this way, orthorexia is very subtle. The sufferer isn’t overtly starving themselves, so the behavior actually disguises itself as a virtue, especially in our increasingly health conscious world.

In reality, the orthorexic is a slave to their diet.

To read more about this issue, click here to check out an article on abcnews.com.

If you or someone you know might be struggling with orthorexia, I encourage you to go see a counselor or a nutritionist. But I would advise you to speak with a church leader as well, because there is more to this disorder than unhealthy eating habits.

What is interesting about orthorexia is that it doesn’t come across as being blatantly harmful since the goal is to be at one’s healthiest. However, this struggle gets to the heart of the term “eating disorder,” because that’s exactly what it is–a disordered view of eating. An individual has an unhealthy understanding of food or diet that negatively influences their lifestyle, as well as the way that they view themselves.

And that’s why I encourage you to talk with a pastor–this is a diet issue, but it’s also a faith issue. In America, we see people bowing down to the altar of diet all the time, and we see it in one of two ways–either by eating too much, or by over-controlling how little they eat–both use food as a source of comfort and security. In both instances, people use food to prop up some part of themselves that is hurting or needy. And in this way, a fixation on food becomes an all-encompassing lifestyle in which diet becomes our god.

For this reason we must always be guarded about our actions and our motives. Even in trying to live a healthy lifestyle, which is a very good thing, it is easy to supplant Christ as the center of our world. In a culture that is obsessed with how one looks and how one eats, it’s easy to join in the worship of healthy eating.

So before you think that this doesn’t apply to you, I want you to ask yourself how often you think about food and eating every day. Then, ask yourself how often you think upon the things of God. Even if there’s a slight imbalance, so little that you alone know the difference, that is still a kind of eating disorder. It may not play out in the form of obesity or starvation, but any kind of mindset that puts diet as a priority over God is, spiritually speaking, disordered.

Several years ago I attended a convention for religious broadcasters in the United States. I was representing the ministry I worked for at the time, which had a radio segment that aired all over the country. We were at the convention to network, meet other broadcasters, and get the ministry’s name out there.

To my surprise, the convention itself was actually very exciting. I got to meet well-known Christian authors, I saw a pre-screening of The Passion movie, and I had fascinating conversations with ministries from all over the U.S. Overall, it was a great experience.

However, there is one thing about the convention that stands out in my mind, one thing that I will never forget. It serves as a kind of accountability for me in my own ministry today…

Because the convention was for religious broadcasters, there were a number of Christian t.v. shows present, along with their hosts. And let me tell you, the women who hosted those shows were BEAUTIFUL! They walked around that convention hall with perfect hair, perfect make-up and perfect clothes. They were incredibly put together and flawless, these successful Christian women, and that is when the first seed of self-doubt planted itself in my heart.

I looked at those women, who were smart and driven and had already accomplished a lot in ministry, and then I looked at myself–my hair was flat, my clothes were boring, and Lysa, the president of the ministry, had to help me put on my make-up because I was so pathetic at it. I was far from perfect.

So as I observed those flawless women and then compared myself to them, I thought to myself, “If this is what it means to be a successful women’s minister, then I clearly don’t measure up.”

I still find myself thinking that today. I look at women like Beth Moore, who is not only a powerful writer and speaker, but is also drop-dead gorgeous, and I feel as though I fall miserably short. I believe the lie that the perfect Christian woman has got to be the whole package, which poses a problem for me since I bite my finger nails, I can never figure out how to get my hair to look right, and I’m barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel. The whole package? That, I am not.

On a head level, I think we all know how faulty that logic is. Scripture is full of verses about how God looks at the inside and not the outside. That message is clear. But the reason my experience at the convention was so definitive for me as a women’s minister is that it made me pause and wonder–Do I ever make other women feel insecure about themselves? Do I convey the message that looking put together and perfect is an important part of being a Christian woman? Do I spend so much time primping and looking cute that I compromise my witness? While I may tell young women that outward beauty doesn’t matter, do my actions undermine my words?

Well I recently discovered that Paul talks about this very thing in 1 Corinthians 2 when he explains to the Corinthian church the he did not come to them with “eloquence” or “persuasive words.” This point is significant because Paul was extremely educated and well-versed in the art of rhetoric. He was very capable of speaking articulately and persuasively. But he instead chose to keep it simple.

Why? Because he didn’t want the presentation to distract people from the message. He didn’t want his listeners to be so impressed by his rhetorical gifts that they missed out on what he was actually saying.

And Christian women do well to keep this teaching in mind. We must not let the presentation distract people from the message. This principle can play out in any number of ways, but one of the most salient examples is the way we present ourselves outwardly. If we are trying to encourage one another to focus on inward beauty, but we spend excessive amounts of time on our outward beauty, then we will undermine our message. Rather than spurring women toward the Gospel, we’ll be encouraging their insecurities, self-doubt, and vanity.

Now that is not to say that we should wear burlap sacks and stop washing our hair–it’s definitely ok to look nice! God created us to be beautiful and we should celebrate that fact. But I am writing this as a kind of heart check. We need to examine our motives in how much time we spend on our outward beauty. Are you spending time on your outward appearance for the glory of God, or in order to feel better about yourself? And more importantly, do you spend as much time working on your inward beauty as do you your outward beauty?

I, for one, hope that in my time as a women’s minister, I have never misled women into thinking that being the “perfect Christian woman” means looking flawless and put together. If I have, I apologize greatly and ask for forgiveness. But the truth of the matter is that there is no “perfect Christian woman.” By that I mean that there isn’t ONE standard to which we should all strive. God created us to be unique and diverse because each one of us reflects His infinite majesty in our own special way. If we aspire to fit in a cookie cutter mold, then we’ll erase the unique beauty in each one of us, and thereby steal a little bit of glory away from God. The only standard that we should all be seeking is holiness, so if there is any message that I want my life to convey, it is the importance of pursuing Him. Anything else is just a distraction.

This blog entry was previously posted in February of 2008.

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re in college and your boyfriend is rushing a fraternity. You two have been dating for awhile, and you really like him a lot. He’s a total gentleman, you get along great together, and He loves the Lord. He even feels called to the fraternity as his mission field, and hopes to be a light in that particular darkness.

But one day your relationship takes a horrible turn. He calls you over to his fraternity house and makes a shocking proposition. Apparently all his potential frat brothers think you are really hot, and they’ve decided that he can only join the fraternity if you agree to sleep with them. So your boyfriend has now come to you, pleading that you will cooperate. “Please!” he begs. “They won’t let me pledge if you don’t do this! I know this is a lot to ask, but imagine the ministry opportunity!”

Sound crazy? That’s because it is.

Think this could never happen? Think again. This is exactly what Abraham did to Sarah in Genesis 12. The couple was traveling into Egypt, and Abraham feared he would be killed because Sarah was so desirable. So what does he do? He saves his own hide by handing her over to Pharaoh. When he should have been protecting her, he instead gains acceptance at her expense.

This is a story that we are pretty familiar with, but the tragedy of it often escapes us. We tend to blow it off as if the moral standards at that time were a lot more fluid. A man prostituting his wife somehow seemed more normal back then.

But if you can imagine yourself in the horrific circumstances I described above, then you got a taste of what Sarah must have been feeling. She was not only abandoned by the man who was supposed to protect her, but she was put in harm’s way for his own selfish gain. What a lonely place that must have been.

Clearly, this story has implications for our marriages, especially for husbands. But there is a degree to which we women should learn from this story as well. It is a story about putting someone in harm’s way to save yourself, and that is something I do all too often.

For example, I can’t tell you how many mornings I’ve spent a great deal of time picking out my clothes for church. Some mornings I have tried on 4 or 5 different outfits before I found the right one! And during this process, a small voice in the back of my head wondered, “Could your obsession with looking nice be a detriment to the women who look up to you? Are you causing other women to feel a pressure to look cute and perfect and put together, since that is the example you’re setting?”

But in that moment, I prefered to prop up my own self-esteem, so I ignored that voice. And in turn, I probably fed the insecurities of many women around me.

In the world of women, we are often about survival of the fittest. I don’t care who I knock down or how I make other women feel as long as I feel good about myself. And in doing so, we perpetuate an unending cycle of bondage to cultural norms, rather than standing up and being different. We feed into an impossible standard of beauty, instead of sacrificing our need to be the best and the prettiest.

And in this way, we have continued the legacy of Abraham. When we should be looking out for one another and protecting one another from a world that measures our beauty according to waistline, we victimize one another all the more by perpetuating it.

Now all of this is not to say that we should rebel against our culture by wearing burlap sacks and refusing to shower. Heck no! We need to celebrate our beauty, inside and out. But we need to ask ourselves why we do it. Are we the type who will NEVER go outside without make-up, who always tell others about all the time we spend at the gym, and who will only wear clothes from name brand stores? If you answer yes, or even maybe, to any of those questions, then you might just have a problem.

Let us instead put an end to this story. Let us be a Church who thinks first of our sisters, and then of ourselves. Let us consider how our actions affect others, and whether we are victimizing our neighbors, as opposed to protecting them. All of our actions, no matter how seemingly innocent, have implications for the world around us. So when it comes to the Christian life and how we live in relationship to others, we should always ask ourselves–Are we selling out Sarah, or are we saving her?

For some reason I have a high number of male friends who really enjoy being naked around one another. There’s nothing weird or sexual about it–they just like the freedom of it I guess.

In fact, some of them consider it to be a valued form of quality time! I even knew some guys in college who lived together and would set aside one afternoon each week for their “naked time.”

As a girl, I really can’t relate. In no way does that sound fun to me. It only sounds awkward. And kinda weird.

With few exceptions, girls are just the opposite of boys in this regard. Unlike our male counterparts, we will do almost anything to avoid being naked in front of other people.

But why is that? Why are guys so comfortable with their bodies, whereas women are not?

This is a question I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. My first instinct is to blame the media–when I look at myself in the mirror, I see a stark contrast between my body and the bodies of the Victoria Secret models. As a result, I can’t help but be ashamed of my body, therefore causing me to hide it.

But this issue cannot be blamed on the media alone. It goes back much further than that. All the way back to the beginning of time…

Think, for a moment, back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall of humanity. What was the first thing that Adam and Eve did when they had disobeyed God? They covered their bodies.

What does this tell us? That there is a very real connection between the way we feel about our bodies and the way we feel in relation to others. In particular, the insecurities we have with our bodies reveal a more deeply rooted issue in our relationship with God.

For Adam and Eve, to be naked before God was to be fully known, inside and out. But after the Fall they didn’t want to be fully known by God, because they were ashamed of what He would find.

That said, when we hide our bodies, we are doing more than hiding our physical features. We are hiding our souls as well. We are afraid of being fully known, for fear of what people will find. We are afraid of being rejected.

Given the fact that Adam and Eve both felt the need to cover themselves, why are women so much more insecure about their bodies than men? Well this is the point at which culture partners with our sin nature to target women most acutely. Due to our sin, there is already a tendency to want to hide ourselves, but culture feeds that fear all the more by attacking a woman’s natural beauty. It mounts shame upon shame.

So how do we fight this?

Well I have one creative solution, but before I reveal it, the first and foundational step is to work on your relationship with God. No person, including yourself, can even give you the wholeness you need to stand before God and others without shame. Only your Creator, the one who granted you life with purpose and intention, and then loved you enough to sacrifice His son, can give you that security.

But in addition to that, I have a little homework for you. I want you to pick out the physical features that you like the least, and start thanking God for them. Pray that God would reveal to you how beautiful those things are. If you don’t like your nose, or your legs, or even your butt (that’s right, God thinks you’ve got a great booty! After all, He gave it to you!), pray that God would open your eyes to the beauty that He sees in them.

For some of you, you might even consider standing in front of the mirror completely in the buff, looking at your whole body, and worshiping God for it. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but your body really is beautiful to God, and we don’t praise God nearly enough for our bodies, so try it!

It may sound a little off the wall, but given that we were created in the gorgeous and divine image of God, I think it’s time we mount a grass roots effort to resist the turn of our culture. And it starts with you.

One of the topics I spend a lot of time writing, teaching and speaking about is beauty. Beauty is a central theme in women’s ministry because all women desire it. And in the face of this desire, women’s ministry fights to protect God’s standard of beauty when culture perverts it.

But having said that, what is beauty? If we are going to resist the world’s understanding of beauty in favor of God’s, we should probably know exactly what we’re talking about. Unfortunately, this is a much harder task than one might initially think. Just pause for a moment and ask yourself: How would you define beauty??

Beauty is one of those ideas on which it is tough to put a finger. We know something is beautiful when we see it, but how does one actually define beauty? After all, what one person calls beautiful, another person might find ugly. Why is beauty defined so differently by so many people and cultures?

Well I discovered the reason for this discrepancy in opinions in the very definition of the word. Wesbter’s dictionary defines beauty as follows:

1: the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit : loveliness

2: a beautiful person or thing; especially : a beautiful woman

3: a particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality

Notice in the first definition that an object is called beautiful according to the pleasure it evokes in the mind or spirit. Now that is quite a tricky definition given its extreme subjectivity! One person might find something to be beautiful because it stirs pleasurable sensations in them, but another person will not call that thing beautiful if it does not stir up the same feelings of pleasure.

So which individual is right? Who is to decide what is beautiful and what is not, if the only measure of beauty is an individual’s personal feelings of pleasure?

Well at this point I decided to turn to Scripture since Webster’s definition was running me in circles. If you search the Bible for the word “beautiful,” you will find that it appears about 75 times. Of those appearances, only two or three are references to men. The remaining 73 references are applied to objects that we more traditionally understand as being beautiful: clothing, jewels, crowns, flowers, cities, and God, but it is most frequently applied to women.

I also found a frequently used phrase, “the perfection of beauty,” which is always used to describe God. What’s more, the New Testament almost exclusively references beauty in the context of service to God. In Matt. 26:10 Jesus asks, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.” And in Romans 10:15 declares, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” Within these contexts, beauty is directly connected to the glory of the Lord.

With all of that in mind, we have a little bit more information about beauty. We know that God is the perfection of beauty, thereby making Him the ultimate standard of beauty. We also know that women somehow possess that beauty in a unique and definitive way.

How, then, are we to define beauty? Honestly, I’m still not quite sure. It seems to be an attribute that almost defies description or definition. It captures us in a way we cannot articulate, and it transports our hearts and minds to a place that is other-worldly. When we see something beautiful, we know that we are experiencing a taste of the divine, but we may not fully understand why or how.

And perhaps that is why we cannot define it–it is beyond our limited capacity to comprehend. Not until we reach the other side of eternity will we truly grasp the glory of true beauty as God defines it. For now, we must be satisfied with mere echoes of it.

What, then, does that mean for women and their understanding of beauty in the face of culture? Two things. One–while we struggle to pinpoint the basic definition of beauty, we can know that God creates certain things to specifically reflect God’s beauty (such as flowers and sunsets) but women reflect that beauty in an especially unique way. While men can be beautiful (both David and Moses were described this way) the majority of Scripture applies the description to women.

That said, women were created to reflect this attribute of God in their very essence. It is written into our beings. We were created with it, so it is an essence that no culture can undermine. Beauty is never defined by certain physical attributes, but instead as that which best reflects God. Any definition of beauty that sets itself up against the basic beauty and divine image inherent in every single woman is a definition in conflict with the beauty of God.

Two–beauty is anything that brings glory to God. Many of the contexts in which the word “beauty” is implemented involve service to and worship of God. Whether it describes the “beautiful feet” of those who spread the Gospel, or beautiful jewels of God’s temple, they are all meant to point back to God.

As women, that is the only way we should consider “improving” our beauty–by reflecting God all the more with our lives. 1 Timothy reminds us that we should not adorn ourselves with jewels, trendy clothes, or plastic surgery. The only makeover we need is one of the soul–we should adorn ourselves with modesty, self-control, and good works.

So when it comes to being beautiful, don’t seek to change or augment those things that God gave you at birth. He created you the way He did because it was beautiful to Him. The only thing we can add to such beauty is a spirit surrendered to God. Any other definition of beauty only seeks to glorify ourselves and calls God a shabby Creator. Let us instead be women who embrace a true definition of beauty, and evidence that beauty with our lives.

Well right now I am on the other side of the world visiting Southeast Asia. I probably won’t disclose the exact location until I get back, but if you want a hint I can tell you that Passion will be doing a concert here on August 3. That’s all I’m going to say!

So far the trip has been amazing! We have visited the biggest Muslim mosque I’ve ever seen (I had to wear a pink robe that covered my head so that I wouldn’t defile the temple–I looked HOT!) and then we went to a Hindu temple that seemed like it was straight out of the Old Testament. People were sacrificing offerings to golden idols and everything!

But one thing that has stood out to me the most has been the presence of women wearing the full, black Muslim covering. These women are actually tourists from the Middle East, not native to the country, but there are a lot of them around so they constantly grab my attention. I can’t help but wonder what it must be like to stare out at the world from a complete veil, no one seeing anything about you but your eyes.

But the fascinating thing about these women is that, while their entire bodies are completely covered, hiding any kind of distinguishing features about their bodies, these women still went out of there way to stand out. Many of them had the cutest little shoes I’d ever seen, or they carried beautiful, eye-catching purses. It was as if they were trying to find a way to make themselves beautiful, even though their bodies were completely hidden from the world.

I love that. I think it reflects something inherent and irrepressible about the female heart. No matter what the world does to hide it, God created women to be beautiful, and He desires that we celebrate that beauty. Our beauty reflects something true about the character of God, so we should never strive to hide it.

That doesn’t mean we should pursue vanity and become obsessed with our looks, but it does mean that at our very essence, there is something about us that reflects the beauty of God, and we should never be ashamed of it. Sometimes that even means resisting our culture’s perception of beauty, knowing that society can also hide our beauty by calling undesirable that which God called lovely. When this happens, Western culture is just as guilty of suppressing a woman’s natural beauty as a strict Muslim culture might be.

Wherever you are in the world today, celebrate who you are! God created you with purpose and detail, so I pray that He helps you to appreciate and love yourself just as much as He does.

Well I’m off to have more adventures on the other side of the world. I’ll try to check back in soon!

The other day I saw a t.v. show interviewing women over the age of 30 who’d decided to have plastic surgery. Specifically, they’d all had breast implants.

Now this was a bit surprising to me. When I think of breast implants, I think of women in their twenties who are perhaps hoping it will boost their specific careers.

But that simply isn’t the case anymore. An article in USA Today reported that from 2000 to 2005 the number of women getting breast implants increased 37%, and as the article described, “The typical person getting breast implants today is not the stripper, the model…It’s the girl down the street.”

What’s more, she’s not so much a “girl” either. She’s a woman–a wife and a soccer mom, most likely with a bachelors degree. A survey done in 2003 found that the average age of women receiving breast augmentation was 34.

About a month ago I wrote about the growing trend of anorexia in women over the age of 30, so given those statistics the rise in breast implants should be no surprise. The only difference is that there’s a stigma attached to one, and not to the other. Anorexia is frowned upon by the general population, but breast implants are becoming more and more accepted.

That brings us back to the show I was watching the other day. As the women being interviewed discussed their decisions, their reasons tended to be more personal than professional. They’d always wanted bigger breasts, or they simply wanted a makeover.

But one woman raised a dissenting voice. She argued that women only have this surgery if they are suffering from low self-esteem or have a poor body image. By having breast implants, they are attempting to prop up their self-esteem in an artificial way.

“Finally!” I thought. A voice of reason in a backwards world!

But she was quickly dismissed. One of the other women immediately replied that her self-esteem was just fine and that she’d always had tremendous confidence. Her reason for having the surgery? “I’m doing it for me.”

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, I wanted to start shaking my t.v. set. I wanted to sit that women down and ask her, “What do you mean you’re doing it for you? Where do you think the desire to have bigger boobs came from? It’s not like you cooked it up in your own brain independent of the culture you live in! You’re doing it because society has fed you the lie that women with larger breasts are more beautiful and desirable. The idea that you’re doing it for you is all an illusion!”

Unfortunately, I am not able to sit down with that women and tell her those things….which probably wouldn’t have gone over too well anyway. But I do have a blog, so I’m going to state it here:

Be careful when you hear yourself utter the words, “I’m doing it for me.” Yes, there are times when this motivation is warranted–if, for instance, you are extremely overweight and you need to do a better job of being healthy. Take the necessary steps to make that happen.

But don’t use these words to mask the real problem. It is most likely that you have been so profoundly influenced by society that you don’t even know what’s you, and what’s the culture.

The key to determining the difference can be found in Scripture. Are you making changes that are consistent with the Scriptural depiction of the human being? If you are trying to be healthy, then yes! Our bodies are the temple of God, so we should be good stewards of them.

But if you are attempting to make drastic, superficial changes to the body God has given you, whether it be through surgery, extreme dieting, or over-exercising, then you will find yourself in conflict with the truths of Scripture. The Bible tells us that we are made in God’s image, and that God knit us together in our mother’s womb. This implies an intimate, intentional purpose in every single part of your body and personality, so any attempt to alter that creation runs the risk of insulting God. It questions His judgment in making you the way that you are.

(And please don’t interpret this to mean that I am promoting some sort of Christian Science position in which doctors should not help people born with birth defects. Scripture shows us examples of healing in the lives of individuals whose day-to-day functioning was impaired from birth. Such surgery is certainly permissible, but it’s in an altogether different category from the kind of changes I have described above.)

In closing, I want to remind each one of you out there that you have been fearfully and wonderfully made. Any message that indicates otherwise does not come from God, so be on your guard against the lies of our culture. We have becomes so inundated by them that we have now begun to deceive ourselves, rather than being speakers of truth.

Ultimately, the best way to determine whether you’re doing what’s best for you, or if you’re simply in bondage to the opinion of others, can be found in the following question: Are you doing it for God? Sometimes the desires we have for ourselves can be deeply misguided, so we should never use our own, personal fulfillment as a barometer of right and wrong. Ultimately it’s about God and what brings the most glory to Him. Anything else is idolatry.

*To read the whole USA Today article, you can check it out here.