Physical beauty can be neglected as a topic by some Christians, perhaps at times out of a desire to not elevate it more highly than it metaphysically deserves, an effort to emphasize the soul more than the body. It still remains an important issue that needs to be addressed, especially in an American culture seemingly obsessed with it. Beauty is not an entirely new subject for my blog. I have written a small handful of posts on it before. All claims about beauty are objectively true or false and yet human perceptions of beauty are purely subjective [1]; the Bible teaches that both men and women can be very beautiful, for beauty is not exclusive to or monopolized by one gender [2]; admiration of beauty is not intrinsically sexual [3]; I have talked about these things on other articles. But I have not actually defined what it means to desire to be beautiful in a way that is vain and sinful. That is the objective here.
Just as sexual objectification occurs only when someone reduces a person to just the sexual aspect of his or her humanity and personhood, and not when one thinks about, looks at, admires, or becomes aroused by someone's body, vanity occurs only when someone cares more about physical appearance and beauty than mental, intellectual, spiritual, and moral matters. One does not become vain by spending a certain number of hours adjusting or checking his or her appearance, by thinking about his or her bodily appearance often, by having a strong desire to be beautiful and admired as beautiful. These things may occur because of vanity in the mind of an individual, but they themselves are not vain.
It is not necessarily shallow to love beauty and have a personal urge to be or become beautiful. This is natural to the personalities of some; some people have a desire to show their (objective or alleged) physical beauty to others. This alone does not establish the presence of arrogance. Just because a person likes "showing off" his or her body does not mean that he or she thinks less of others or thinks that beauty determines human value. Someone may want to be beautiful for others in general because of social pressure (and thus may need to be reminded that they have value not from being physically attractive or sexually desirable but from being made in the image of God), for the opposite gender out of a desire to be admired by them, or simply for himself or herself. Diverse motivations for this drive can exist.
The Bible does not condemn beauty or the desire to view it in others or possess it in one's own body. But it does teach constantly that other things have greater significance, for God is concerned with the heart of a person even when other humans stop only at their body, beauty, or sexuality (not that the human body, naked or clothed, is at all sexual on its own), as the prophet Samuel said in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 16:7). There are many aspects to human nature beyond just the external appearance of the body, such as moral accountability, rich emotions, rationality, and the capacity for salvation and relationships with God and other humans. This point needs to be remembered, but, beyond this, one is morally free to savor and seek beauty of the human body, whether of one's own or that of another person!
While I'm addressing the subject of physical beauty, not only does the Bible explicitly describe men as well as women as having beautiful bodies, for it is fallacious and erroneous to believe one gender is more intrinsically beautiful than the other, but it is also very fallacious and incorrect to say that women care about their appearances more than males do. The desire to be beautiful does not appear in only one gender, though my culture encourages this more with women than men. I myself know what it is like to deeply want to be physically beautiful; I just care more about other matters. Vanity is not a male or female sin, just as lust, malice, selfishness, pride, and other behaviors or attitudes are not male or female sins. People are people; people are individuals. As I've said many times before, the fallacious and contra-Biblical gender stereotypes (all gender stereotypes) society and the church often encourage are impossibly flawed, illogical, and erroneous.
There is nothing wrong with pursuing beauty as long as vanity is not a part of that pursuit. People need not fear physical beauty as an unspiritual thing; unmarried men and women who are not dating need not feel awkward or shameful for wanting to compliment each other's bodies; no one needs to feel like his or her priorities are misplaced simply for having a strong desire to feel or be beautiful. After all, God created the human body, and he made people, some more than others, to admire and want beauty.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-objectivity-of-beauty.html
[2]. I mean by this that reason undermines all attempts to argue that one gender is more beautiful than the other and that the Bible affirms the beauty of the male and female body. I know many girls who find the male body very beautiful. See here:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html
[3]. See here, for instance:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/bikinis-are-not-sinful.html
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