Life-changing Christian Hedonism »
The question I most often hear in response to this is that if God loves himself pre-eminently, how can he love me at all? How can we say that God is for us and that he desires our happiness if he is primarily for himself and his own glory? I want to argue that it is precisely because God loves himself that he loves you. Here’s how….
I often ponder what God means for us to do with the subject of beauty as it applies to our own fallen physical states. We humans tend to wilt in appearance without any effort on our part. We take a shower and eight hours later our hair is oily and our skin will be stinky. It takes considerable effort to keep healthy and trim—let alone go above and beyond appearing healthy to look physically attractive.
Many thinkers conclude that external beauty is a trivial matter God doesn’t want us to dwell upon. I get that it’s difficult to find good fitting clothes and the right fat to muscle mass ratio, but is giving up on our general appearance the right solution? Is the only reason we dress nice and comb our hair to impress others in public or to look qualified for a job at an interview? I don’t think so.
God didn’t design anything about the world to serve man’s shallow/sinful desires or misappropriated notions. Believers aren’t supposed to look good on the outside for man’s sake, but for God’s sake. As we strive to glorify God in all that we do, inner and outer beauty are important to the Lord.
But why? Why does God care about our external appearance? What biblical argument is their to support this view?
This issue arose on the blogosphere over the past few weeks. Christian blogger Tim Challies wrote on the subject of why Christian wives should make the effort to look attractive to their husbands. Challies stated:
What is outward is significant. Clothes make a statement. There is a spiritual dimension to what a person wears. Clothes can be used to attract attention and they can be used to deflect attention; they can be used to serve other people and they can be used to hinder other people. The same is true of hair (Peter speaks of both clothes and hair in 1 Peter 3) and jewelry and anything else outward…..
The way a woman relates to her spouse is a spiritual matter. And the way she dresses, the way she cares for herself, is a part of the way she relates to him. It makes a statement about her, about him, about them. Her words speak, her actions speak, but so too do her clothing, her appearance, her hygiene, her adornment.
His post was a response to another’s, and due to his post their were hundreds of comments that resulted. Ultimately, the issue was unresolved and there was a great matter of the debate left to be considered.
Then Mary Kassian, author of Girls Gone Wise chimed followed up to Tim Challies in this post. I have got to say her answer is very insightful and agreeable. It is easier to understand why God cares about outward beauty when one relates it to God’s relationship to the Church. Mary states:
Many scorn beauty as “a passing pleasure.” They think that the illusive, fragile, fading, temporary, and wrinkle-and-stretch-mark-prone nature of female beauty indicates that men (and women) should just “get over it” and focus on more important things.
Beauty is indeed a passing pleasure. But I think there’s a deeper meaning here that we dare not trivialize. The symbolic importance of beauty/beautification is not unlike the symbolic importance of marriage. Woman’s beauty, and all the broken, distorted ideas about it, will not so much pass, as give way—in the end—to that to which beauty points. There will be no marriage in heaven because the shadow will give way to the reality. Likewise, the illusive, fading, temporary beauty of women will one day give way to the breathtaking, spectacular, eternal beauty of the Bride of Christ.
Both Chalies and Kassian make apt points in their posts and I encourage you to read them in relation to the subject together.
Christians should consider why God gave us the deeply rooted desire that our spouses should be attractive to us. We should consider what our appearance communicates symbolically to our fellow man. Beauty doesn’t have to be about looking sexy—as is the worldly standard. Rather, for God’s people, outward beauty is the depiction of the spiritual condition and our relationship to our Lord.
A Russian Countryside
God made nature perfect, and He didn’t mind if man took what He made and cultivated it. In fact, He commanded us to do so. It baffles me, at times, that God would entrust man with His marvelous creations. But, then again, God’s ways are greater than ours. Continue reading
There are people in the world that want to go against the grain of culture-making to accomplish their God-given drives. Man wants to fulfill for himself what God meant man to do for Him. When man wants to better the world, whether he be an atheist, buddhist, or mormon, he steals the fundamentals that make the world a better place from God’s own style expressed in the Bible and twists them for his own brand of right and wrong. (Man defies God—what else is knew?)
Any deviation from the path in God’s Word is driven by self-fulfillment, but the sense of accomplishment that we—man—have for doing some good in this world is only genuinely comprehended in mortal men when we are in line with the Holy Spirit; bettering the world the way God intended. In an ironic way, God made man to make the world just what He always wanted…. In so doing, man finds that when he pleases God most, he is most satisfied with this life and the culture man is able to produce.
To transform culture, mankind must understand that God is the Master Culture Director. As Creator, Lord, and all the other things He is, He defines culture and the limits we have to make culture of our own. We are gardeners tending His creation. Man brings the order about in God’s universe that God meant us to establish. To transform culture at its best means to refine culture into the ideals God wants for the world.
My wife is an awesome, smart, beautiful woman. I love her to infinity. Regrettably, we all have our moments when the lighting and cheap digital cameras we have to take snapshots with don’t show us how attractive we actually look. My wife has been dealt the card of “not-so photogenic for life.” She looks much better in life than in most of her pictures.
For this reason, I am here to help sweeten her pictures from time to time. Here’s a recent shot I took with a before and after treatment in Photoshop. This is a simple cleanup in Photoshop, and it’s not very difficult if you know what you’re doing in the application on a Mac or PC.
Why do we care about the way we look? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? I think not. There are fundamental consistent values we all think deem something beautiful. However, we often confuse beauty with our personal tastes and preferences. There is a subjective and objective quality to beauty at the same time. Continue reading
Does all art have a purpose?
You can’t make art up for the sake of being art that doesn’t have a meaning to the art you create. Many intelligent and prolific artisans think you can, but if you examine the examples around you you’ll find man is a lier if he believes he can create anything without a purpose. Whether you are a student of the arts, a hobbyist, or a professional designer of some sort, you make your piece of art for a specific audience with the express purpose of some message — even if the message is as sad and contradictory as “this piece of art has no message.” Even if you don’t take your art seriously, you’re at least creating it to humor one’s self (this is a purpose also). Continue reading
Most people in western culture, consciously or passively, consider art to fit in one of two categories: secular and/or sacred arts. Few people know how to define these categories. Churches usually don’t educate their flocks on the arts, but along the way—going to church, Sunday school, Bible studies, etc.—members of the flock get an indirect idea of what religious art is, and what it is not. The rest of the culture wants to put sacred art into a box that they can tuck away from their lives. Only on the rare Christmas or Easter church services they attend do they enjoy religious icons, decor, or other religious artistic works. Continue reading
I got the tip from iJustine that Google is doing a contest for grade school kids to make stylized treatments of the Google logo. These come with the twist, as the website tells:
Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to play around with our homepage logo and see what new designs they come up with. This year we’re inviting U.S. kids to join in the doodling fun, around the intriguing theme “What I Wish for the World.”
Both our country and the world are undergoing significant change. At Google we believe in thinking big, and dreaming big, and we can’t think of anything more important than encouraging students to do the same. Continue reading
I want to give you with a twist on my last post that will, as best as one can, clinch the debate over whether God is real and whether God is the one described in the Bible. I don’t mean to trivialize or over simply the issue, so with all due seriousness I’ve been studying and thinking long and hard to find the most valid evidence to support the biblical faith.
As I was saying in my last post, “Why is There Evil? What If I Don’t Like the Answer?” you can’t choose the absolutes in your life. The weather is going to bring rain or shine whether you consent or not. People in general have grown accustom to whatever the weather brings, but when you’re present and eternal perceived freedoms are at stake you may argue with a higher power telling you to be consistent with a specific paradigm other than the one that naturally suits you. I know this will test your unbelief if you’re not a Christian, and when it does I ask you to ponder the matter, research it, and come to an educated conclusion of your own. Please don’t react to what I have to say if you haven’t really anything to support a counter-argument.
First, I want you to read for your consideration these words from the arch-atheist Friedrich Nietzsche:
When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God has truth—it stands or falls with faith in God.[1]
Morality is Inescapable
So here is what I want you to consider. You ask Christians “why would a good God let evil happen?” Let me ask you: if there is no God, and if He is not calling all the shots, than how do you know what good and evil are? Think about it. I trust you have some morals you judge the world by—what’s right and what’s wrong (what’s good and what’s bad). If you have a moral compass telling you that stealing is wrong, how do you know stealing is wrong? By what authority do you validate that stealing is wrong?
In law, and with all higher powers, you have to have a basis for facts. A fact may be that the government says stealing is illegal. That’s one reason you know that stealing is wrong. But if the government didn’t regulate theft, would it still be wrong? What if other countries say it is but other countries say it is not? Is the ultimate authority the law of the land you stand on? Does it change depending on the land you stand on? What about land where law has not been defined? What gave man the authority over other men to decide what’s good to do and what’s not good to do?
You say you are grieved that some tragedy has happened to you and/or a close friend and loved one. That loss has made you have doubts. Maybe you’re stubborn on the issue because you just can’t accept the mysteries of a higher power that would allow evil in this world. So, rather than accept a real and powerful God that controls everything, you take God out of the picture. What do you have left? Man is the highest authority? Why does man have any authority over the universe, let alone this planet? If man says something is good for this world, like feeding the hungry or saving wildlife, how can he prove that it is a good thing without religion? Is it written in your biological gene pool? Scientists don’t seem to think so. But if so, why is it written deep within your physical heart in the first place? What decides what’s morally right and wrong apart from Someone more powerful than a man?
If you want to use evolution, you can’t make a case for Christian morality (i.e. we should love our fellow man, give to the poor, care for the young and elderly, etc.). This subject has already been deliberated by many a smart man all the way back to Darwin. In a natural “the-answer-for-everything-is-science” world, where mankind’s purpose is dictated by our genetic code, you have a naturalistic barbarian world. You may think that murder is wrong—got some inherent evil to it that’s a crime or sin against humanity. But that’s not a universal understanding among men. Many people would take advantage of murder if they could get away with it. Many people commit murder anyway because they justify it. These people excuse the murder by committing murder. If there’s supposed to be a universal moral ethical code in the evolution of all living kind, why doesn’t the murderer have the same moral code you have? While we’re at it, what about the animal kingdom? It’s not called a ‘dog-eat-dog-world’ for no reason. Many a Darwinist, evolutionist, atheist will tell you that there’s no place for morality in their worldview, and they would be consistent with their anti-God perspective saying so.
I don’t think morality is avoidable in the real world, and you don’t have morality without God—more specifically, Judeo-Christian ethic—to define it. Every man has a conscience because God put it there (whether the conscience is ignored or obeyed). It’s why we grieve when injustice happens! It’s why we are excited to see good things happen. It is why we value peace and prosperity, and don’t enjoy self-annihilation, war, and destruction (when consistent with the God-given pursuit of good will). You have an appreciation for right and wrong because God gave you spiritual characteristics like His own. Your spirit knows that most every action taken in this world has a moral right or wrong implication.
Faith is Inescapable Too
No matter what you believe about the meaning of life, the creation of the world, the explanation for good and evil, you have faith in what you believe. History has shown that no man from his own human potential has been able to satisfy the skeptic of any worldview. Ultimately, you have to believe in something without 100% undeniable evidence whether you believe in science, Christianity, or another religion. You believe their is oxygen in the room, that your heart doesn’t stop beating till the day you die… that your car works—you’re not sure how, but you believe it does… somehow. You can’t explain it. Faith is believing in the “how” that you cannot explain.
The Bible talks about faith a lot. God says it’s not easy to believe for some, and for others, like children, it comes almost naturally. Faith is one of the greatest commendable qualities a person can have. Faith is like courage; it takes determined spiritual effort to overcome what you don’t know, trust, or have confidence in. Faith goes hand in hand with the qualities of hope, love, wisdom, courage, and joy.
So for all the evidence one can muster, believing in what you will not see till after you die takes guts. That’s something God wants you to demonstrate in life. If your will can muster faith, God will help you with your unbelief. I know because this is the testimony of every Christian. So consider what it is you believe right now, and ask yourself if you think it really makes sense to believe in that over the most profound, logical, noble, consistent, civilized God of known belief.
Endnote:
1. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Twilight of the Idols,” The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 515–6.
A coach of a Christian school team recently led a game with his team playing against a juvenile delinquents team. The Christian school’s team always had lots of support from family, fans and cheerleaders making rallying cries; while the opposing team, these delinquents, never had a supporter in the stands for any game. There’s no protocol to do this, but the coach of the Christian school team asked the supporters in the stands to do something they’d never done before—rally for the opposing team: the delinquents.
The coach explained the delinquents never have support, and Christians should, if anyone, support them. Demonstrate some Christian love. So the fans, families and cheerleaders backed the coach up. They cheered for the delinquent team. They ‘boo’ed their own. Needless to say, it left quite an impression. The usually unfavored team of delinquents were very encouraged.
This happened late last year. It was such a big deal it gained publicity with the local media, and before long the story was on TV, in the newspaper, and on the web. All of this was good news. The coach was made out as a role model. The Christian school team was commended as good sports. This bit of news made it’s way to several people that were so moved by the event they felt led to send thanks and encouragement to the school, the team, and of course, the coach. Fan mail poured in. Among the fan letters, a young women wrote a very heart-felt message.
The message said that she, the writer, had all but given up on Christianity. Becoming somewhat agnostic, she was deeply moved by the Christian character of the coach, and she wished only more Christians were like him. This is basically what the message to the coach said.
The coach was getting lots of mail about the game, but this was a rare instance he was compelled to write a response to a piece of fan mail. So he did write the woman asking her not to give up on God for what men do. “You’ve got to take God for His own words and actions.”
The women was doubly moved that he’d responded. It was like a celebrity had sent her a personal letter of concern for her salvation. What was she to do? It seemed providential. She knew the right thing would be to respond back, but she wanted to be careful in choosing her words. She wanted to tell the coach the unpretentious truth. She told him that in all honesty, her lack of faith was not for what men had done. Her lack of faith went back to a close friend getting cancer and dying a miserable death. The woman said “I just can’t see why God would let her suffer. She was a good person. People loved her. I figure a good God would not let that happen.”
In the midst of this story unfolding, the word had got out to This American Life (sound familiar?) of what was going on between the coach and the lady. They were compelled to report on the story from the woman’s perspective in their latest episode, so they asked her if it was all right with her if they got involved. She said it was okay, and when the coach responded to her latest correspondence that he’d like to talk with her in a phone call, she asked if it’d be okay to record their conversation for the radio show. She really wanted to get words of encouragement and affirmation from the coach, and at the same time the story was interesting enough if the coach could offer special insight into her unbelief they might also be meaningful to other listeners.
The coach agreed to have the conversation recorded. His position was he took every opportunity to be a good Christian witness and he wasn’t afraid of national media. So the call ensued.
First it was cordial and heartfelt. The woman was getting some long-overdue spiritual attention. The coach’s words were uplifting and interesting. Then the conversation switched gears. The coach wanted to affirm why God was a good God, a real God, and clarify who God was. The woman listened closely, and for awhile she was with him and was being convinced. Still, the coach had yet to answer some of her most important questions. She was in a difficult position still wondering why a good God would let her friend die a miserable death. What words of insight did the coach have to offer?
He said that no man could answer that question. If anyone tried, they were not telling her the truth because God chooses not reveal His will in such cases. Most of the time, anyway.
The coaches answer missed the mark. It didn’t cut it for the woman. In the end, the woman felt the conversation was incomplete and she was disappointed. She thought that this time she may get some real answers, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen now.
When This American Life followed up, the show suggested they speak with the coach again with the host of the show in on the conversation. Maybe they could get a better answer with more heads involved? Whatever the logic may have been, the story was unresolved, and the woman wanted to believe in God—she just needed help with her unbelief. Keep in mind this was a basically atheistic program trying to aide this woman in her struggle to find reason to believe.
The coach welcomed a second round. This time the host of the radio show helped the conversation along seeking the answers to the woman’s questions. But in the end, nothing persuaded her the coach had to say. The woman went away from these events with more hope, but at the same time just as much struggle. Deep down, she knew that their had to be an answer other than “God isn’t real,” but knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt wasn’t coming together for her.
What decides what’s true and what’s untrue?
It is true that the Bible does not have everything the Lord does spelled out. We do not know why in all His goodness he let’s evil happen to those that are good people. This woman’s friend, her character being beside the point, was a loved individual and had made a positive impact on others. Her faith we do not know. Her life story we do not know. We just know that she died a horrible death.
But there is someone that knows much much more about this woman that passed of cancer; someone that knows more about that woman than even this close friend left behind the wrestle with the loss. This person is God Himself. The Bible affirms that God knows the number of hair on your head, He knows when the bird falls from the sky, he knows and cares for each flower in the field. “Then how much more important are you to the Lord than the flower of the field?”
One unanswered question should not call into question the validity of all truth. There are many questions to be asked about all things in life. Does man know why he needs to sleep? Does any person understand why gravity is a law that does not change at random? Does man know why the body will inevitably grow old and deteriorate—why nothing lives forever? Does man know why many animals eat their young to seemingly protect them? Do people know why we need government, and why government inevitably becomes corrupt and harms the people it sets out to help? Does mankind know why it perpetuates evil? How does one even know what evil is?
The answers to these and an infinite number of other relevant questions goes unanswered all the time—that is, if you’re unwilling to swallow the answer. The truth is, we all want to know why evil exists and perpetuates, but do you think that for any man an answer to that question would satisfy his soul? It wouldn’t because evil is so great it is overwhelming, and if the truth were told that man is responsible for all evil in the world, for most people the burden knowing this would be too much for people to bear. So man wanders the world looking for the answers but unwilling to accept one if the answer in and of itself does not reconcile the grievance of evil in the first place.
There can only be one truth, but no one ever promised that it would be simple and easy to understand. No matter what religion, scientific theory, political policy, human philosophy… the answers are not simple. With a world of infinite complexity and distinction of the creation of the universe around us, why do we think that it can all be reconciled with one easy answer that everyone will like?
And I don’t like prunes, but does that mean they don’t exist because I don’t agree with them? The truth is inescapable whether you agree with it or not. This is true of our parents, siblings, bank account, country, time zone, and on and on. Inevitably, I’m bound to accept the real world at large because my not liking it—accepting it—doesn’t change the fact that these are absolutes we all have. I can change where I stand on this earth, but no matter what, I can’t stop time. I can bleech my hair, but that won’t change my natural hair color.
I will continue this thought in my next post. Please stay with me.
