Teens

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One of the saddest phenomenons of the latter end of the previous millennium, which has been carried over into the new millennium, and which affects our youth in record numbers, is the hatred of self.

Our culture is a culture that has a fixation with beauty. Because of this fixation, people have and are spending billions of dollars to look beautiful. From the simple skin lightening/darkening to the more complex facial reconstructioning, people are in essence saying, “I don’t like myself.”

However, what is simultaneously taking place are the consequences. Bulimia, anorexia, disfigurement, and often death are the end result of matching the standard of beauty. And, as stated earlier, there are a vast number of teens and young adults that have been seduced into this self-hatred. Those who have wealthy parents can pay to alter their appearance. Those not so fortunate crawl into a shell of low self-esteem.

To those of you reading this article, I pose this question and ask you to consider it carefully. Who set the standard for what is beautiful or handsome? And yes, guys grapple with this as well.

Who gave you the blueprint? Who set the pattern for beauty and ugly by which you gauge your appearance? They say that beauty is in the “eye” of the beholder, but if that eye is dark, the beholder cannot rightly judge. Consider Jesus. Very little is said about His looks, but what is said leaves a powerful statement. The prophet Isaiah in the 53rd chapter of his book in verse two says “...He hath no form nor comeliness and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” In order words, Isaiah was saying that when Jesus would arrive he wouldn’t meet the standard of beauty set by His culture. He wouldn’t stand out as some tall, dark handsome figure of a man. To make it even plainer, He wasn’t “Fine.” Because of Him having such a common-looking face, He’d be lost among all the other common faces.

What attracted men and women to Jesus was the beauty that was within Him. Men look outwardly on a man’s appearance while God looks upon the heart. The compassion that flowed out of Jesus to heal broken bodies, the love that flowed from Him that raised men from the dead, the grace that emanated from Him, that made prostitutes feel accepted, was what overshadowed this common-looking face and brought souls to worship at His feet.


And for us today who have never seen His face, how deeply we have fallen in love with Him who first loved us. The mercy, grace, and love that flows yet still from His heart towards us in so many ways, that when grown men think on it are reduced to weeping; when women just think of His love that delivered them, to fall prostrate in adoration.

Remember, you are an original; don’t alter perfection; it doesn’t need it. True beauty comes from within and is produced by the Holy Spirit working from within. Beauty and ugliness is a heart issue, not an eye, nose, color, face or breast issue.

There’s nothing wrong with admiring someone else’s appearance, but it is wrong to judge your physical appearance by someone else’s. Be happy for being you and realize that no one else can duplicate that. If I’ve encouraged just one person, then this article was not written in vain. Outer beauty, as men determine it, fades, but inner beauty is an eternal beauty and produces longer lasting results. Seek the inner kind.

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