Beauty is no longer in the eyes of the beholder, it has evolved into a humongous global industry worth some US$600 billion. Its giant-sized companion is the fashion industry, with an estimated value of US$2.5 trillion. These monster sectors are boosted annually with mega runway deals, brand promotions, obscene concepts and combinations, and exotic fabrics and fragrances. No thought is spared, as raging mad money is pumped into these golden calves, celebrating, enhancing, and exalting flesh, lust, materialism, and unabashed idolatry.
The world’s standard of beauty is not a precious gift from God to humanity; it is a relentless pursuit of perfectionism, an elevated idol that is worshipped by both men and women, across nations, race, class and creed.
For centuries, women have corseted themselves to the point of stifling in order to meet elusive standards of perfection. Men have shaped beards, grown hair, pumped iron, downed copious amounts of steroids, and built muscles in order to meet unattainable standards of perfection. Billions are spent annually on make-up, hair, popular clothing lines, body contours, enhancements of selected body parts, skin bleaching, and dieting in order to fit into glossy magazines which camouflage the Satanic worship of flesh.
The flesh-worshippers prostrate themselves at the feet of their ignoble ideal. While their focus may appear to be on the physical, there are outrageous undercurrents which suggest that their idea of perfection goes beyond flawless bodies to assume that they also possess superior minds and purity of souls.
The thought that worldly perfection is tantamount to Godly perfection and is sinless, deserving of praise and glory, free from abuse, curses, demonic possession and the wiles of the enemy is a fallacy for which vast numbers of people fall prey.
Myriads of models and beauty contestants suffer the most heinous forms of abuse, are afflicted with cursed illnesses like depression, anorexia and malnutrition, face abject poverty and ultimately lose their souls in their bid to appear flawless.
Celebrities are the main proponents of this unrighteous pursuit. They set themselves up as super-humans, demanding and accepting worship from their fans who elevate and idolise their very image.
This affront against God is not only in the secular; the church too has its band of celebrities. For some organisations, their imposing sanctuaries boast wealth and power. Mortal men standing behind unholy pulpits are elevated and even idolised.
Especially in recent times, fatally flawed men, many of whom were pastors and other members of the five-fold, have been defrocked and cast down by God, exposing the clump of mud from which they were first formed. From their smatterings, they fake miracles, fooling the undiscerning that they are in right standing with God, even replacing God Himself.
But God cannot be mocked. He is never a party to the pretence. Embleachened sepulchres will be exposed and publicly whipped. Their worshippers will cry foul and blame God and not themselves for their deliberate rebellion, idolatry and ultimate demise.
Note this: it is always essential to be properly and modestly groomed. Neglecting one’s body, Paul says, is a sin of defiling what is holy, and God will punish you for it. However, nowhere in the Scriptures is perfectionism encouraged. In fact, God goes to great lengths to expose the imperfect, clay feet of outstanding men in the Bible.
Neither Abraham, Moses, David, nor any of the Apostles were presented as perfect physically or otherwise.
Despite his great faith in God, Abraham failed when he used Hagar to produce an offspring, and Moses was not allowed to enter the promise land, not on account of his stutter, but because of his disobedience to God’s instructions. The David and Bathsheba story is epic and the Apostles were really ordinary men with pronounced weaknesses, but who were available to be used by God.
God knows our perfectionistic temptations and tendencies and He has shown us that perfection is completely out of our experiential reach in this age. We all stumble and sin in many ways. Those who understand this truth have out-rightly rejected the world’s version of perfection and humbly accepted the magnanimity of the exchange of ashes for true beauty that comes through Christ.
Understand this, when God instructed Israel on how to offer acceptable sacrifices, He specifically did not ask for perfection, but for animals, grains and flour with no obvious defect or blemish. The outer coatings of animals selected for the altar could not be swatted with make-up and fake fur in order to feign flawlessness.
When God decided to offer Salvation to humanity, there was no animal or human life of any kind on the earth, physically unblemished or otherwise, that could meet the divine standard of perfection that would have been acceptable under the circumstances.
So, as He swore on His own Name, when He could not find any other name on which to swear, God turn to Himself to present at His own altar in order to save humanity from the wages of their sin. Enter Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God into human form.
Christ did not come into the world meeting the world standards of perfection. He came as God’s perfect sacrifice, meeting divine standard, as only God Himself could. To underscore the fact that Christ was not about the worldly yard stick, even His place of birth, among the animals, was below the world’s standard of beauty or perfection. So too were the circumstances surrounding His conception—a pregnant virgin pledged to be married to an older man.
The world fails to understand that perfection is only possible through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and the sanctification and grace that He provides for us. Understanding this divine mystery is not dependent on money, magazine images or make-up, it can only come with humble submission to Christ and Him crucified.