Dr. Rodney Plunket

A topical sermon on beauty

People Magazine, October 30, 2000, has an extended cover story (pages 108-118) entitled, “A Body to Die For.”  Let me begin this morning by reading part of the opening portion of that article.

In his sprawling La Habra, Calif., home Ruben Fernandez is surrounded by reminders of his late wife, Judy, especially the furnishings she traveled widely to buy-Spanish statues, a grand piano, crystal chandeliers, Oriental rugs.  “Everywhere you look, you’ll see detail,” says Fernandez.  “She wanted everything to be right.”  That included her figure.  At 47, the mother of three decided it was time for lipoplasty, commonly called liposuction, a procedure that siphons fat from strategic areas.  “She had gained a few pounds,” recalls Fernandez, now also 47.  “She was just looking, let’s say, for maintenance.”

Instead, on March 17, 1997, Judy Fernandez died following extensive cosmetic surgery, a casualty of the all-too-common pursuit of the perfect body.  “The premium for women on physical beauty over intelligence is on the order of 100 to 1,” psychologist Dr. Rex Beaber says bluntly.  “A woman with an IQ of 180 who is not lovely is likely to marry ugly, be paid modestly well and secretly despise herself until the day she dies.  A woman with an IQ of 100 and beauty in the 99th percentile is likely to marry a physician or an investment banker, have a maid and be admired by all her neighbors” (page 108).

This article next tells of a girl named Merrick Ryan.  She was a nineteen year old with Anorexia Nervosa, the eating disorder that springs from a desire to be beautiful by being thin.  As a result of her disease she “saw a succession of therapists.”  In the course of her therapy she revealed that “she had been the victim of a date rape . . . .  Describing the trauma to her mother, she cried, ‘Didn’t he think I was pretty enough.’”  Her mother found her at 7 a.m. on January the 7^th of this year, “on the floor” and “barely conscious.  She was rushed to the hospital.”  As she slipped in and out of consciousness she told her mother, “I don’t want to live like this any­more, . . . .  I don’t want to be fat.  I want to die.”  A few hours later she did (page 111).  The article goes on and tells several more such stories, stories of people who died because of their pursuit of physical beauty (pages 112, 114, 117-118).

We may think that such people have gone to an extreme that makes them very different from the rest of us.  But the root cause of their obsession runs very deep within most if not all of us.  Studies keep showing how much we are drawn to people who are physically attractive.  It has also been made very clear that we evaluate people on that same basis.

Years ago, I read of a panel that was convened to judge the attractiveness of college students based on a photograph of each one of them.  After the attractiveness assessment, groups of papers were given to several college professors to grade, papers which those same students supposedly had written.  Each paper had attached to it a photograph of the supposed student.  The papers connected to stu­dents who had been judged to be physically attractive received better grades for the very same papers than the students who were judged to be unattractive.

A 1997 article in Christianity Today entitled “Is Beauty the Beast?” reports:

Studies in 1983 and 1989 for the Academy of Management found that with each additional attractiveness point on the researcher’s scale, a woman gained $2,000 in ongoing yearly salary.  A University of Pittsburgh study in 1990 revealed that businessmen’s average annual earnings rose $1,300 for every inch of height.  By 1993, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, men and women considered good-looking were earning at least 5 percent more than those labeled average-looking (Karen Lee-Thorp, “Is Beauty the Beast?” Christianity Today 41 [July 14, 1997] 31.

This same article also reports that research reveals that “people around the world accord a man higher status if his wife is attractive” (Ibid).

David Buss is a psychologist at the University of Michigan whose research is also cited in this Christianity Today article.  Buss’s research reveals that people all over the world place a great deal of emphasis on physical attractiveness.

Further, Buss says the importance of physical attractiveness to both men and women has increased in the U.S. in every decade since studies began in 1939.  On a scale of 0.00 to 3.00 , men’s emphasis on good looks in a wife has risen from 1.50 to 2.11, while women’s concern for a husband’s appearance has climbed from 0.94 to 1.67.  Buss attributes the shift to the increase of advertising and other media depictions of ever-more-perfect models.  Madison Avenue may not create instincts, but it can inflate them (Ibid).

But the depths of the human concern with physical attractiveness came home to me when I read this:

Studies confirm what most of us intuitively sensed as children:  Mothers and daycare workers smile, coo, kiss, and hold pretty babies more than plain ones.  Fathers are more involved with attractive babies.  In her study of mothers with their newborns, physchologist Judith Langlois concludes, “The less attractive the baby, the more the mother directed her attention to and interacted with people other than the baby . . . .  By three months . . . mothers of more attractive girls, relative to those with less attractive girls . . . more often kissed, cooed, and smiled at their daughters while holding them close and cuddling them” (Ibid., 30).

The author of this article says, “Children learn that attractiveness is the key to love.”

This article, as noted abve, refers to the research of physchologist Judith Langlois.  This researcher’s studies are also reported upon in the January 2000 issue of National Geographic in an article entitled, “The Enigma of Beauty.”  Please listen to a very revealing section of that article.  The author says,

I am standing behind a one-way mirror watching a six-month-old baby make a choice.  The baby is shown a series of photographs of faces that have been rated for attractiveness by a panel of college students.  A slide is flashed; a clock ticks as the baby stares at the picture.  The baby looks away; the clock stops.  Then it’s on to the next slide.

After more than a decade of studies like these, Judith Langlois, professor of psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, is convinced that this baby, like others she has tested, will spend more time looking at the attractive faces than the unattractive ones.

At six months old, we already have a preference for a beautiful face.  That, brothers and sisters, is a profound predisposition.

Scientists explain it as all related to the search for a mate.  Women deemed beautiful are more likely to be fertile and capable of bearing healthy children, they tell us.  Men deemed handsome are more likely to be able to provide for and protect their families.

But it does not take an overabundance of moral judgment to realize that even if that is the basis for this concern, then it has far exceeded any sort of healthy limit.  When mothers, I am sure unconsciously, show more attention to beautiful babies than to plain ones, then surely we can all tell that something is badly amiss.  And when babies at six months old already like to look at some people’s faces more than others, then we are dealing with a fixation that runs deep within us.  When people desire to be attractive so much that they die due to risky cosmetic procedures and die because of an obsession with thinness, then we are dealing with something that has a malevolent power that must be confronted.

You may be thinking, ‘Rodney, why are we talking about this in church?  What does this have to do with being a Christian?’  I believe that it is extremely relevant to our Christian walk because this obsession with outward appearance is in stark contrast to the Bible’s concern with the inner nature of a person.  Our Scripture reading this morning well conveyed this biblical concern.  God said to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7, “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

But look at the New Testament and you find the same focus, maybe even more so.  Jesus, in Matthew 23:25-28 says,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  You blind Pharisee!  First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.  So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

There is a parallel statement in Luke 11:39-40.  There Jesus says,

“Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  You fools!  Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?

And hear the words of 1 John 2:16:  “for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world.”  I would argue that there is no form of human sin that is more clearly connected to the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes than our obsession with a person’s outward form.

And notice how little the Bible as a whole is concerned with the physical appearance of people.  Realize that nothing is said about the physical appearance of Adam, Eve, Abraham, Moses, Miriam, the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, Mary Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene, or the apostles.  The focus was on their words and actions, words and actions which reflected their inner selves.

As the DNA code has been mapped, scientists may be closer to telling people what their predispositions are.  They will likely, in time, be able to tell us if we are prone to heart attacks, cancer, or some other diseases.  They may be able to tell us if we are likely to commit murder, theft, or rape.  Now do not misunderstand this research.  These are predispositions, not fatalistic certainties.  A person can say no to many of these predispositions.  Lifestyle affects the disease predispositions.  Human freedom affects the moral predispositions, and the power of God can absolutely negate them.  But many will breathe a sigh of relief if they discover that they have avoided the genetic tendency toward cancer and the genetic tendency toward murder.

But what this study has caused me to realize is that we have a tendency that is much more widespread.  And this tendency affects the way we treat people from the time they are infants.  This tendency causes us to love people more simply because they are appealing to our eyes.  And this tendency shows the power of sin that is still alive within our fallen natures.

It is like a serious corruption in a computer’s software.  Sometimes there is only one way to fix it.  Delete the software.  Get it completely out of the system and start over again.

Only God can do that.  Only God can so change us that we are able to focus exclusively on the inside, focus upon the heart.  I am convinced that God wants us to be transformed in that way.  Listen to the words of J. D. Mullen,

Physical health and beauty are factors over which the individual has very little control in the short run, and none in the long run.  To use Kierkegaard’s language, they lie outside of the realm of free­dom.  A life organized around these principles is an immediate (spiritless) life, different from the life of the animal only in the insignificant sense that it is in a way an attempt to improve upon nature (Kierkegaard’s Philosophy [A Mentor Book, New American Library, 1981], 83).

And listen to the Russian Orthodox priest and aesthetic theorist, Pavel Florensky, who said, “Everything is beautiful in a person when [that person] turns toward God, and everything is ugly when [that person] is turned away from God” (Quoted by Arthur Pontynen, “Facts, Feelings, and (In)Coherence vs. the Pursuit of Beauty (Kandinsky and Florensky),” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly No. 3 [1996]: 179).

I want to close with a poignant and powerful story that drives home with great force the need to move away from evaluating on the basis of appearance to a completely different way of viewing people.

I never thought that I understood her.  She always seemed so far away from me.  I loved her, of course.  We shared mutual love from the day I was born.  I came into this world with a bashed head and deformed features because of the hard labor my mother had gone through.  Family members and friends wrinkled their noses at the disfigured baby I was.  They all commented on how much I looked like a beat-up football player.  But no, not her.  Nana thought I was beautiful.  Her eyes twinkled with splendor and happiness at the ugly baby in her arms.  Her first granddaughter.  Beautiful, she said.

Before final exams in my junior year of high school, she died.  Seven years ago, her doctors diagnosed Nana with Alzheimer’s disease.  Seven years ago, our family became experts on this disease as, slowly, we lost her.

She always spoke in fragmented sentences.  As the years passed, the words she spoke became fewer and fewer, until finally she said nothing at all.  We were lucky to get one occasional word out of her.  It was then our family knew she was near the end.

About a week or so before she died, she lost the abilities for her body to function at all, and the doctors decided to move her to a hospice.  A hospice.  Where those who entered would never come out.

I told my parents I wanted to see her.  I had to see her.  My uncontrollable curiosity had taken a step above my gut wrenching fear.

My mother brought me to the hospice two days after my request.  My grandfather and my two aunts were there as well, but all hung back in the hallway as I entered Nana’s room.  She was sitting in a big, fluffy chair next to her bed, slouched over, eyes shut, mouth numbly hanging open.  The morphine was keeping her asleep.  My eyes darted around the room at the windows, the flowers, and the way Nana looked.  I was struggling very hard to take it all in, knowing that this would be the last time I ever saw her alive.

I slowly sat down across from her.  I took her left hand and held it in mine, brushing a stray lock of golden hair away from her face.  I just sat and stared, motionless, in front of her, unable to feel anything.  I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.  I could not get over how awful she looked sitting there, helpless.

Then it happened.  Her little hand wrapped around mine tighter and tighter.  Her voice began what sounded like a soft howl.  She seemed to be crying in pain.  And then, she spoke.

“Jessica,” Plain as day.  My name.  Mine.  Out of 4 children, 2 son-in-laws, 1 daughter-in-law, and 6 grandchildren, she knew it was me.

At that moment, it was like someone was showing a family filmstrip in my head.  I saw Nana at my baptizing.  I saw her at my fourteen dance recitals.  I saw her bringing me roses and beaming with pride.  I saw her tap dancing on our kitchen floor.  I saw her pointing at her own wrinkled cheeks and telling me that it was from her that I inherited my big dimples.  I saw her playing games with us grandkids while the other adults ate Thanksgiving dinner.  I saw her sitting with me in my living room at Christmas time admiring our brightly decorated tree.

I then looked at her as she was . . . and I cried.

I knew she would never see my final senior dance recital.  I knew she would never see me cheer for another football game.  I knew she would never sit with me and admire our Christmas tree again.  I knew she would never see me go off to my senior prom.  I knew she would never see me graduate high school or college or see me get married.  And I knew she would never be there the day my first child was born.  This made tear after tear roll down my face.

But above all, I cried because I finally knew how she had felt the day I had been born.  She had looked through what she saw on the outside and looked to the inside and saw . . . a life.

I slowly released her hand from mine and brushed away the tears staining her cheeks, and mine.  I stood, leaned over, and kissed her.

“You look beautiful.”

And with one long last look, I turned and left the hospice.  (Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, & Kimberly Berger, eds., A Second Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul [1998]).

Now we are going to spend some time in reflection.  I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes.  I want us all to open our hearts to God and allow God to beautify our hearts.  And I want us all to open our hearts to God and allow God to counter our obsession with outward appearance.  While we are reflecting, Adam and a group of singers will be singing a couple of songs that have been deliberately chosen because of their ability to focus our minds on matters of the heart.  Please enter into this special time.  Allow God to transform your heart.