Article July 18, 1983 Issue

Beauty is yours right now

PAMELA SUSAN McKNIGHT

These days many people seem preoccupied with the way they look. Television and radio commercials and newspaper advertisements are filled with advice on diet, makeup, and exercise. We are urged to count calories, weigh pounds, measure inches. But do we know where real beauty comes from?

The beauty of man, like the beauty of a flower, is natural. It comes from God. In the Bible we read, "God created man in his own image." Gen. 1:27. An image is an exact likeness, so we are actually the exact likeness of God. For example, because God is Love, as His likeness we are loving. Because God is Truth, we are truthful. God is Spirit, so His image and likeness is spiritual. Everything that we really are and everything that we truly have come from God. This includes genuine beauty. Think of a daffodil. If we hold that daffodil in front of a mirror we don't see the reflection of a withered flower. Certainly there is no ugliness, deformity, or ungainliness in God's shining being; hence it is impossible for any of them to be a real part of us.

We run into trouble when we think of beauty in physical terms. Then we view ourselves as an arrangement of matter that needs fewer pounds, more exercise, longer legs, larger eyes, and any number of other "improvements." We tend to think of ourselves as a collection of physical statistics, and this points us in the wrong direction.

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July 18, 1983
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