Beautiful People, Ugly People

Your beauty must not depend on outward things such as hair-styles, jewellery and clothes. It must show itself in that calm and gentle spirit which rises from the inner springs of a person's nature
1 Peter 3:3,4 


Jesus said Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Don't you understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside? 
Gospel of Thomas 89

Let it be by your gentleness that all men know you
Philippians 4:5 




I remember one time when I was talking with a friend. She said, "I'm going to the salon. What should I do with my hair?" I thought about her question. I thought for a while. In fact, I thought about it long enough for my friend to interrupt my thoughts by asking, "Well?" 

I replied, "You know, I really have no idea. I'm actually a lot more concerned about what you are going to do with your heart."

My response was not dismissive, trite or trivial. It was honest. I knew where she was coming from, what she was trying to deal with; she had recently sought me out for some advice. Her idea now was that a new hairstyle would signify a new her, would go some way to wash away the hurt of her recent past. But we both knew that appearance usually flatters to deceive; any real change must begin inside.

We live in an age when people pay excessive attention to their outward appearance, believing that their bodies are who they are. It's not just hairstyles, of course, or fashion, or editing selfies, or getting a tattoo; our body obsession is all over our shopping malls, gyms, and every article and film with gratutious sex. It's also obvious in our all-too-easy dismissal of the old, the frail, and the crippled.

Interestingly, in the passages quoted above, the word 'braided' is used regarding hair in the original Greek, telling us that we are not so different from the people who lived back then.  But stop there for a moment. Why would biblical texts even mention braided hair? They mention them because our appearance is not who we are.

You may have seen Chris Rock's film, "Good Hair" which analyses the African-American hair industry from the premise that his children believed they had bad hair. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with braided or styled hair or even paying attention to our appearance. But there is a big problem when we pay more attention to how we look than how we live; when we pay more attention to our image than our thoughts; when we spend more time in front of a mirror or taking selfies that we do in resisting evil or showing care and compassion for those around us. 

The point of the ancient writers is simply that prettifying our bodies (our outsides) doesn't create beautiful people, it only creates beautiful bodies; truly beautiful people are created within, through developing loving, compassionate natures. It's what we do, not how we look. In other words, for Jesus, Peter, and Paul, beauty or ugly are how we live; beauty is a verb.