Sell By Beauty

Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. (1Peter 3: 3, 4)

We are very conscious of the attractiveness and beauty of a woman at her peak. We are also conscious of the vigor of youth at their peak. We recognize the excellence of performers. Sportspeople, models and musicians are such people. The reason they are idolized is because they appear to exceed normal people in their specialty. They appear as if they have been taken from another world.

In the past they were actually declared gods. But we are not really much different as the only thing we do not in our ‘enlightenment’ do is call them gods. But we give them those ancient titles all the same assuming they are not indicative of our worship. Diva, cherubic, angelic, star and many other names and titles we give them are actually declarations of devotion, which is worship, anyway.

Girls at their peak will many times become too selective as to be obnoxious to young men of their age. They become too picky when approached for marriage, loathing the ‘hopeless’ young men without a future since many times they are just from completing education and possess nothing of worth to these goddesses who have the whole world ready to lick the dust of  their feet. The kind of man who meets their standard must be one with as much world as might please her.

The interesting fact is that the men who meet her qualification are mostly married men. They have the wealth, the respect, the allure consummate with the picky nature of the girl. The other class is men who are not interested with settling down with any woman, choosing to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of a wayward life. They will therefore want to exploit these beauties before they expire.

I want us to look at a very beautiful girl. And I am now using my many years of observation. I also have the advantage of sharing with many old men as I was growing and so have the benefits accruing from experience beyond mine. But I am sure you will bear me witness that what I am sharing is not hidden wisdom as it is the compilation of many years of observation, observation that is not restricted to my eyes.

In her teenage a girl is most attractive. Her budding body is full of the right curves and her desirability is at its peak. In the past she would be married off as there was nothing much expected of her but getting married, raising a family and putting herself at the disposal of building her community and culture.

But things have changed. The said girl will most likely be in school for the next seven to ten years and will therefore be exposed to a different set of values and expectations. Marriage is discouraged and indefinitely postponed until other expectations are met. This shifts the expectations of this girl beyond the ‘primitive’ expectation of a simple desire for marriage and family (1 Timothy 2: 15). Even the standards change beyond raising children and contributing to the wellbeing of society. The value of success changes beyond hard work and good breeding. The main driver of all this change is education and the expectation being placed on it. You see nobody goes to school to go to farm and raise livestock personally.

Our beauty therefore confronts a different social dynamic and value system. Whereas in the past the choice of a husband was dictated by society, sometimes even ignoring her choices, she is thrust into a situation where the whole marriage equation changes. The urgency diminishes, if not killing altogether the desire for marriage. In fact she is brought to believe that marriage is not only unhealthy at that age but totally retrogressive for her status.

With such a drastically changed definition of marriage and the new set of priorities, it comes as no surprise that she starts imagining that her beauty will last forever (at least until she becomes 30 which for her is not much different from forever). It is therefore not surprising that any proposal from young men will be met with disdain for the most part as she is convinced that she deserves better; a more educated man, a wealthier man, a prominent family, etc. and of course she believes she has all the time in the world to wait for her prince in shining armor.

Whereas in the past the desirability of a man had to do with his inner qualities (character, industry, honesty, prudence), the modern girl is faced with new qualities (caliber of university and course, employer, family wealth, car he drives) which are external with little to do with the kind of man he is. And it is no wonder that the rate of divorce, separation and infidelity has reached shocking proportions lately. You see a rich man is not necessarily a good man. Remember Christ talking about a rich man accessing the kingdom of God (Mark 10: 25)?

But these are the qualities our beauty is now brought up to desire and value.

But let me cut short this side of the story by saying that  this beauty will stay for very long without getting any eligible man due to her unreachable standards among the men who should marry her.

Incidentally those men will go for the girl who, though not as beautiful or endowed as she is, is ready to settle down in marriage. This girl will accept because though she might also have been fed with the same standards and expectations will realize that she is not as attractive or desirable as the really beautiful and will therefore lower her expectation in view of that simple fact. It follows the law of demand and supply that the most desired will have the highest expectations.

As the years go by our beauty remains unmarried as her less endowed ‘sisters’ land the men she had rejected and her prince gets farther and farther as the years are going. Eventually all her age mates get husbands as she holds on to her high horses.

But time is never stagnant. The men who were below her class got married anyway as it is impossible to wait for someone so discriminating, however desirable she may be. As usual the marriage will release them the favor God has promised (Proverbs 18: 22). As a result of that they are able to access the things our beauty was looking out for. They get the good jobs, the big cars, the houses, because they had crossed the barrier for favor.

All of a sudden our beauty finds out why all the men who met her standard were already married. It was marriage that opened them to that standard. Sadly for her all those who sought her hand in marriage already got married and render her regret vain and ineffectual. She is therefore locked out of her age mates through her extreme beauty and desirability. The proposals which were coming daily become rarer and rarer and the men becoming incomparably worse than those she had initially rejected so that accepting them would be a shame especially to those prime ones who had lacked a very slight mark. Imagine rejecting someone with a 90% mark and later being left with one with 40% after the first ones gave up on you and moved on?

Not only does it become more difficult for her to accept another proposal due to the fact that the cream passed her by meaning that the latter proposers were for all intents substandard compared to what she had rejected, but it starts taking desperate proportions since it now appears as if she has condemned herself to the eternal single state. But she is still beautiful and extremely attractive as a woman’s beauty peaks around 30.

Another factor that complicates her situation is that as she was making herself unapproachable, she was getting her own status beyond that beauty. She most likely got a good education and an excellent job, probably very wise investments. She therefore becomes choosier even as her situation becomes more desperate in the marriage direction. But worse is that she becomes too high for any man to think of proposing unless it is the silver tongued conmen who seek to use and dump her. It goes without say that even if she lowered her standards even below surface very few men will dare approach her, first because many have a record of the kind of men she rejected and second because she is above them in most, if not all social indicators. She has become the epitome of independence.

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach. (Isaiah 4:1)

She will eventually conclude that a normal marriage is out of her way and must therefore look for a way out of her predicament respectfully. That is when we start seeing her looking to be second, third or any other number wife.

But then her contemporaries are not in the least interested in getting additional wives since they are just making it in life and still care for what society thinks and polygamy has never been respectable for younger men. Yet for her getting married to a tired old man is lower than even the desperation she feels under. How will those she rejected feel? Will she be able to handle the gloating of those who had pleaded with her unsuccessfully?

Again time does not wait for her. She reaches the plateau her beauty and attractiveness and still having challenges of the nature I have described. Then the graph starts going negative. Time starts to demonstrate that it was also a force. Bumps and dents start appearing here and there. The body shape starts disobeying her nutritional and exercise regimen. In short her age starts showing off. She could start applying paints but it becomes harder to conceal the truth.

Then another crisis develops. One very important reason for marriage is children, and she does not have children despite all her success. And marriage even as the seventh wife is becoming more and more an impossibility. What does she do to get a child? Remember many times this is a girl who has been in the church and therefore kept her sexuality for that prince, a prince who has decided to move elsewhere. Her regret at the wasted chances has not been able to rectify the situation.

Again she thinks to approach those she knows and trusts most, the men she had rejected in her ivory towered folly to provide seed so that she can get a child. They could even approach the wife so as to show that what she is interested is not marriage but just the seed. But her pleas do not succeed because the men’s consistent faith blocks it.

She could therefore give up waiting and decide that even dirty water can quench a fire and hire men to sleep with her so that she can get that child.

They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom. (Ezekiel 16:33)

She is now become a harlot who started only with a lofty and worldly value system.

There is one quote I like. The ship is surrounded on all sides with water but the only water that sinks it is the one that gets into it.

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. (John 17: 15 – 17)

The little world we allow into our spirits is the one that will wreck our lives.

I have just used beauty. But there is academic excellence, athletic prowess, entrepreneurial acumen which all lead to a similar sort of grave; regret and desperation.

How many extremely wealthy people commit suicide or even die through drug overdose? How many immensely successful people die of loneliness? How many are unable to settle down with their wife or husband without sleeping around?

A secular worldview will ultimately dominate your life, irrespective of how many verses of the Bible you know and believe. You see believing in God is not constrained to us, even the devil and his demons believe even more than us because they tremble because they know where that faith would take them, only that they are not willing to be led by it.

Does God dictate your choices? How do you choose your friends? What do you use to decide one job offer is better than another? What do you use to decide the ministry you will get involved? How do you decide the ministry or minister to give as worship? What do you use to gauge ministry success or effectiveness?

How deep is my devotion to God?

But not all beautiful girls are single because they became too selective. You see even men (and it is actually worse) allow the world to shape their value system. The men that ought to have approached her become too full of the world to offer anything of value to a girl with spiritual values. They will propose in a way as to cause the girl to prefer singlehood to marriage to such worldly and totally unspiritual men as those asking for her hand in marriage.

But that girl will not become desperate as God and her commitment to Him was the reason she is still not married. Her faith will continue being vibrant though the world may pour scorn on her decisiveness. And she is sure to be rewarded by the God who controls her value system.

The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. (Ruth 2:12)

And that is the reason I started this post with the Peter passage. A truly transformed worldview will give me peace amidst the challenges the world offers.