August 22, 2009 - 11:41 pm
Maybe you’ve bought into the lie that you’ll never be pretty enough, tall enough, smart enough, unique enough, or important enough…here’s some good news: The God who slung the stars across the heavens…whose very breath gives life…that God, the King, has always been taken with you. He thinks you’re gorgeous. In fact, He is absolutely wild about you!
Check out the verses in the blue box below that scream of God’s love for you.
When I read this excerpt in a Christian girl magazine I was eager to see what the verses in the blue box were all about. In fact, they even showed up in True North’s Scripture of the Day yesterday!
Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear:
Forget your people and your father’s house.
The king is enthralled by your beauty;
honor him, for he is your lord.
Psalm 45:10-11
Today’s typical Christian resources tell our young women that they don’t need to be overly concerned about their appearance or what people think of them. They pitch to the girls that you can be raw and real, just you, and everyone should accept you. They say God thinks you are beautiful just the way you are.
Now, I’m all for helping high school girls overcome their insecurities and I am definitely excited about taking them to God’s Word. However, we can’t twist the Bible.
For example, Psalm 45:10-11 is not God’s feelings toward womankind. This psalm was a royal wedding song and verse 10 calls the bride to leave her people and be joined to her husband and his house. Verse 11 describes the groom’s affection for her and calls her to submit to her new husband with honor.
We cannot just find a verse that compliments a specific woman’s beauty and claim it as a compliment for ourselves! Much less saying this is what God thinks about us when that wasn’t even what the verse was originally saying!
Here is another example from the same magazine:
The greeting the angel gave Mary is something to focus on for a minute. In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases Luke 1:28,
“Good Morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty. Beautiful inside and out!”
And guess what? God feels the exact same way about you. In fact, you could fill in the blank using your name and the Scripture would apply.
Something authors do when taking verses out of context is they often choose a translation that says what they want it to say. In this article the author chooses a paraphrase, but consider the NIV translation of Luke 1:28 says, “The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Reading that translation it is clear that the angel wasn’t even talking about external beauty.
This verse is a specific word to Mary, a righteous young woman who God chose to be the mother of Jesus. How in the world can you insert your name here and rest in a compliment God didn’t even give you?!
This is a subtle but dangerous way that these Christian resources are trying to encourage young women. We should never twist verses to say what makes us feel better about ourselves. God does say clear things in the Bible about how we can be beautiful in his eyes and we need to make sure we have a right understanding of those passages.
What does the Bible say about God’s definition of beauty? Leave me a comment with your ideas! Let’s continue this discussion in future posts on this topic.