The Problem with "Beautiful"

I stumbled upon this blog post yesterday and I just had to share it here. This guy nails the problem with the "everyone is beautiful" sayings, on the head. My favorite lines in the article, he writes:

Because we have created a culture that values beauty above all other innate traits… So it reassures you that everyone is beautiful. Because if everyone is beautiful or everyone can be beautiful or everyone is beautiful to someone, it’s okay to base a civilization around it.

Genius. This guy couldn't be more right. I mean, sure the whole concept of "everyone is beautiful" seems really nice. After all, God created us in His perfect, beautiful image. But beauty is relative. Some people are attractive to me, and others not at all. Someone may find another attractive, while I do not. Some people have outer beauty, with really ugly souls. Others the opposite. And in all honesty, some people are not beautiful on the outside or the inside. Despite that, it is o k a y. Beauty depends on the one who is perceiving, and anyone who knows the smallest bit about philosophy knows that our perceptions deceive us time and time again. 

Admitting that I, or anyone else, think everyone is beautiful somehow benefits no one. It's also a lie. But everyone has value and worth. Everyone was created in God's perfect image and we ought to love them, beautiful or not. What we need to do is reclaim qualities with real meaning. Worth, value, importance. All qualities that make it someone worth getting to know. Qualities worth loving someone for. Qualities which everyone truly comprise. And perhaps, when we begin to look at people and see that really matters, the fact that God made them and He loves them unconditionally, it may become easier to love them and our personal obsession with beauty may diminish as well. 

Read the full article here. You won't regret it: 

http://nathanbiberdorf.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/not-everyone-is-beautiful/