Today I saw an old short on TV from the late 1950’s and it was talking about the advancement of science and how far things have come. I was taking a break from work, and I didn’t catch the beginning of it. I heard them talking about discovering ways of working with rats in a maze and how these scientific discoveries were going to advance the science of intelligence and teaching. When I sat down and started to pay attention, they had moved on to the advancements in plastic surgery.
At first, it was okay. They talked about being able to help people who had been in accidents be able to get surgery and be restored to the way that they looked before. However, then it took a dark turn into some nightmare. The show suggested that ugly people wouldn’t be able to function in society and would need to turn to a life of crime because no one would like them or want to have to deal with them because they were physically unattractive. The show suggested that there should be programs in jails and other corrective detention centers that got prisoners plastic surgery. The plastic surgery would make them attractive and acceptable to society. Then, they could be released, and they would be better citizens now that they were physically attractive.
It made my skin crawl. The true beauty of a person isn’t in their physical features. First and most importantly, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. What is considered physically attractive changes across cultural and social boundaries all the time. What is considered beautiful in the United States in 2022 might have been considered totally repulsive in 1800 Europe. The true beauty of a person is what lies beneath the surface. What is in that person’s heart and spirit makes that person beautiful. When God looks at me, surely He sees my physical body, but He also experiences my heart and soul; He know the true essence of my spirit. When God looks down at me from Heaven, I believe that He doesn’t just see this decaying body around my spirit; I hope He sees the spirit within me and I hope He finds it beautiful.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
