Worldy ways
Ever since the advent of beauty contests, the meaning of the word beauty has changed significantly. People are now likely to consider a beautiful person only on the basis of the fellow’s appearance and not due to any other reason.
The adage that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder has lost its meaning to many people as at now.
To be called beautiful, a group of young women must willingly submit themselves to few paid judges to use some inadequate criteria to pronounce them beautiful or ugly. !
A pathetic scene was the screening of the Miss Model of the Universe Contest where hundreds of young women were told they did not qualify because they were too short or too fat on TV screens. The look on the face of the young ladies told it all. Their spirits and pride were broken. “Oh I can model in high heels, one of the girls pleaded.
How can a young beautiful woman subject herself to such a situation. To be told right in your face that you cannot be a model because you are not tall.
That is the human mind and it should be the business of Christians to be consoling all those girls and advising the rest to do something better with their lives other than aiming at the catwalks.
After all money is not all that life is about and it is also an open secret that most of the successful and long necked models are not happy at all.
We believe every human being is good looking because we are all created in the image of God.
Who on earth has a better sense of beauty than the Creator, who made the whole world so wonderfully? The psalmist said: “In his time, he made all things beautiful.” How then do mere men take two or three characteristics and subjectively base their idea of beauty on them.
How does proverb 31 describe the virtuous woman, does it say, one who is tall, with a long neck and long legs?
It makes it explicitly clear that beauty is vain; charm is deceitful and lays emphasis on a woman who fears the lord.
The leadership of a church should busy itself by encouraging young bachelors not to concentrate on outward beauty but the inner one. It is not their business to help identify the outward beauty of women.
Traditionally and biblically, beauty is found in a person’s comportment and never in their appearance. In the academic field, beauty is conferred on a person vis-à-vis their ability to produce good work of intellectual value. Depending on which meaning one gives to the word, they organise a pageant to that effect.
Today at school programmes, traditional festivals and other group anniversaries the planners find a place on their tight timetable to fix a beauty contest on it. Interestingly and not surprisingly, it is always women who are put on the contest to showcase their womanhood.
It is an open secret the whole world is making a lot of money out of women’s body.
Advertisements which has nothing with nudity would show women in some form of nudity just to attract the opposite sex or people interested in looking at the bare bodies to breasts of women.
In advanced countries women’s rights activists are on the warpath with beauty contest organisers saying they are exploiting the bodies of the girls for financial gain.
These women rights activists have also embarked on education programmes to educate young women to excel in their chosen careers other than participating in beauty pageants.
The most unfortunate thing about it all is the type of attire designed for such occasions. Modeled for a fashion parade, they have all sorts of questionable outlook and most of them reveal the parts of the female body that should under normal circumstances be kept out of public view.
Some organiser's claim that even Queen Esther in the bible took part in a beauty contest and this cannot hold.
First of all, that competition was to select a wife for a King.
It was to make the woman look attractive for the king to desire her.
Secondly, it was not Jewish or Christian principle and as such we cannot claim to use it as our measuring stick.
In any case are we supposed to imitate all stories in the bible because they have been recorded in there both positive and negative ones.
Would any woman today lie at the feet of a man as Ruth did in the Bible? Certainly no.
Because the men in those days are different from the men of today.
Dressing
Peter, in his first epistle, recommended the appropriate mode of dressing for Christian women. In the third chapter, he writes: “Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging of the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—Rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.” Yet the professors of the faith have marred this incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.
If a beauty contest is accepted and promoted in a church hall, which other place in the world shall it be condemned?
The bible’s account of the process through which Esther the Jewish young girl was selected as a Queen to replace the disfavoured Queen Vashti is painfully a misinterpretation of an in event in history that served a particular purpose for those who initiated it.
The grooming of Esther leading to her selection as the best choice for the king could in no way be equivalent to the present day so-called pageant which only seeks to demean some people and pre-judiciously select some as winners.
In these days especially where the business enterprises want to seize every opportunity, fair or foul to market their products to a large number of people, it is their offer of meagre benefits for contestants that must be wooing so many innocent young ladies into such events.
In John’s Revelation chapter three, Jesus admonishes Christians to be either cold or hot because he says he will not at all tolerate lukewarmeness in the church. What is good is good. What is wrong, no matter how it shall be modified cannot ever be right.
"So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to for the glory of God." (1Corinthians 10:31)
God bless
hadirfuss
