But our standard of beauty in America is not necessarily the standard desired by the rest of the world. For instance, in Korean culture, their version of ideal beauty has been heavily influenced by Japanese animation. These are cartoons that tend to portray the characters with large and distinct features, which is not natural to the Korean population. In fact, South Korea is now considered the plastic surgery capital of the world with nearly 25% of women aged 19–29 have undergone plastic surgery, and 31% of women among 30–39-year-olds. The citizens of South Korea are paying huge sums of money to achieve a look that is genetically almost impossible for their ethnicity.

We can see an evolution of how these standards change by examining history. If we could travel back in time to ancient Rome, we would find that the ideal version of female beauty was the polar opposite of our standards today in America. In ancient Rome, a beautiful woman was one who had fat and curves on her body. The reason why this was considered beautiful is because your weight indicated wealth. The majority of the population was thin because they could not afford to eat. By contrast, if you were more plump, everyone would know that you had the means to feed yourself. So if you’re imagining Cleopatra as a thin, beautiful woman like you would see in a modern fashion magazine, think again. She was probably a large woman because that was the standard of ideal beauty during her time.

What you may have noticed about the societal perception of ideal beauty from my examples is that beauty is often defined by what is most rare in our population. The harder it is to achieve, the more it’s idealized by the broader society. And of course, this has a huge impact on the way we value ourselves. If our external image is able to mirror the standard set by society, then we are given permission to feel good about ourselves. Likewise, if our external image falls short of this standard, which is true for 99.9% of us, then we are made to feel as though something critical is missing from our lives.

I have spoken before, in previous sermons, about how much of the standard of beauty in our society is created by advertising. We live in a society where we are bombarded by images of who we should and should not be. Every day the average person is exposed to more than 3000 advertisements and these advertisements not only sell us products, but they sell us ideals of normalcy. They convey to us the standards of what a successful life is supposed to look like: if you look like these people who own these products and are doing these things, then you will be happy. The women’s rights activist, Jean Kilbourne, really brought this home for me in her presentation entitled, Killing Us Softly, on how women are represented in the world of advertising. Let’s take a look at some of her insights.

The fascinating thing about this issue is that we all know intrinsically that our “society image” shouldn’t matter that much to us. You heard each of the people interviewed from our congregation say that our external complexion shouldn’t matter as much as our internal complexion. But you can also see a dramatic difference in how that thinking evolves as they get older. The youngest ones are able to articulate very clearly that the only thing that really makes us beautiful is who we are on the inside. And yet, as they get older, you can see how they are wrestling with the societal pressure that external beauty does matter.

Unfortunately, this reality is inescapable because, as Jean Kilbourne says in her talk, there is this incredible emphasis in our society on achieving physical perfection. We have all bought into this notion that humans should strive for perfection. However, the paradox of human life is that the more perfect we look on the outside, the more dead and empty we feel on the inside. And Jesus touches on this paradox in the scripture we read from Matthew’s gospel when he says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

In these verses, Jesus is saying that just because you do all the right things on the outside and seem perfect to others, that perfection is simply a mask that prevents people from seeing the reality that lies inside of your soul. Beneath that perfect exterior is a person who is empty, flawed and sad. I find it amazing that even though these verses are almost 2000 years old, they are so spot on to the issues we deal with in our modern society. Indeed, these verses indicate something universal about our species: it is very important to us to present the illusion of external perfection. We don’t want others to think that we are weak. Interestingly, I have found a correlation between external perfection and internal chaos. The more a person emphasizes external perfection, the greater the probability that the internal world of that individual is in absolute turmoil.

The reason why we don’t see that turmoil is because we are often distracted by the façade that they are in total control of their lives. The people who have mastered external perfection are usually very put together. Everything seems perfect in its right place. Whatever our society deems to be important, they have it. The nice house, the nice car, the nice family, lots of money, lots of friends. If you’re an outsider looking in, you think to yourself, “Man, they’ve got it all.” But if you scratch just a little bit beneath the surface, you find that it’s not as put together as they’re trying to make it out to be. You come to realize that they’re using those beautiful features of their life to hide the meaninglessness they feel inside of themselves.

And I’ll be the first to admit that, for a long time, I fell into that category. I was that person who Jesus was describing in the scripture – nice and beautiful on the outside, dead on the inside. When I was 18, I had a bodybuilder’s physique. I had gotten into all the best schools so people would think I was smart and successful. I came from a family of means, so money wasn’t a problem for me. I had managed to achieve all the things that society expected of me, and yet, I felt miserable on the inside. Ironically, the only time I felt good about myself is when I was surrounded by people who said they admired all of my achievements. You see, that’s the problem with external beauty, unless there’s someone there to admire it and affirm its worth, then that external beauty means absolutely nothing.

This is why Emily’s phrase “society image” captures the problem so well – without a society to appreciate and validate your external image, those features of your life can provide you with no joy or happiness. It took me a long time to come to the realization that investing in my external image was not going to solve the problem of my internal turmoil. I needed to turn inward and work on my internal image, or “God image,” as Emily put it. But I discovered that this is no easy task. Even though I knew, intellectually, that nurturing my God image is where I would find my value and worth as a human being, it was much easier said than done.

In fact, I wasn’t even sure where to start, but I learned that the answer is actually found in something that Rosa said in the video we watched. She said, “What makes someone beautiful is them being themselves as person in who they are because everyone’s different and I think that’s kind of beautiful.” And she’s absolutely spot on with that. What makes a person beautiful is when they are simply being themselves. Not what society wants them to be, but the person who God intended them to be. Therefore, I believe a person is most themselves when they are in touch with God’s image inside of them.

In Genesis chapter 1, it tells us that humans are created in God’s image. Now the word in Hebrew that we often translate as image is tezelem, which comes from the word tezel, meaning shadow or reflection. In other words, God creates human beings as a reflection of God’s own self. We were created to be like God. If we look at God’s being from the perspective of the Bible, particularly the New Testament, we find that God is best summarized by the English word love. So when we are in touch with God’s image inside of us, we have tapped into that spirit of love. The more you are able to love, the more you will become the person who God intended you to be. That might sound simple, but it’s not.

I believe when we are born, we are most in touch with God’s spirit inside of ourselves. That’s why we interviewed children in elementary school because you can see how easily God’s image and love shines through their spirits. However, as the students become older, the ability to love becomes harder. For many adults, they have been so affected by negative experiences that they have closed themselves off to the beauty of the love in their hearts. And so they focus on their society image or external beauty because they are too scared to open themselves to what the feelings of love might bring because it might hurt too much.

As I have pointed out in previous sermons, most of us are actually pretty horrible at love. There are only a small minority of people in the world who make it into adulthood and are proficient at loving God, loving others, and loving themselves. To prove this to you, think of the person you respect most in your life, the person who has had the greatest impact on your life – more than likely, the reason why you feel that way about them is because that person was very good at loving you. They chose to look past your faults and your flaws. They were able to see the potential inside of you and bring out the best of who you could be. There are not many people like that in this world and, when you find it, you know you’ve stumbled upon something special.

When I began the journey to find the image of God within myself, I was greatly comforted by the idea that God loved me for who I was; that God would not hold my past mistakes against me; that I could be somebody different than I was. And what I discovered as I let go of my society image is that God helped me to love myself. Every day I would look in the mirror and realize that God’s image was a little more pronounced in my life because I was able to express that love to others. Until eventually, I realized that I was no longer deriving my value and worth from the admiration I received of others, but from the love that I was able to release into the world.

I want to end this morning by asking you to consider something extraordinarily important. I want you to look deep inside of yourself and I want you to ask yourself, “What is my image? Am I invested in my society image, what others expect me to be? Or am I invested in the image of God inside of me? Am I working on loving God, loving myself and loving others?” And if the answer leans more towards the end of being invested in the image of society, I hope that you might take a chance and open your heart to the possibility of simply allowing God to love you for who you are. Because as Rosa said, “People make mistakes, but God will still think you’re beautiful. God will still love you because you’re his child and he helped create you.” May we all take comfort in the truth of those words. Amen.