daily java

Daily Java:

Don’t envy violent people
      or copy their ways.
Such wicked people are detestable to the LORD,
      but he offers his friendship to the godly.  (Proverbs 3:31-32)

It is Oscar night for picking the winning movies of the year. The red carpet is out and all of the magazines are salivating at the edge to take pictures of the movie stars and their husbands or wives or current live-ins or whatever.

The flash bulbs pop, pictures are taken, the stars are in their expensive clothes with their expensive hairdos, fresh from their plastic surgery and personal trainers. And they are an assemblage of beautiful people.

When we watch them on the screen, we see people that are almost super-human in their beauty and fitness. There is little or no way we can compare to them ourselves when it comes to physical beauty. In fact, there is little or no way anybody can. They look absolutely perfect.

It is just plain hard not to envy them. They are physically beautiful. When they take their clothing off – and they do at every opportunity – they are almost physically perfect. They are wealthy and adored by millions. Their every action is followed by those same millions and chronicled in magazines and newspapers all over the world.

But while they are not necessarily violent themselves, their way of life is violent to the Kingdom of God. Everything they do and everything they stand for is against what and who God is.

It is rare to find a celebrity who is a Christian. In general, their lives are lives of debauchery and godlessness. Their actions are those of people who are without any vestige of holiness. There is no beauty in their lives or in their souls. Their lives are lives of violence against all that is holy.

Their movies show this. They glorify all of the things that God descries. They glorify gratuitous sex, immorality, aberrant lifestyles. They are advertisements for everything God is against.

They are beautiful physically. And all they have is physical beauty and they will do anything they can to keep it. They know that when it is gone, all they have is gone. Their beauty is skin deep. When their skin gets old, all of their beauty is gone.

On the other hand, there are people who are not as beautiful on the outside, but are absolutely gorgeous on the inside. They do not look like movie stars but radiate the grace and glory of God.

I was irritated at one time trying to take pictures of some of the teenaged girls for the bulletin or something. I couldn’t figure out why the pictures came out badly. This one had a weird mouth, that one didn’t photograph well. The pictures just didn’t seem to capture them as I saw them as their youth pastor.

Then it dawned on me. the camera will not capture the inner person. It only captures the outer. Movie stars, celebrities – all have nothing but outer. They photograph great but when they talk, there is nothing but ugliness.

Their lives are beautiful on camera, but in person their lives are cesspools. Listen to the talk about things important to them and you can see this. Nothing that is important to me – God, love, family, honor, morality, goodness – is important to them.

I firmly believe that is why people like Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. They could not bear the thought of getting older and losing their looks. They had nothing else, nothing inside.

Looks are good. Nothing wrong with being beautiful. But I will take the lesser beauty with the inner radiance over the greater beauty with the inner emptiness any day of the week.

Yes, these women are beautiful, and it is hard not to fantasize about having such a beautiful body close to you. But sooner or later, you have to get out of bed and go on with life.

And when the inner person is empty, there is no life.

Real beauty is not skin deep. It goes to the soul when it is real.