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.

daily java

Daily Java:

Seventy years are given to us!
      Some even live to eighty.
   But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble;
      soon they disappear, and we fly away. (Psalm 90:10)

Last week I turned 62. It is truly hard to believe that I am this age. I am no longer the young man I have felt myself to be the vast majority of my life.

According to this scripture, I have no more than eight years left to me, maybe eighteen, depending on whether or not I am allowed it.

It is a fact that people are living longer nowadays. Good nutrition, availability to doctors and medical attention, all that stuff has caused us to live longer. And there are those who think that they are just a step or two away from a longevity drug that will cause us to live even longer.

But do we really want to? As hard as the last five years has been on Ella and me, would I really want to live a long time like that.

There is also the problem of finances. If people live longer, what will they use for money? Social Security will run out, pensions only are able to go so long, unless you have a phenomenal stock portfolio, you will run out of money. Then you are a very old person with nothing.

And if people live to be over 100, who is going to hire a 100 year old to work? Not to mention the fact that there are young people who need the work too to start their lives and families.

It really is a selfish thing to want to live too long. But why do people want to?

What is it about life that causes them to try desperately to hold on to it and to their youth?

One of the big things I hear nowadays is that 40 is the new 30. People forty today are in the shape people who were thirty were in fifty years ago.

I will admit that as I get older, older women look better to me. younger women are beautiful, yes. But older women have something to say. Sooner or later you have to get out of bed and talk. It would be hard for me to carry on any kind of life conversation with a woman who is the age of the Victoria Secret models. Older women are more appealing there.

But it is also true that an older woman cannot hold a candle to a young woman in terms of absolute physical beauty. Not only that, she turns into a fool trying to do so.

Plastic surgery, dating younger men, large helpings of denial – all look stupid on an older woman.

Looking at some of the movie stars and their botched plastic surgery facial jobs, it is hard not to feel sorry for them. When you have nothing but your body, you are desperate to keep it.

The older actresses who make a place for themselves as older actresses are to be admired. They recognize that there is life after beauty, that youth is not all there is.

I have heard it ventured that the reason Marilyn Monroe killed herself was because she was about to turn 40 and could not imagine herself as an older woman. She was a star in many ways based on her looks. When those were gone, what was left?

And the funny thing is she is almost idolized today because she died at a point in time before the ravages of age hit her. would she have done well older? I don’t know. And we will never know.

We accept what we have and we grow older. The key is to grow to our 70 or 80 with dignity and grace. There is nothing more beautiful than a godly older person. And there is nothing more pathetic than an old person who is trying desperately to keep his or her youth.

daily java

Daily Java:

When they arrived, Samuel took one look at Eliab and thought, “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed!” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Then Jesse told his son Abinadab to step forward and walk in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “This is not the one the Lord has chosen.” Next Jesse summoned Shimea, but Samuel said, “Neither is this the one the Lord has chosen.” In the same way all seven of Jesse’s sons were presented to Samuel. But Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” Then Samuel asked, “Are these all the sons you have?” “There is still the youngest,” Jesse replied. “But he’s out in the fields watching the sheep and goats.” “Send for him at once,” Samuel said. “We will not sit down to eat until he arrives.” So Jesse sent for him. He was dark and handsome, with beautiful eyes. And the Lord said, “This is the one; anoint him.” (1 Samuel 16:6-12)

The old adage says don’t judge a book by its cover. It’s easy to get swayed by appearance. Something looks good so it must be. Something looks bad so it must be.

Samuel was going to anoint a new king over Israel. The old one was Saul and he had turned his back on God, so God turned from him. Saul was tall and straight and a good warrior, just the kind of king material people wanted.

Samuel came to Bethlehem and to Jesse’s house. He had several sons and one of them was going to become the next king. When Samuel saw Eliab, he fell into the trap of appearances. He just looked kingly. But then again, so did Saul. God said no.

All  of the sons came and none were the one. Samuel finally asked, don’t you have any more sons? Well, Jesse said, there is the kid. He is out in the field. They brought him and God said, this is the one. And he was the one who God called a man after his own heart (1 Samuel 13:14).

A few years ago, the show American Idol had a woman named Susan Boyle come out to sing. She was plain, dumpy and absolutely not good looking. In fact, they made light fun of her. Then she opened her mouth and sang and it was totally at odds with her appearance. She went on to become one of those odd success stories of ability over appearance.

I remember girls swooning over the Beatles. John, Paul and George were handsome, but some girls was going on and on about Ringo. I said, but he’s ugly. One girl said, yes, but he is so ugly he is cute and she went on from there.

Barbra Streisand and Janis Joplin were not pretty women, yet when they sang they became beautiful. They had an inside quality to their singing that came out in their appearance.

But you take a beautiful girl and let her start cursing and all the beauty is gone in my eyes.

My wife is one of those people whose insides come out. She was always cute as a young woman, but she grows more beautiful as she gets older because her heart is pure and good. As she gets older, the inside shows more and more.

And some girls are the reverse. They have nothing but their looks and they know it. They spend all of their fortunes trying to keep those looks because they know that when they are gone, they will be empty.

A beautiful, vain and shallow girl with no real insides would be hard to live with. Sooner or later, you have to get up and put some clothes on and have a conversation. Sooner or later the sex will wear off and the life will begin and there will be nothing there.

And if nothing ever comes there, as she gets older, she will lose her beauty and become ugly. Some movie stars who were so hot in their day lose that young fresh beauty and fade into obscurity because there was nothing to replace it.

Someone once said, beauty is skin deep, but ugliness goes clear to the bone. God sees the bone, we see the skin. It isn’t that we are stupid, it is just the way we are made. We do not have the prescience God does.

God sees the inside. When viewed by the Lord’s standards, the outwardly ugly person becomes beautiful, the outwardly beautiful person ugly. When you look with his eyes, you see the real truth and value of things.

naked women

Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion.  (Proverbs 11:22)

I was looking at some pictures of the MTV Video Music Awards last night. Cher came out in an outfit like the one that she wore in the 1989 video, If I Could Turn Back Time. Very revealing. However, at the age of 64, it was inappropriate on so many levels. She gave an award to Lady GaGa. She was dressed in a rather brief meat kind of dress, really quite strange. She usually wears something revealing and stupid looking.

I saw a picture essay the other day of movie stars who had one too many plastic surgeries. The desire to stay beautiful was so strong that they disfigured themselves by accident trying desperately to remain young.

The internet is full of beautiful young women who are quick to disrobe. Nudity, or at the least, brief bikinis, rule.

Yet, there is probably nothing more beautiful than a well dressed beautiful woman.

The Bible says that beauty in a woman who has no sense is wasted. Her beauty is thrown around like a commodity and then when it near gone, she tries everything she can to keep it.

One of the saddest things I have seen was the old Mae West, tottering on high heels, with body builders on both sides of her to prop her up, still wearing the clothing and stuff that she wore at the height of her beauty. It was as if she could not let go.

So many of the Hollywood beauties are getting older and they cannot let go. The reason, in my opinion, which is the only one I have and I am proud of it, is because they have nothing else. When a person is graced with beauty but no real sense, they try in vain to hold on to the beauty. They know they have no life after it.

I also believe that is why Marilyn Monroe killed herself. She couldn’t imagine being an old woman with no looks.

One of the things that impressed me so much about Lauren Bacall is that she is able to function as an older woman. Both she and Katherine Hepburn were great looking when they were young, yet managed to keep their talent when they got old.

It is a curious thing in our society that a woman who takes off her clothes in public is arrested and told to cover up. But that same woman can have a man take a movie of herself undressing and we will pay money to watch it. An exhibitionist in public is known to have a mental disorder. An exhibitionist in Hollywood is known to be a movie star.

When we pay money to watch them naked and simulating sex, we enable that mental disorder and make them rich.

And that beauty, which was intended for a husband’s eyes, is debased and is like putting a gold nose ring on a pig. Something beautiful is used for a debased reason.

I know that makes me an anachronism and someone out of touch with society. But it is sad to see our young girls wearing Playboy stuff and sending pictures of themselves naked in a desperate attempt to make boys like them.

It is a shame and it is wrong.