Walking down the street with his girlfriend, this young man turned to look at a beautifully dressed girl on the other side of the road. He forgot that in front of him was a parking meter. He slammed into it. “You deserve to be hit. I saw you looking at her, and I am right here.” The girlfriend exclaimed. Really? How did she know the guy was wishing different things for himself? Maybe the guy was admiring beauty.
Women are tough to dissever. They admire each other’s dress, make up, and hair. They touch each other’s bodies in a state of admiration. Men do not have this behavior. Can you imagine I telling a guy, “Man you look handsome today?” Really. In order to overcome their guilt, humanity conned the proverb, “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” The philosophy is meant to communicate that everything is beautiful and it depends on what perspective one is looking. However It is hard to see a person crediting beauty to something ugly! The existence of the word ugly is necessitated by the existence of ugliness. Beauty cannot exist without ugliness. It is like saying there is evil outside of its positive, good! When God created GOOD, he warned Adam of evil: Thus acknowledging that evil was real even before the fall!
My postgraduate professor advised us that if we wanted to have beautiful children, it was necessary to marry beautiful persons. A feminist once argued that it does not matter how smart the man is, if his wife is dumb their children will not be smart! Both were associating GOOD both in beauty and intelligence to genes! A friend of mine argues that if people view themselves as ugly, they should consult with their parents. The extreme state of this is where women are buying sperms of men viewed as genetically fit. Margaret Higgins Sanger, founder of plant parenthood preached the theory advocating for the need to eliminate ‘disqualified’ humans.
Every body has a concept of Beauty and GOOD. Think of how many times you look at yourself in the mirror. It cannot be that you look at yourself constantly to verify that you have not mutated into a toed! Imagine the business of make up and cosmetics, and cologne! Beauty is identifiable other wise it is an exercise in futility!
Abraham’s wife Sarah was so beautiful that he decided that pharaoh would see her beauty and take her over. He told her to lie and present herself as his sister. Imagine that. If she were not beautiful, Abraham would not have told her to lie. But Sarah was naturally beautiful and Pharaoh agreed. In fact he agreed with Abraham but God intervened! (Genesis 12) Beauty is not in the eyes of the beholder. Beauty is independent of the beholder!
Beauty is the state of formation within perfection as per the mathematical requirements within God’s calculations. All the things that God made were perfect within the required dimensions and therefore beautiful. Eve must have been beautiful. In fact, when Adam saw her he was stunned to the point of poetry. “This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” Who talks like that without shock or tusker? Imagine the planetary positioning and their mathematical Constance! Behold flowers, birds, mountains, and the view of the Mara. The fall brought ugliness!
The original state of things was beauty. God gave humanity the ability to distinguish between those things that are beautiful and those which are not. Therefore the senses and their attraction to beauty is God given. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat”. Genesis 3:6-7. Though she had been given the proper senses and perspective of good and beauty, Satan was able to give her another perspective: she saw as the devil saw and admired the devil’s beauty!
God made all things beautiful (perfect, good). But when Eve looked at them, she beheld them from the perspective of the devil. The innocent state of the perceived beauty in her eyes became covetous and lust. It is God who gave man the ability to admire beauty. Therefore the art of admiring beauty is wonderful. This means that I can stop and look at some flower garden and enjoy that beauty. I can look, like I do, at a beautiful car and stop to admire roses. In fact the most beautiful creature to look at are birds! They inspire the way I dress. Perfect combination! If humanity could apply the perfection of God’s creation, they would resist from throwing garbage off a matatu, or the failure to plant flowers outside their homes!
Given this therefore, women or men cannot judge their partners on the basis of a look. The ability to admire is inherent in man. Therefore if one is walking down the street and on the other side of the road one sees a women who exemplifies perfection, it is her perfection that ones’ humanity is looking at. Where it becomes questionable is when that look is taken over by the devil’s perspective becoming a desire to have and to hold: lust. Or of a car, to steal, or to take by force: covetousness. The Bible guides one to proper perspectives!
Teddy Njoroge Kamau (PhD) HTBluff Associates. @HTBbluff.
