Biblical Beauty 1

As promised I will be discussing and presenting parts of Saint Theophan the Recluse book "Raising them Right". Under a section titled "Understanding Sexual Attraction". Saint Theophan starts by saying that contact with the opposite sex is the pinnacle of the danger, because it makes youth stray off the straight path but more importantly youth "loses himself".

As an x-porn addict I could really relate to this; I lost completely myself because of porn. Sexual sins makes you confused about your identity and ruins your self image. I became someone I didn't like and I was enslaved to porn. What a terrible feeling that you don't agree with what you are doing, but you are still doing it! I lost control over my acts and I filled my mind with evil pictures. Saint Theophan explains that it all starts with a "need for what is beautiful, a need which from the time of its awakening compels a man to seek satisfaction for it"1

Let me first start by explaining why we have an internal need for beauty?

To answer this question I started my research looking in the Bible for the word beauty. The first thing that came to mind was Genesis 1; through this chapter this phrase is repeated 5 times "God saw that it was good".

More importantly in the 6th day when God created Adam the Bible says "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" Genesis 1:31.

But being good has nothing to do with beauty? one person may ask. Here I went to the Strong's concordance and the definition for the Jewish word translated good in Genesis included beautiful. Moreover, I went to the Arabic Bible and good is translated حَسَنٌ which is a synonym to beautiful. My conclusion was that we need beauty because we were created very beautiful! The secret of our beauty is in His image

“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; " Genesis 1:26

St. Basil the Great explains the meaning, making a distinction between God’s image and His likeness. He says that we carry the image of God in three main attributes, namely, rational soul, free will, and authority (“let them have dominion ….”). As for the likeness of God, St. Basil explains that it pertains to humans’ sharing with God His virtues, such as sacrificial love, joy, peace, etc. This is the true Biblical beauty. Furthermore, the Bible says

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made" Psalm 139: 14

Youth longs for beauty as an attempt to fill the emptiness inside him/her. When I was in middle school and I started consuming pornography. I was hooked to this sin because I was empty; meaning having no proper personal relationship with God whatsoever. People need to realize that personal relationship with the lords fills our emptiness; satisfies our souls; it's pleasing and enjoyable. "A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." Proverbs 27:7.

True satisfaction is through having a daily routine of prayer, reading the Bible, confession, attending liturgy. If I was satisfied spiritually; I wouldn't have fell victim to porn. Bible clearly says that filling our emptiness and getting satisfied is through the fear of the lord "The fear of the LORD leads to life, And he who has it will abide in satisfaction; He will not be visited with evil."Proverbs 19:23

Instead of numbing my pain through a personal relationship with the lord; I consumed porn! Instead of spending hours reading and researching the Bible; I consumed porn and increased my knowledge in evil. Everyday I felt that I am way behind and missing a lot in spirituality. Times magazine says the following

"an explicit-video-sharing site, says that it gets 2.4 million visitors per hour and that in 2015 alone, people around the globe watched 4,392,486,580 hours of its content" 5 In short, the total time spent watching porn on a single porn website in 2015 is equivalent to 500,000 years! Imagine the waste ! Imagine how empty and evil this world is? If you write on google search "feeling empty" the first suggestion will be "feeling empty after sex!" Sin is never beautiful and will not fill our need for beauty.

Modern psychology agrees with Saint Theophan's explanation about

the need for beauty. The commonly taught theory about human needs is Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. Psychology today magazine summarizes the Maslow's Hierarchy in the following statements

"Maslow called the bottom four levels of the pyramid ‘deficiency needs’ because a person does not feel anything if they are met, but becomes anxious if they are not. Thus, physiological needs such as eating, drinking, and sleeping are deficiency needs, as are safety needs, social needs such as friendship and sexual intimacy, and ego needs such as self-esteem and recognition. In contrast, Maslow called the fifth level of the pyramid a ‘growth need’ because it enables a person to ‘self-actualize’ or reach his fullest potential as a human being."2

Esteem needs and self actualization are very similar to Saint Theophan's explanation of the need for beauty. The need for esteem is explained as

"a need to feel respected; this includes the need to have self-esteem and self-respect. Esteem presents the typical human desire to be accepted and valued by others. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs: a "lower" version and a "higher" version. The "lower" version of esteem is the need for respect from others. This may include a need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. The "higher" version manifests itself as the need for self-respect." 3

As for self actualization Maslow explains it "as the desire to accomplish everything that one can, to become the most that one can be. In his later years, Abraham Maslow explored a further dimension of needs, while criticizing his own vision on self-actualization.[9] The self only finds its actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, in altruism and spirituality, which is essentially the desire to reach infinite" 3

In christian terms Maslow is saying that to be fully satisfied we need to be in "His image" which is the true beauty. During teenage years, kids are searching for their self esteem and self actualization. Satan is diligently working to destroy them using two methods. First, attacking them with an epidemic of bullying to kill their self esteem. Second method, is false earthy beauty that Maslow called "lower version of self esteem" that include need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. It's crucial to teach our kids Biblical beauty so they don't wast their youth searching for meaningless ways to satisfy their need for beauty.

The second reason that I was hooked is ignorance; I knew nothing and nobody warned me. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.Because you have rejected knowledge,I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God,I also will forget your children." Hosea 4:6. Our society rejects God's knowledge on purpose. Our schools teach nothing about Biblical beauty and our kids are deceived by earthly standards of beauty. Ignorance is demonstrated in our lives through the phenomenal time wasted on amusement. I love the term amusement because it's generic inclusive of all amusement in the past and the ones we will see in the future. In my time amusement was through excessive TV but now it's cell phones and God knows what we will see in the future! CNN reports says that average teens spends 9 hours a day on screens this is 3,285 hours a year 4. This translates to 4.6 month a year; 38% of his life is on screens! Compared to how much time reading scripture ?! or Attending Liturgy?! or Serving community?! Our teens are building their conscience from screens. This is ignorance because if we knew Godly beauty we would have abstained from amusement.

Saint Theophan explains the dangers of excessive amusement saying the following

"And the harm from them [amusement] , is one and the same. There is no better way to starve the good seeds which have been placed before in the heart of a youth than by these means. A young blossom planted in a place where the wind blows on it from all sides only endures a little and then dries up; grass on which people frequently walk does not grow; a part of the body which is subjected to.friction for a long time becomes numb. The same thing happens to the heart and to the good dispositions in it if one is given over to amusement or, to enjoyments. If one stands for a long time in the wind, especially a damp wind, and then comes to a quiet place out of the wind, he feels that everything within him is not quite in its place; the same thing happens in the soul that has been amusing itself, in whatever way. When he returns to himself from his state of distraction, the youth finds that everything in his soul has become distorted The most important thing that has happened is that everything good has been covered by a kind of veil of forgetfulness, and in the first place stand only those deceptive things which have left their impression on him. Consequently, what was before and should always be is no longer present; one's inclinations have changed, and new ones now take the first place.

Why, after returning to it after some kind of distraction, does the soul begin to grow bored? Because it finds itself robbed. A distracted person has made his soul a highway, along which, through imagination, tempting objects pass by like shadows and tempt the soul to follow them. And then, when one is thus, so to speak, torn away from oneself, the devil secretly approaches, takes away the good seed, and puts a bad one in its place.Thus the Saviour taught when He explained who it is that takes away the seed sown by the wayside and who it is that sows the tares. It is the enemy of mankind who does both the one and the other.And so, young person! Do you desire to preserve the purity and innocence of childhood, or the vow of Christian life without reproach? With as much strength and good sense as you have, refrain from amusements [......].How good it is to subject oneself in this regard to a strict and even a most strict discipline, and to be, during the whole time of one's youth, under the guidance of others."

As a parent, do your best to provide the environment for God's word to grow and bear fruit and change your child completely. Jesus Said in the parable of the sower "Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful." Matthew 13:22. Remove the thorns in your child's life; remove excessive amusement from the very beginning. Educating our kids at teenage years is too late! Godly education has to start very early. Teenage is the time we reap the fruits of the previous years. Teaching our kids to be Godly has to be from day one and at HOME! NOT IN CHURCH ONLY. Our houses has to be little churches that glorify God. Otherwise, our kids will feel empty, lack proper knowledge and fall victims to porn. The double life we live between church and home will confuse our kids and most probably they will abandon church when they have the choice.

Saint Theophan says "what is beautiful little by little begins in the youth's soul to take form, because we can find nothing more beautiful than this. The image which has thus been formed is carried about in the head of the youth. From this time on he seems to be seeking what is beautiful, that is ideal, not earthly" Notice that true beauty is not earthly. One of the things I noticed in Genesis 3 the Bible says "the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes" Genesis 3:6

God's definition and view of beauty is completely different than ours. What Eve thought beautiful was actually extremely ugly in God's eyes. Hence, comes the need for spiritual discernment so we can judge beauty spiritually, not earthly. My next article we will discuss in details Biblical Beauty.

Sources

1. "Raising them right" Saint Theophan the recluse

2. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needsby Saul McLeod, updated 2017 https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

3. Maslow's hierarchy of needsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

4.Teens spend a 'mind-boggling' 9 hours a day using media, report saysBy Kelly Wallace, CNN http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-screen-use-report/index.html

5. Time Magazine Porn, Belinda Luscombe Mar 31, 2016