At the start of my sophomore year, my friend and RA, Kourtney, gave everyone on my floor a journal with our favorite Bible verse pasted onto the front. My journal is pink and displays Proverbs 31:30, which says that “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Underneath this verse are the words: “The Lord looks at the heart.”

Over the past couple of years, I have filled the pages of this journal with the thoughts, prayers, and observations that have occupied my mind along my personal spiritual journey. Recently, I’ve noticed that I only have a few pages left, so I started to read the things that I have written to God and to myself, and it has become painfully clear that I have failed to internalize this favorite verse of mine.

Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, and yet so many times I have asked God to make me more beautiful, or to help me to improve some part of my life that keeps me from living up to the world’s definition of beauty.

In the book “Captivating”, the authors say that “Shame is what makes us look away, so that we avoid eye contact with strangers and friends.” What exactly is it that makes us feel so ashamed that we can’t look into the eyes of someone who knows nothing about us, someone who can only see us from the outside?

The book goes on to declare that “Many women feel this way. We can’t put words to it, but deep down we fear there is something terribly wrong with us. If we were princesses, our prince would have come. If we were the daughter of a king, he would have fought for us. We can’t help believe that if we were different, if we were better, then we would have been loved as we so longed to be. It must be us.”

It’s sad to think of how guilty we all are of letting our vision of our self, our self-worth, be determined by anyone but God.

It’s sad that when we fail to live up to what we see in magazines or on television, we consequently develop a sense of shame that prevents us from living out God’s plan for our lives.

Staci Eldredge said that we are “Passionately loved by the God of the Universe,” and “Passionately hated by his enemy.” We can either choose to accept the love that God has for us by trying to see ourselves through his eyes, or we can accept the lies that the enemy feeds us in order to make sure that we can never reach our full potential.

We live in a culture, in a world, that emphasizes external beauty in a way that makes us believe that if we were just more “beautiful”, if we were skinnier, had better skin or hair, that we could be more successful. We could be happy if only we were pretty.

The Bible makes it perfectly clear that these delusions that we hold are incredibly false.

1 Samuel 16:7 says that “God told Samuel ‘Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him. God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face, God looks into the heart.’”

So, If God says that our heart is what determines our beauty… what kinds of things can we do to make our hearts more beautiful? Shouldn’t compassion, love, and kindness replace dieting, plastic surgery and the 22 Billion dollars that is spent on cosmetics in America every year?

1 Timothy 2 says “I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.”

What if everyone suddenly started judging people by the beautiful things that they have done, rather than by their outward appearance?

I read somewhere that Kim Kardashian was voted the most beautiful woman on Earth. I don’t think anyone can deny that she is gorgeous; some may even call her perfect, but if we were to vote again, according to the criteria that God has provided, I’m sure the results would be different. Women like Mother Teresa and Clara Barton surely take top honors.

Our purpose as Christians is do things that will bring glory to God, not to do things that will bring glory to ourselves. I’m not saying that it is wrong to want to be physically attractive, but when we let our desires be come obsessions, the end is never as attractive as we imagine. These obsessions lead to eating disorders, depression, and self-esteem problems none of which are even remotely beautiful.

When we are finally able to learn that superficial beauty fades and that in God’s eyes we are all beautiful, we will be able to create passions and priorities that will allow us to be the beautiful people that we were created to be.