Lily Girls Magazine

By Leslie Hunt

Headlining much of the news recently is the “airbrushing” phenomenon. I would be extremely surprised if there was a single magazine out with a person on the cover who hasn’t had some type of doctoring or airbrushing. A popular UK teen magazine fell under fire from critics because they recently came out with a program where girls can airbrush themselves to remove all imperfections, redness, or simple dislikes about their pictures. So what’s the big deal? Does it really matter if pictures and people look better than they really are?

Here’s the scoop. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, if our ideas of beauty weren’t so off. Our idea of beauty is so much based off what we see. We are being bombarded with unrealistic views of beauty everyday. We place value on how close we can come to looking like our favorite movie stars who are splashed on the covers of magazines.

Thinking about this reminded me of the story of King Rehoboam in 2 Chronicles 10-12. King Rehoboam was King Solomon’s son. Rehoboam’s reign was marked with poor decisions, pride, sin, and abandonment of God’s ways. While Rehoboam was king, King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem and stole the treasures in the Lord’s Temple. Some of the treasure stolen included the gold shields made my Rehoboam’s father, King Solomon. In an effort to create the appearances of wealth and power Rehoboam replaced the stolen shields with cheap bronze ones. Although the cheap bronze shields may have looked good, they were only lousy imitations for the real deal. It wasn’t as much the fact that Rehoboam replaced the shields, as much as it reflected how he has replaced God with cheap imitations in his life. Rehoboam was always looking for ways to trade real for counterfeit.

The bottom line, our beauty and worth are found in Christ alone. Airbrushing and altering what Christ has already made perfect, well, its just replacing the real deal with a cheap imitation.  The truth is friend; it really comes to the heart of the matter. Airbrushing aside, if we haven’t learned to find our value and beauty in Christ, no amount of altering will fulfill what we have replaced with King Jesus.