Today’s Scripture Reading (February 16, 2018): 2 Corinthians 10
Author and feminist Naomi Wolf writes
that “Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it
is determined by politics, and in the
modern age in the West, it is the last,
best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.” I think she is right, and
she is wrong. I agree that beauty and appearance is a currency system. If we
watch the various media all around us, we know that is true. Our televisions are filled with the beautiful people. The ugly are often relegated to supporting roles or stock
characters. To be ugly means you are evil, and if you are overweight, then you must be lazy. My struggle
with what Wolf says is that, in the absence of money, the lack of beauty is a
limiting factor for everyone, and it doesn’t matter whether you are male or
female. The real issue is the presence or absence of money. If you are male and
rich, you are good, no matter your appearance, although there may be some rich
men in our culture who are working hard to disprove that caricature. If you are female, beautiful and rich, then you
must have slept your way into money, and if you are female, rich but lacking beauty,
then you are greedy, conniving and some
words that I won’t use in this blog. But that is not the place where most of us
live, so beauty becomes a currency system for all of us. Being accused of
having a face made for radio is something that both men and women have to
endure.
And it seems that it always has been that way. We know very
little about the apostle Paul outside of his writing. None of his
contemporaries painted his picture or
built a bust of him. Why would they? In his era, he lacked both power and money, and
it was only the powerful and the rich that would have received such treatment.
But that does not mean that we don’t have any idea of how the apostle might
have looked, or how he might have acted. And it is passages like this that
gives us the clues. We know that Paul was a powerful writer. We hold his words
in our Bibles. He painted great word pictures, and
he had a way of explaining things that made sense to his audience. The problem
with Paul, which was becoming a real issue in Corinth, was that he lacked
beauty. Some have openly wondered if maybe he was short and balding, with a
prominent nose. He lacked the classical Greek physique that most powerful men
seemed to try to emulate. It is possible that he didn’t see very well, maybe
because of the long nights writing letters by candlelight, so he did not
recognize people quickly and from a distance. And on top of all of that, there is the suspicion
among historians that Paul might have been a stutterer. Therefore, the Corinthians
accused him of speaking without power or that “his speaking
amounts to nothing.” And all of
this was a problem because the people were willing to judge him on his lack of
beauty even though the words he wrote in his letters were powerful. In the
absence of beauty, how could anything that the apostle wrote be true or trusted?
While Paul possessed a great intellect, he lacked the currency that, even then,
counted more than any other; he was not beautiful.
We still act more on beauty than any other single factor that is presented to us. I know of pastors who have
been turned down by churches solely on the way that they look. The problem is
far beyond just a feminist issue in Paul’s day and ours, and it is something that
we need to address. It is possible that the wisdom that we need to hear is
passing us by because we do not like the way that the messenger looks.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 11
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