God Forgive Us

This is an entry from my brother's blog that he wrote a while ago, and I feel compelled to post it on my blog. He wrote it at the end of Elementary Winter Camp at Camp Arrah Wanna, where he is on the program crew and I was a counsellor. This summer, I'm joining him on pro crew, plus I'm gonna teach a hip hop workshop. Haha, how fun does that sound? I'm excited.

Yeah anyway. This is the blog he posted. It's worth reading, otherwise I wouldn't be re-posting it.



God Forgive Us

This morning, as the end of the camp weekend approached, we were walking from the Worship Center to Counselor Rock for a morning campfire. As I walked along with Amie and Jessica, a little girl, probably 9 years old (the age range for our elementary camp is generally 8 to 10), went running ahead of us. As she did, she made this comment: "I gotta lose my weight!"

I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach. Someone very strong.

She was 9 years old and as skinny as bean pole. And already her focus was on her weight. I wondered, as I continued to walk along in disbelief, if she was already doing a variety of diets. Does she look in the mirror in the morning and wish she was skinnier? I felt sick.

What have we done?

It's our fault, you know. We have done this. And by "we," I mean men. It's because men care so much about physical appearance, even though it means so little. Men will fall over themselves and fight each other over a "beautiful" woman with a "nice body," but a woman who doesn't quite meet their standards of outward beauty is fair game for every kind of degradation. I have seen the most worthless, vacuous creatures treated like queens simply because the emptiness of their character was bottled up, what little there was of it, in a "beautiful" body. And I have seen the most amazing people I have ever known effortlessly and thoughtlessly dismissed, without even a second thought, because they weren't up to Hollywood supermodel status. And not only dismissed, but thoroughly degraded and insulted, denied even the basic respect due by all to even the vilest of human beings.

And that's how we get to where we are today. Women—girls, even—think that the only way to get any attention, the only way to be treated like a person, is by attempting to measure up to the sickeningly unhealthy, and often times rather whorish, image of the skin-and-bones, airbrushed stars of the silver screen. Ironic, isn't it? To be perceived with even a hint of respect by so many men, women have to give up all self-respect and serve the unquenchable lust of the male collective. And notice that I say "perceived" with respect, for they are not truly treated with any respect. A woman has ceased to be a person, but has become a mere object whose sole use is to satisfy the perverted cravings of shallow men. But respect was lost so long ago and so far back that so many women don't even know what it is anymore, wouldn't even recognize it if they saw it.

That's the world we live in. Young girls grow up learning to find their own self worth—or lack thereof—not in who they are, or in Who loves them (God), but in a numerical rating system, ranging from 0 to 10, by which they are judged and then tossed aside by men and boys. It's the new Indoctrination of Insecurity.

This shouldn't be happening at all. I know so many absolutely gorgeous young women who can't even see their own beauty because they've learned to see only the "blemishes" and "imperfections"—the words of the world, not mine—that make them human and, in that way, truly beautiful. But like I said, I don't call those blemishes or imperfections, I call that reality. Who wants a fake plastic girl? Well, a lot of guys, unfortunately. But not me; I want a real woman, one whose beauty is her own, not something she puts on in front of the mirror or tries to shed on a treadmill. But I know so many young women who get so down on themselves because they're not "perfect," as though that existed. And all the while I'm thinking, "Are you kidding? I can't take my eyes off of you! No, you're not perfect—and it's truly beautiful." This shouldn't be happening at all, and it breaks my heart whenever I see it. But when I hear those words from the mouth of a 9-year-old girl... I don't even know what to feel anymore.

But it goes beyond even that. It breaks my heart when a girl with such natural beauty hides it under the fake plastic mask that appeals to our fake plastic society. But it breaks my heart even more every time a person goes undiscovered because she is dismissed on outward appearances. Some of the most incredible people I have ever known go unnoticed by much because people only look at outward appearances. People deem them boring, unattractive, and essentially inferior; but these are the people that blow my mind, that leave me in absolute wonder, that show me glimpses of God. And it saddens me that so few ever find them. And it angers me that the world judges them so unfairly based on something so completely unimportant, not to mention fleeting.

But that's the world we live in. Sometimes, the idea that I will one day be a parent scares me. How do I raise a daughter to find her self-worth in who she is, and in who the God who loves her is, in a world that is waiting to objectify her for the casual glance of shallow men? How do I raise a son to learn to see the true beauty that God created, and that we try to hide in favor of plasticized uniformity; who learns to see the beauty within, to see every human being through the eyes of their Creator, who loves them just as they are; who keeps alive the kind of respect for humanity that most have long since forgotten; and who is constantly, daily in awe and wonder at the truly amazing people that go unnoticed by the world? Honestly, I have no idea.

The bottom line, ladies, is that any man whose approval and attention you could gain only by measuring up to a bogus standard of artificial "beauty" is not worth the time. If he cannot appreciate you for the amazing, incredible person that you are, then he is not worth caring about. I know that narrows the field down quite a bit, but I have known a few men who would refuse to objectify you, and would stand speechless in awe of who you are, of the truly beautiful woman that God created, both inside and out. Wait for one of those. As for the rest, don't let them dismiss you; dismiss them first, because their opinion is not worth caring about.

I don't know what else to say. I don't even know if I've said what I want to say very well at all. I just think of that little girl up at camp, and so many like her, and I want to cry.

God created you, and He loves you exactly as you are. Not only that, but He didn't make a mistake with you. And He thinks you are absolutely beautiful! And you are.



The end.