Beauty May Be Skin Deep, But It's The Only Skin I Got

Five days a week, I drive by a church on my way to work. It has a billboard out the front that rotates a series of pathetic little messages that are supposed to be modern, hip and religious at the same time. They’re about as hip as your grandmother’s joint replacement. Stuff like, “Jesus. Detox for your soul.”

There’s one there at the moment that is so dumb, it’s self-defeating. It features a large picture of someone with absolutely terrible facial deformities. I mean, there’s been plastic surgery, there’s a glass eye, there’s no lateral symmetry, this poor person has either suffered the most awful congenital condition or they’ve suffered an absolutely horrendous accident. I can’t tell because I’m driving at the time but suffice to say, this person is doomed to a life of other people avoiding their gaze and praying that their little children don’t say something too honest within earshot. The large font caption is, “Beauty is in the eye of the creator.” I understand that the church is trying to be deep as a tonic to the shallow beauty-consciousness of the rest of us, but I want to run through the logic of that.

The all-powerful creator, the one that keeps the atoms moving in the correct orbits, the one that designed the universe, its magnificent machinations and all of the laws that keep it delicious for life, Him; every now and then can’t be bothered and makes some basic errors in the construction of some human beings. Or, he does it on purpose.

He also finds it acceptable to leave the poor sod the way he sloppily turned them out. He doesn’t think it worthwhile enacting any miracles to correct the oversight.

He also designed the rest of us to find physical attractiveness very important, to the point that we will pay certain especially beautiful people enormous amounts of money just to appear in pictures (moving or still). This slavish attention to physical beauty will ensure that someone who doesn’t get anywhere near the barest minimum of attractiveness is going to find the world a very hostile and difficult place.

This all-powerful being is happy with this situation. The beauty is in His eye, remember. Doesn’t matter that it isn’t in anybody else’s, He’s happy with a lifetime of misery that He’s foisted on someone for… what reason? Has He ever explained why?

If this God was real, why would you want to abase yourself to something so manifestly cruel and unfair? My “God-given” right as a person of self-determination, would be to rebel and reject this monster with every fibre of my being, even if it cost me my life. Lucky I don’t actually have to put my money where my mouth is on that one.

All the church has advertised, is that He is cruel, capricious and sloppy. It’s actually better to assume that the universe does not care, feels no animosity or joy at your existence and that sometimes awful things happen. Better to understand that and not also be worried about the super-long-term consequences of being born with horrible facial deformities. In the religious mind, the reward for putting up with such unfairness in your temporal life, is to go to heaven. Who the hell wants to spend eternity with such an unconscionable bully?