“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
-Wendell Berry
What makes something beautiful? What are the attributes or properties that set the beautiful things apart from all the rest? Who, or what, provides the metrics and measures that determine the presence or absence of beauty in a person, a place, or a thing? And is beauty something that we can assess in an instant? After just one glance at an image or the exterior of someone or something? Are the properties of beauty really only skin deep?
These days, the defining lines of beauty have been blurred by the likes of Pinterest, Instagram, and all of the other channels of influence where carefully curated productions and feeds of artificially enhanced, filtered, two-dimensional images cycle before us at breakneck pace. And the more we engage with these things, the more we become formed into people who are inclined to evaluate ourselves, our neighbors, and our use of this planet and its resources, according to the parameters of the instant, and by terms that are woefully narrow and skin deep. They habituate us towards a way of seeing that does not look behind, before, or beneath the surface of whatever it is that we aim to assess. And in time we lose both our capacity, and our interest, in detecting the spots beneath the superficial where underlying disease, damage, or despair might be concealed. We fail to notice the hidden presence of abuse, exploitation, diminishment, and destruction that might be there, just beyond our line of vision. And this reshaping of our perspective is an intentional marketing move on the part of industries that benefit from our lack of sight. Because they know that our blindness is a prerequisite for the ongoing consumption of the forms of beauty that we are being fed.
Consider the multi-billion-dollar cosmetic industry, who in 2022 alone convinced 9.2 million American women to inject the world’s most lethal neurotoxic agent, BT or Botulinum Toxin, into their bodies, in the name of beauty. 1.2 billion American dollars were spent on neurotoxin procedures in 2022. Procedures that paralyze the face and prevent it from expression. We have made so many strides as a gender in the past hundred years, and yet somehow this industry has made it trendy and attractive for women to pay a small fortune to inject poison into their bodies, poison that then hyphenates their God-given capacity to communicate and creates the conditions for future disease just beneath the surface. And it’s called, beautiful.
And even putting Botox aside, The Environmental Working Group reports that women use an average of 12 products, containing 168 different chemicals a day. Again, in the name of beauty.
But is this beautiful? If we look beneath the surface, what is the impact that this image of beauty is having on the bodies and minds of women? On their physical health, but also on their emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being, which depends on the knowledge of one’s innate belovedness and worth? Likewise, what is being spread to future generations of women as a result of this trend today? What is the message that is being communicated to the little girls and young women who are developing their own sense of value and purpose by watching their elders for clues on how to move through this world well? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what we say to young girls, it’s our lives that will disciple them in one way or another, it’s our actions that convey our most accepted version of truth about who or what is beautiful, and what is not.
And what about the image of the beautiful lawn? That lush expanse of manicured turf-grass that radiates as an emblem of wealth and good stewardship? It’s an image that is plastered on the labels of all the weed and feed products on the market, where an attractive couple stands in front of an immaculately landscaped home while a child rolls in the grass at their feet. But most of the weed and feed products today depend on the herbicide, atrazine. And while the European Union has banned its use on behalf of humans and wildlife, the US still deems it safe, and we apply about 80 million pounds of it to our land each year, not just on our lawn, but also on crops such as corn (65% of it), sugarcane, soy, and sorghum. It’s in our land, our food, and our waterways despite the fact that atrazine has been linked to both prostate and breast cancer, and reduced sperm count in men. It is also a known endocrine disruptor, and it actually changes the gender of frogs. One article that I read said that it only takes .1 parts per billion to change the development of sexual characteristics in frogs.
All that aside, even when they are covered in poison, lawns don’t support much life. Like the frogs, and the human men, lawns are kind of sterile. There aren’t many species on this content that can find shelter or nourishment from turf grass. And yet, appreciation of its beauty has led us to devote somewhere between 40 and 50 million acres to lawn in the United States, and the average home uses somewhere around 75% of their water budget for lawn irrigation during the summer months. While a multitude of creatures risk extinction due to habitat loss and water shortages abound.
So is the weed free, perfectly uniform, lush lawn still beautiful?
Again, we have to ask, what is beauty? Can something be beautiful if its only skin deep? Can it be beautiful if it’s the produce of poison or abuse that is hidden just beneath the surface? Just beyond what is easy to see? And should our metrics of beauty be informed by both its roots and its fruits? Or is it just something we decide based on the information available to us in the moment?
I am going to keep going with this thread in future weeks, because I think that we are in a place, as people and a planet, where we can no longer afford to be so blind to the underbelly of the stuff that we have been taught to deem beautiful. Human beings are in crisis. The planet is in crisis. The Church is in crisis. And a lot of it our ills are the produce of narrow vision. We have stopped looking to the past for wisdom, stopped looking behind the surface for indications of damage and abuse, and stopped considering the needs of the future. And its creating conditions where we are prioritizing hollowed out images of beauty, in exchange for the eternal benefit of the real thing.
There is a correlation between this conversation and the tension evident in the exchange between Jesus and the blind man, Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus cried out for Jesus, and then he jumped to his feet and went after him when Jesus responded. And Jesus kicked off their encounter with the same question that he often asked of those who pursued him, a question that James K.A. Smith notes as the most important question of discipleship, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51) And these questions from Jesus point to the implications of our requests. It’s a question that requires us to probe the cost of our professed wants in order to evaluate the true source of our desire. Because Scripture shows us that sometimes the way to our want looks like a rich man being told to sell everything, or the fisherman setting down the nets and the certainty of the family business and walking away, or the one in line for an inheritance leaving before the check comes in. And sometimes when we really pause to consider Jesus’ question ourselves, we find that what we really want is the wealth that we won’t give away, the security that we won’t set down, the certainty that we can’t turn away from, the control that we don’t want to relinquish, and like the rich man, we turn from Jesus, in an attempt to distance ourselves from the disruption.
In Bartimaeus’ case, that question had implications that are difficult for the average reader to pick up on. But both Jesus and Bartimaeus knew that if his sight was restored, Bartimaeus would no longer be able to live as a beggar. Restored sight would implicate him in a life of responsibility beyond that of a man who could not see. And the same is true for us. Which is why Jesus asks, do we want to see? Because every bit of new sight that we receive, each step that moves us deeper into the Kingdom of God, implicates us to live differently, more responsibly, more aware and responsive to whatever it is that is before us. It requires us to be people who probe the hidden truth that resides behind, before, and beneath the surface, searching those once out of sight places for the truth about whatever forms of beauty we are going after. Restored sight renders us culpable to the past and the future, and the roots and the fruits of whatever it is that we are pursuing, and thus producing, today.
I’ve said this here before, and I’ll say it now again, I really want to see. Sometimes I don’t like what I see, and sometimes I struggle with the disruption of it. But I do want Jesus to continue the work of restoring my sight, I want to awakened to my blindness, and I want what I see to transform my actions in and on behalf of the world, more and more, every day.
Side Note: I referenced a lot of studies and data in this post. Because this publication is a free labor of love I have not added in all of the footnotes to each source. It would take too long and its planting season on the farm. But if you would like links to any of them, please reach out and I would love to send them your way.
I’m with you in this! Thank you for pushing me farther along in my journey to better sight.