The Beauty Parlour
Personal Matters
I have not slept soundly since a church related trauma around 20 years ago, but since being on retreat recently things have been considerably worse. (When you feel tired out before 9 a.m. in the morning something is seriously wrong.) Things deteriorated even more when I felt constrained to speak about the abusive and addictive nature of religious institutions over the last few weeks. Then when the disturbing dreams started to involve complex liturgical events and dialogues about orthodoxy I knew that that the Lord was working to resolve my ambivalent relationship with organised Christianity. Out praying this morning some of these things began to come together, but in a rather unexpected way. I came across a sign on the street, of which there are a number in our suburb, advertising beauty treatment in a local home. (Our culture is fairly obsessed with appearances; even the wretched local barber recently seemed constrained to tailor my hair artistically rather than with the purely functional cut that I requested.) Out in the street I sensed that the real issue between me and the Church, and one that touches all those believers disaffected with organised religion, is whether there are any limits to the Lord’s working to beautify his Body? The place to start answering this question is through God’s perspective on “all things” (Rom 11:36).
All the World’s a Parlour
If all things was created “for” Jesus and we are “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh” then everything was created for us his Bride (Gen 2:23; 1 Cor 3:21; Eph 5:31-32; Col 1:16). Such are the unfathomable dimensions of Christ’s covenant of grace (Eph 2:7). When in “awesome wonder” we behold the heavens, moon, stars and all that God has made a Christian can no longer ask, “what is man that you are mindful of him” (Ps 8)? We know this person worthy of all the wonders of creation is Jesus, the second Adam and our true Bridegroom “crowned with glory and honour” (Heb 2:5-9). The prophetic utterance, “he has made everything beautiful in its time” has been fulfilled in Christ (Eccl 3:11). The whole world of colour, sound, scent, sex and deliciousness was first of all created to reflect the radiance of the Lord Jesus, and in time our glory in him (Heb 1:2-3). The “king in all his beauty” is Christ and the beautiful Woman he desires is us his Bride the Church (Ps 45:10-11; Isa 33:17). In the plan of the Father everything gorgeous has been given to Jesus to give to his Bride to intensify her eternal loveliness. It is at this point of receiving from Christ that things started to go wrong.
Idols
Instead of seeing beauty as a gift Adam and Eve desired it for themselves; the fruit of the tree of knowledge was such a “delight to the eyes” they felt they needed it be their possession (Gen 3:6). The forbidden fruit stood as the gift of a boundary from an all wise God, this was the one gift humanity refused to receive. In wanting to “have it all” God’s children fell away from the whole purpose of creation. Likewise, having forgotten the foundational nature of creation-as-gift Paul must remind the foolish Corinthians, “What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?” (1 Cor 4:7). We need constant reminding that the pinnacle of creation is its sheer givennness. As a created being man can achieve beyond the graces of the Creator and the most beautiful thing about creation is that it is pure gift. When human beings began to set their eyes on beautiful things to be possessed and enjoyed in themselves they lost their true glory and became idolaters (Rom 1:19-23). If the most potent form of idolatry is religious, and who could doubt that in our day, then its most ugly dimension must be the usurping of true worship in the Church. Thus the New Testament describes the peak of the power of satanic rebellion taking place “in the temple of God” i.e. amongst God’s people (2 Thess 2:3-12 cf. 2 Cor 6:16). This is why Matt Redman’s song The Heart of Worship lamenting the “worship of worship” is so obviously prophetic. There is nothing uglier in the spiritual realm than a “worship leader” or “anointed” preacher, miracle worker etc. who does not point purely to Jesus as the gift of God in whom are included all other graces and gifts (John 4:10; 2 Cor 9:15). No wonder I have trouble sleeping. Yet this article cannot be about me. If givenness is beautiful then it is the sacrificial givenness of the cross which is the ultimate expression of all possible beauties (John 3:16).
Suffering for This?
When the prophet describes Jesus’ appearance as “so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind…. no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” he upholds the crucified Lord as the final reference point for all appreciation of loveliness (Isa 52:14; 53:2). When Christ cries out; “my God, why have you forsaken…?”” he feels that before God he has no loveliness at all (Mark 15:34). These terrors however are not his but ours; Jesus carries all our sinful fears of being unlovely and so unloved (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24). In the light of the curses, beatings, lashings and piercings of the cross borne for us we have insight into the uttermost beauty of the immeasurable love of our Bridegroom, a beauty that will intoxicate us forever (Rev 19:6-8). Compared to this all else is eternal boredom. Why then do we get so stuck in our idolatry?
When the Emperor Constantine called the bishops together for the Synod of Nicaea he was overwhelmed to see that many of them bore the scars of Roman persecution. This hardened soldier himself is said to have kissed the eyeless cheek of one attendee. In the realm of holiness the world’s most powerful man knew he was in the presence of a sacrificial Love whose reflected beauty knew no limits (1 John 4:10). Those who share my ambivalence about organised Christianity are not yet persuaded in conscience that all the traumas suffered at the hands of an immature Church have been part of a wondrous plan for the beautification of the Bride, to which we belong. Through suffering Jesus prepares for himself “a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish…holy and blameless” (Eph 5:27). The powerful dynamic of the global beauty parlour is not limited to open physical persecutions in far away places but embraces our trials at the hands of immature Australian Christians like ourselves. They too are included in the parlour process without limit by which the Lord makes “everything” beautiful in its time and for his sole glory (Eccl 3:11; 1 Pet 5:9).
Conclusion
The institutional Church often treats its children as unlovely and so unloved. We can either receive this as within God’s “only wise” plan to make all things beauteous or we can respond in a realistic down to earth manner (Rom 16:27; Col 3:1-3). The latter is disastrous because it fails to embrace the way of the cross. Since “the death of God’s saints” is “precious in the sight of the Lord” and we have been united with the infinitely sweet death of Jesus, then in all the little deaths we have suffered for Christ there is in us already a radiant beauty desired by our Groom (Ps 45:10-11; 116:15; Rom 6:3; 1 Cor 15:31; Eph 5:2). Already Jesus delights in those scars we have faithfully borne whenever we have refused to compromise his truth, either inside or outside the Church. Already in his eyes rays of glory stream from our lives bringing glory to his Father (cf. Hab 3:4; John 20:27-28; 2 Cor 3:17-18). The wondrous purposes of God never fail and we are within this wisdom; “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph 3:21).