How Should Christians Think About Modern Beauty Treatments?

In this episode, I’m exploring the complex world of cultural beauty standards and self-perception through a biblical lens. I address the tension we experience regarding personal choices about our appearance, what it means to bear God’s image, and how cultural expectations can shape—or sometimes distort—our self-perception. I’m also sharing a bit of my writing journey and what I’m learning about humility as I grow older in a world that is often obsessed with youth and perfection. I hope that this conversation will help us approach beauty with wisdom, discernment, and hearts anchored in truth and grace.

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Read the Essay On Facelifts, Fillers, and Faith: https://www.justinecheri.com/articles/on-facelifts-fillers-and-faith

Chapters
00:00 Season Two Reflections and Future Plans
12:32 The Journey to Authorship
22:48 Beauty Standards and Cultural Reflections

Tags: Should Christians get Botox? Should Christians get fillers? What does the Bible say about Botox and beauty? Kris Jenner's Deep Plane Facelift

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

Hey guys, welcome back to the Going Deeper podcast. This is going to be the conclusion of season two, which I don't know about for you guys has been a little bit of a roller coaster for me, but you live and you learn and we are going to hopefully have a little bit more preparation for season three. In fact, my goal is to have every single episode recorded and completed and scheduled before it even launches so that every episode that comes out is every single week rather than kind of flying by the seat of my pants because I gave myself like a four week buffer and then life happens as it always does. So thank you guys for joining me for today's episode. We have a little bit of housekeeping before we dive into the meat of today's kind of content. And I feel like this episode is going to be a little bit of a smorgasbord, a little here, a little there, what I'm learning, what I'm feeling, what God's teaching me, that sort of thing. But what to expect for season three, let me just, we're all you need to know is that My goal is to have season three launch in the fall. And in fact, I might even give myself even more of a break and start beginning of the new year. I haven't decided yet. We're gonna see how everything pans out. And with that said, I wanted to let you guys know that I actually created a newsletter and I swore, I swore I would never do this because I am, if you follow me, you know, I am very, I have an anti-establishment personality, which means that if everyone is going right, I want to go left. That is just how I am. So that said, I swore I'd never do a newsletter because everybody has a newsletter. However, I have wanted to build my email list for something that we'll talk about in just a moment, something exciting in just a moment. And And I've also found myself loving newsletters. I used to subscribe to a lot of them, and I still do, but I would never read them. They would come into my email inbox, and then I just would scroll through them briefly and take what I wanted and leave. And I still, to some extent, do that for certain newsletters. But now... They are genuinely a treat in my inbox. And I think it's just me turning 30 in a few weeks. But yeah, so I was like, I'm opening these new letters. I'm reading them. I'm gleaning from them. I'm finding things that I enjoy. And it's a nice little read. It's enjoyable for me. And I thought... Okay, well, if I enjoy reading newsletters, maybe, maybe it wouldn't be such a terrible idea. But I also didn't want it to just be and not that there's anything wrong with these, because I read these as well. But I didn't want it to be just like this personal reflection that I often find in newsletters is just what They're learning and typically it's what got in there. There's nothing wrong with that. But I really wanted it to be more meaty and more a place that you can go to for some thoughts, resources and reflections from other people. in regards to what's going on in the world, in culture. And specifically, I want to, and this is my passion for this podcast, it's my passion, period, when it comes to addressing what's going on in the culture and just what we're seeing around us, even in the Christian community, is to address it with grace and humility and compassion. Because, and we saw it a lot in the last few weeks with all of the politics, if we can put it that way, that are going on that are very loud in our ear, there's a lot of outrage. There's a lot of content out there that is very divisive and it just stirs outrage. And a lot of times it can be condescending and also it compromises. And what I've found is that There is compromise, not necessarily on truth, what is coming out of their mouth, but they will compromise, and we will, in general, Christians, believers, humans, we will compromise on virtue and how we approach the issue. So what we're saying is true, but how we're saying it It's not Christ-like. It doesn't embody the humility and the grace and the compassion of Christ. And we all love table-flipping Jesus, but the fact of the matter is that he was God. He is God. And his wrath is righteous and ours is not. So I digress. I digress. We're going to get off track here. But that said, my heart with the newsletter is to... create email you know monthly that's my goal monthly if it's two if it's twice a month that's awesome um that is like packs a punch and that gives you actual beneficial voices sharing articles from people that i trust who are speaking into what's going on uh from a biblical and and and a lens of truth but also with grace because i think that that's important as well but Fun news. This could end up being an entire episode, but we don't have time for that. So I've talked about on here bits and pieces about my heart and goal to write a book, to be an author. That is something that the Lord has put on my heart. He put it on my heart 2018. Very vividly. I remember where I was sitting. But I didn't even have a book idea at the time, y'all. I just knew... I had read The Purpose Driven Life. I remember I was really seeking the Lord in my purpose and my calling. Really what it came down to is I was wanting to steward my gifts to the glory of God. I took a spiritual gifts test. I was like, okay, these are what I think my spiritual gifts are. This is what I'm good at. This is my skill. I like writing. I like communicating. So God, what do you have for me? And I just really felt like he called me to authorship. And at the time, back in 2018, no joke, I truly was like, I don't think so. I'm not... I don't have resources. I don't know anybody in the business. I don't know the first thing about publishing or writing a book. Did I write like seven chapters of a fiction novel when I was in seventh grade? Yes, I keep it for memorabilia purposes to remind myself that I've always loved this. But it seemed very far-fetched, very far-fetched. And I just, but I just took it at face value. I just took the Lord at face value. And I was like, okay, Okay, I'll lean into that. I'll press into that. And I did. And I have for the past math, seven years, seven years now. Anyways, all that to say, I have been working on a book proposal for three years now. I don't know when I started. I don't know when I started. I think it's three years. And I have had a lot of doors closed, a lot of rejection. But I got to a place where I truly wholeheartedly was like, this is what I feel the Lord is calling me to do. I feel like he's given me this message and he's given me these words, but I don't know how this is gonna come to fruition and I just have to trust him with it and I'm just gonna be open-handed with it and I just have to surrender. Also, I had to get to a place where I said, if this does not happen, I am okay. I'm okay. If this dream doesn't come true, it's all enough. Everything that you've done thus far up in my life is enough. But also too, my salvation, that is enough. And I think that was very helpful along this journey is just being content and satisfied regardless of the timing, regardless of which door was going to be opened, regardless of if the door was going to be opened at all. And I was ready. I just, I was very much like, if you want to close the door, close the door, but do it loudly and obvious so that I can stop pursuing this, and he just never had. He never had indefinitely. Flash forward to May. I get a text from a friend who I talk to maybe twice a year. She told me, and this is a very long story. It could be very long and drawn out. There's so much detail of the Lord and His kindness, and just the detail of Him moving. But what I'll say is that I felt the Lord prompt me to write, and He does that in little ways, little breadcrumbs. But I felt Him prompt me to pick the book back up again. I'd set it down for months and I hadn't touched it. But I just felt him nudging me to write again. So I started writing, but I didn't know why I didn't have any, any door, any options. There was no opportunities. There's nothing. It was just like, okay, I'll just write, you know? And I was really getting into the groove and words were flowing and things were changing, but I, I was like, okay, well, this is awesome. Like, you know, I'm having some writing breakthrough here, but I, where's this going to go? I don't know. And I even said to Jeremy and I actually posted it on social media, media, if you followed me, I think it was a post that started said something along the lines of like, can I be honest? And I essentially said that I was just feeling very disillusioned by my presence on social media, by the platform that I have and the voice that I have. But also just thinking, what am I doing? Is this worthwhile? But one thing that I said in that post and that I said to my husband was that at this point, I'm going to need like a there was a day I, it was, it's so weird. You guys, if you've ever really co-created with God or like partnered with God on something and you've just been, it's like a dance. There was a day where I was working on it and I, I get a text and she was like, Hey, this editor from this publishing house just joined my small group and I want to connect you with him. And in the moment I was just like, wait, what? Is that real?

UNKNOWN: 11:32

And

SPEAKER_00: 11:32

Are you serious? This is what I've been praying for all along. This is what I've been waiting for. And so things are rolling. Things are rolling, y'all. I'm in communications with an editor, and I'm just really praying that I can write this book and get this out into the world. So there's a little bit of an update there. I'll share more details later as they come. And yeah, just be praying for me in that. Okay. The last thing, last housekeeping before we jump into the meat is I always share a recommendation, if I remember. Right now, my number one recommendation for you to look into is it's Paul David Tripp's, I believe it's his new devotional. I think it's new. I'd never seen it before. But it's called Everyday Gospel. And it's very similar to New Morning Mercies, if you're familiar with that. But What I love about it is that it goes along with the Bible reading plan. So right now, I'm going through it, and it gives you like five chapters to read along with it. Like you read right now, it's Psalm 146 through 150. And You read that first, and then you read the devotional. And it's been really great. I love Paul David Tripp. He's so solid and gospel-centered. I wanted to read this little snippet from you from today's devotional. He says... Think of how little and insignificant we are. We are tiny dots living somewhere on a tiny little planet that is spinning around in the vastness of the universe. In light of the enormity of time and eternity, our lives are the definition of brevity. Each of us is just one of a billion little dots that shines for a moment, but then quickly burns out. Yet God regards each one of us. Stop and take it in. The King of Kings, the great creator who set everything in motion, the sovereign Lord who sits on the throne of the universe, If you're watching on YouTube, this is what it looks like. Very solid. Really enjoy it. And it's just gospel-centered. That's what I love about it. We just need to constantly be reminded of the cross. So today I want to talk about Two things, but I guess one thing that leads to another, and I've been wanting to talk about this on the podcast for a while now, but to be honest with you, it wasn't that I was afraid to talk about it. I'm not afraid, but I wanted to be, I wanted to do my due diligence first before I came on here and I talked about it. And one One way that I was able to do that was through writing. When you write and you write an essay, it requires you to think things through so much more than you would if you're just scripting or outlining something, but you actually have to string the words together and make it make sense. So you have to really like churn something over in your mind a lot. And that's what I did with this topic. If you follow me on social media, you've probably already seen, but I wrote an essay called On Facelips, Fillers, and Faith. And the essay stems from, there was a day where I was on my feet, an article popped up and it said, Kris Jenner's new look goes viral. And of course, it was like a before and after photo of her. And it was kind of a shock moment where I was like, whoa, she does look really different. She looks fantastic. very young, very youthful. How is that even possible? I mean, last time I saw her, you know, she looked old. She looked like her age. She had wrinkles, you know, and excess skin and all the things that happen when you age. But this picture of her was very youthful. It almost looked AI generated. It was so youthful. And of course, there was a part of me that was like, leave it alone. Leave it alone. Don't, don't go Googling. But I Googled. I was like, what the heck? How is this even possible? How does her face look like that? What plastic surgery did she get done? And so I was digging. And I stumbled upon the deep plane facelift. And I was like, ooh, what's that? What's a deep plane facelift? And one Google search led to the next. And my mind was sort of blown. I started watching videos online. people who had got it done before and after videos. And I just thought, how in the world is this possible that they can go from looking one way and then through multiple, very small things that the surgeon does and pulls the skin back, end up looking like a completely different person. Not all the time. Not every time do they look completely different, but oftentimes they look different. They really do. And really what it is, is that there's the subtle imperfections are just concealed. You know, any excess skin, any wrinkles, any puffiness, any, or not even puffiness, but like plumpness, you know, like your girl has some baby cheeks. Okay. But there's none of that. Everything is pulled back very tightly. I don't need to go into all of it, but I just was very taken aback by the procedure. I didn't, I thought, wow, this is some technology here. Plastic surgery has really upped their game. You know, I mean- But 10 years ago, there were shows like Botched where it was very obvious when people had plastic surgery done. And now it's not so obvious. It's like, whoa, you would never know with how impressive the technology is that they got work done. You would not know how their face looked beforehand unless you saw a photo. And I started to develop a little bit of righteous indignation toward the unfairness unrealistic beauty standards that we see in today's culture that are making women question what they see in the mirror. And yeah, it just started to bubble up in me and it has, has bubbled up in me for a while now. But as I've really reflected on this trend, this topic, this conversation over and over and over again, I've come to a lot of different conclusions. And if it's easier for you to just read the essay, please do that. And honestly, I would recommend you doing that because I don't think I'm going to be able to articulate exactly how I feel or what I've learned better than I did when writing it. But I wanted to still flesh it out in a podcast episode because it's something that I've thought about and something that's going on in today's culture that I think is important. But the big question that I kept coming to over and over and over again is, I may feel this way, right? I may feel some type of way about it. But where do we draw the line? And how do we draw the line? And who draws the line? You know what I'm saying? Because this is super multifaceted, right? There's the money aspect of a lot of this stuff, whether it's Botox or fillers or Ozempic or any procedure, plastic surgery procedure, really any beauty treatment, period, right? It's all expensive. It's so expensive. And it's frustrating because one thing that I'll say as a caveat, and it's worth saying is that beauty is fun. We all want to look pretty. We all want to feel good. We all want to dress up and look our best. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it is so expensive. And that can be frustrating at times to feel like you've got to keep up with everybody and keep up with the trends. that are going on, which is a whole beast in and of itself. But anyways, it's multi-faceted, right? So there's the money aspect, but then there's also just the topic of vanity. Like, are we so consumed with what we see in the mirror that we're sort of blinded by the fact that what should be confidence has now turned into conceit? And there's a fine line. And that was something that I wanted to delve into in my own life personally, but also just in what we're seeing in the culture. And then there's just the worldliness aspect of it. Like we're not supposed to look like the world. We're supposed to live in it, but not be in it, but not of it. And what does that mean for beauty, right? So all of these factors play into... this question of where do we draw the line, how do we draw the line, and who draws the line. To answer the question, of course, I had to search the scriptures. Of course, I had to see for myself, what does God's word say about beauty? If anything, what does God's word say about our identity, our faces, who we are, our uniqueness? Like, what does he say? And for the To delve into it deeply was really formative and honestly really helpful, really convicting, which we'll get to in a second. But the first thing that I highlight in the article or in the essay, whatever you want to call it, it was definitely longer than a typical article, which is why I called it an essay. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. came to my mind was, we are messing with the Imago Dei here. We were made, humans were made, in the image of God to reflect His image. We were made in His likeness. We were made to reflect His glory. And the image of of the invisible God is Jesus Christ and were made to reflect Christ, to be imitators of Christ. And so what does it say about the Imago Dei? about the image of God when we are like shape-shifting, when we're trying to completely change what we look like. I think my mentor said, there's a difference between enhancing beauty and completely changing what you look like. And I think that that requires discernment of what that, all of this requires discernment, all of it. Not any bit of this is black and white. It's all nuanced. which is why I wanted to be so careful in addressing the conversation in this topic because we all fall differently on this conversation, just like we all fall differently on how we feel as modest dressing or how much is too much alcohol, right? Like, well, the Bible talks about drunkenness, but you know what I mean. And that was one thing that I really wanted to ensure that I said in the essay is that when people, me, anybody approaches a topic like this, that is controversial, if you wanna put it that way, controversial or even just sensitive, very personal, It can be very easy, and this is something that we're going to address in the end of the episode, and this is what I've found the Lord conveyed to me of, but it can be very easy to start looking to the right and to the left and think to yourself that you are somehow better than somebody else because you made a different decision or you drew the line a different spot. But because we all struggle with different areas, some of us are going to struggle more with maybe vanity, maybe a little bit more... pride in our appearance. Like we think we look hot, but then there are going to be others of us who really, really struggle with body confidence and thinking that we look beautiful. Like we fall on the spectrum. And then there are also the category of people who, you know, are judging somebody for one category or the other, like where they fall on the line. And that's also not Christlike. And that was something that I wanted to say in the article is that No way in any of this was my goal, is my goal ever to like ostracize or to disparage or to bring down anybody for any decision that they've ever made. Truly, my heart is to just take this topic that is taboo, that is relatively sensitive and controversial and tackle it from a biblical standpoint. perspective, but also tackle it with, um, as much grace as I possibly can and do so in a way that brings glory and honor to God. So kind of jumping back in, we were talking about the Imago Dei and how my initial thought, cause you know, there's, there's makeup, right? And that's where the big question comes in was my first question before the big question was, okay, here I am. And my initial thought is deep plane facelifts. You But then in my mind, I'm like, okay, well, how different is that from like just wearing makeup? How different is that from me just putting on a whole face and enhancing my eyebrows and my cheekbones with some contour and blush, making my eyelashes? You know what I'm saying? How different is it? You know, wearing some Spanx, right? To cover up this mommy pooch that I've got, like, how different is it? And that was a very convicting moment for me because it is so easy to look at everybody else and what everybody else is doing and be like, Ooh, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't get Botox. I wouldn't get Ozempic. But meanwhile, you're putting on Spanx, you know what I'm saying? And it's like at the core, how are they any different? And they, and that's where there's nuance, right? Like there is differences. And that's kind of what I was saying between the difference between maybe enhancing beauty and completely changing your appearance. I do think, and this is my own personal conviction, this is where I've drawn the line, right? I do personally feel like light makeup enhances the beauty, makes me feel fresh and good. But I do try to be very mindful of what is too much and what is making all eyes on me. What is making... I don't want to be so... in line with what the world says is beautiful, that I'm completely blinded by what God says is beautiful. And what is beautiful about God is that he is God. And the fact that he is perfection and glory and beauty and everything that is gorgeous, like he is that. The Imago Dei is that. And yet we were made in his image and likeness is essentially saying that in our uniqueness and in our quirks and differences and all of the ways that he's intricately woven us, we are also perfectly beautiful in our own way. And that's not frou-frou-y or anything. That's just biblical truth. It just is. Which leads me into the next kind of scripture that I fleshed out in the essay is, so we've got the Imago Dei, right? The Imago Dei is important. But also we've got the Psalm 139 that talks about how you were knitted together in your mother's womb. You were intricately woven. He knew us before we were even formed in our mother's womb. Like he knew us. He formed us. We were intricately woven. And I think that we... Always gloss over. Familiarity breeds apathy. So the more familiar you are with a passage, the more apathetic you are going to be with its truth. And this is a passage, Psalm 139, you are fearfully and wonderfully made, that we hear and we almost roll our eyes at. But what's sad is that this is God-breathed scripture. God-breathed. You were God. by the creator of the universe, uniquely created, intricately created, to look exactly like you do. Like your face and my nose, my butt nose, my little baby cheeks, right? My height, my... shape, my pear shape. I mean, you know, maybe eating too many cookies can help form the pear shape a little bit more. But that's, we're not talking about gluttony in this episode, okay? We're not talking about that. But my height and just the uniqueness of how God created and designed me and you, why? Why would we want to tear that down? Why would we want to look in the the beauty and the uniqueness and the way that God designed us. We are his handiwork. He crafted us. He molded us with his hands. And then yet we go and we shapeshift and we change everything about ourselves. And that can a little bit be overgeneralization at times. But when we look at celebrities, it's not. When we look at celebrity culture, that's what we're seeing is we're seeing these caricature, cultural caricatures. Everybody looks the same. There's a trending body type. We all want glass skin. We all want defined cheeks. These deep, plain facelifts are making everybody look the same. There's no uniqueness. And also, what gets me the most sad, frustrated, is that we've narrowed the standard of beauty so much that now every single time when we look in the mirror, we try to fit ourselves into this narrow mold of what constitutes beautiful. And it's just so not realistic or fair. And it's not what God would have for us. So believing Psalm 139 is... as a really important step into stepping into, because what we're talking about here is confidence in Christ, right? We're talking about being so content in how God's created you in your face, in your body, to not look in the mirror and tear down your appearance, not constantly trying to change to fit the mold of the world, but also to honor it and to take care of it and to steward it and to say, okay, I'm not going to eat whatever I want and drink and whatever. I'm not going to just sit and be a couch potato either. The next thing that we dive into is just vanity and how the wife of noble character, when we look at the wife of noble character, it says that... I think it's charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. And essentially what we learn from this verse, but also just this passage, is that the woman of noble character that we read about is a woman who is deeply devoted to God. And that is what makes her beautiful. It is not her outward appearance. God really doesn't care about our outward appearance. He just doesn't. I think he cares in so much that he created us and he created us, like I said, uniquely. And he cares about beauty. He is beautiful in and of himself. He is beautiful. But as far as a factor in our worth... It's just not, it doesn't matter to him. The other thing that, the last thing that I talk about in the essay that we'll talk about here is the money aspect of things. And the Bible says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And our church does a really good, has done in the past a really good job of talking about money. Money is a topic that occasionally is preached on. One of It's one of the most talked about things by Jesus. But when he says, where your treasure is there, your heart will be also, what he is saying is that we don't throw our money at what we say we love. We love what we throw our money at. And the simpler way to put it is that our transactions will always reveal our affection. It is not the other way around for the most part. I think all day long we can say, oh, I love this, I love this, I love this. But if we look at our bank account, it's saying something completely different. And so if you look at your bank account, that's going to tell you what you love, what you love. And that is true for every category, not just beauty. Like I love coffee and food. I do. I do. And in the beauty conversation, because that's what we're talking about, as I mentioned previously, it's expensive and it adds up. And what I want, what I try to be mindful of and what I would encourage you to be mindful of is not so much that you have to draw some sort of line or that you have to say, I'm only allowed to spend this much on my appearance. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But I think I think what we should do is when we're walking is one, walk with the Lord so closely, be gazing upon the face of Jesus so frequently that you just don't look at yourself in the mirror as frequently as you did in the past. And when you do look in the mirror, you don't tear yourself down. You don't see all your flaws. You see the unique way that God made you. And that in and of itself, in turn, will cause you to spend less on your appearance. It just will. I think that a lot of times what we try to do is we try to look at maybe a struggle or a sin or whatever, and we try to like focus so hard on it that we no longer struggle with it. And what I mean by that is, let's say that you are somebody that spends a lot on your appearance for whatever reason, you know, right? We all have our vices. And maybe you've been like, wow, you know, if I look at my bank account, I spend a lot on this. And, and in your mind, you're like, okay, let me set a budget and I'm going to make a goal to only spend this much on that. You know what I'm saying? Like we can, we do that, but I don't think that's the way we want to do it. And I don't think that's the way we would handle sin period. We don't handle sin by looking at the sin and trying to rid ourselves of it. We handle the sin by shifting our focus on Jesus. And when you're so all consumed with Jesus, everything else, what is this? What is the turn your eyes upon Jesus? Look full in his wonderful face and all the things of the world will grow strangely dim. Yes. But the concept being is that the more you look at Jesus, the less you'll be concerned with the things of the world. And the things of the world say that you have to look a certain way and you have to dress a certain way and your face has to look a certain way and you need this, this, this, this, and this. Your skin needs to be glassy. You know what I'm saying? Your forehead can't have line. Like you just will grow less consumed with all of that. But kind of reiterating what I said before, we all have to draw the line somewhere. And I can't tell you, where to draw the line. And everybody's conviction is going to be so different. I recently heard Frances Chan's wife talk about how she had to go get her grace colored. And I was just like, I don't know, in my mind, I guess, to be honest, and this is what we're just going to tread right on into the next part of the episode. To be honest, I think I had this view because I had come to the conclusion that like, you know what? My mentor had shared with me about Aging being a form of humility. She's like, humility is to take the low place, to not take so much pride in ourself. And so she was saying like, aging is a form of embracing your aging. And because our bodies are deteriorating, and on this side of heaven, they will not be glorified until the new heavens and the new earth, like when Jesus comes back. She was saying that accepting that process and knowing that they won't be glorified on this side of heaven is a form of humility because we're just saying that these bodies are not... They're going to deteriorate. My skin is going to start sagging. I'm going to get wrinkles from the sun. I'm going to get smile lines. My body doesn't look as youthful as it once was. I'm going to get grays. But... How cool is it as sort of an act of rebellion to say, I'm unbothered by that. Like I'm unbothered by that. But I think where I can fall into sin and where I have to watch myself is I then can say, okay, then that's, you know, if you don't have conviction about that, or if you want to, if you're going to cover your grace, then I, why, you know, but again, This is so personal. It's so personal. It's such a personal decision. And what I may have conviction about, you have zero. And also, the Lord works on us at different times on different things. You know, whereas I may be unbothered by my gray hairs, I'm real bothered by something else over here that the Lord's working on me on, right? So I feel like we've kind of... I've been on a little bit of a soapbox, but what I want to wrap up the beauty conversation by saying is that from what we look at in scripture and what God's heart is for you as a woman is that your true security and your self-assurance and your confidence is wholly found in God. In Christ, it is not found in whether your skin is pulled back and your cheekbones are prominent and you're thin or whatever. That's not where it's found. And I think the more that we remind ourselves of that, the more we anchor ourselves in that truth, the less we will be swayed by all of these unrealistic beauty standards of culture and the less we will look in the mirror and nitpick every little thing about us and want to change every little thing about us. So what else say about the conviction aspect of this? that the Lord's been working. I briefly talked about this already, but about what the Lord has been teaching me in just the writing of this essay, just the turning over this topic in my mind is that Satan wants us to look at everybody else. He wants us to be so consumed with what everybody else is doing because that blinds us That blinds us to our own sin. When we are so consumed with the sins of others, we're blinded to our own sin. We're blinded to our own failures and shortcomings and faults. And the reason that he wants us to keep comparing ourselves to everybody else and being on social media and looking to the right and to the left is because it keeps us from repentance. And it's like the Pharisee in Luke 18, 10 through 14. I'm going to go ahead and read it to you guys. It says, Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I'm not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, and even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you that this man rather than the other went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. And that's just a reminder that we can be like the Pharisee. We tend to do that, right? Because we are prideful human beings. I am a prideful human being. And it's easy for me, especially when I'm working on an essay and I'm writing an essay about something else that I'm seeing everybody else doing. And it's not something that I'm struggling with. It can be very easy to just to boost my ego and be like, yeah, but then the Lord is constantly humbling and being like, Okay, but what about this, this, this, this, and this that you do struggle with, that you're not repenting of, that you're not addressing right now with me? You're spending all your time looking at everybody else and comparing yourself to everybody else. And that's just a personal conviction that I wanted to share. One, sort of as a form of confession, if you will, but also to just be honest. And kind of give you the other side of the coin that we, when we are on social media and because we live in a digital age and we're able to see everybody else's lives, their decisions that they make, where they went for dinner, the car that they own, the clothes that they wear. It's really nothing new under the sun, but it's been heightened and exacerbated because of the digital age that we're in. It is so easy to constantly be comparing yourself, whether it's that you're coveting and you're looking at their life and you're saying, I wish I had all of that. Or you are looking and you're like, at least I'm not doing what they're doing. Both are sin. Both of them. Because it shows a lack of contentment and the season that God has you in and the person that he's made you to be and the time that he's called you to. It's saying that you know better than God. It's saying that I want more. I desire more than what you've already given me. And it kind of goes back to Psalm 23 of like, the Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want. I lack nothing. Do we really believe that if we're looking at everybody else? And that's something that I have to challenge myself with all the time. If the Lord is my shepherd, do I really believe that I have no lack? It's sanctification, y'all. It's like one step forward and five steps back. But the Lord is kind and He is gracious. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And He is patient with us, wanting all to come to repentance. I am reminded of that in the days that we have been experiencing with all the politics and the war. Just to encourage you, the Lord is not shocked by any of this. He's not concerned by any of this. He's not caught up in any of this. He's sitting on his throne, very, very sure of how everything is going. And that gives me peace. And that helps me to turn it off when I need to turn it off and to say, I don't need to keep up with all this right now. This is not doing me any justice. This is not serving anybody. It's just serving my inability to be still. So I hope this was encouraging for you. I know it was a little bit all over the place, but if you glean anything from this episode, definitely shoot me a DM on Instagram, send me an email. If you know me, you can text me. I'm also very much open to constructive criticism. So if you have any critique or if you're like, I wouldn't have put it that way or I see it differently or whatever, please let me know because I want to grow and I want to make sure that I'm talking about these in the best way possible. So I hope you guys really enjoy this episode and I guess I'll see you back here in a few months.