A young woman in Los Angeles sued Meta and YouTube over her childhood addiction to social media – and won. A world-wide ripple effect has governments wondering how long those under 16 should spend on their phones. Yet ‘social media’ damage extends to adults, too, many suffering anxiety, depression and lower self-esteem from ‘social comparison’. Even before social media was a thing, though, people have compared themselves with others, becoming worried that they do not match up to those around them.
Of course, the outward appearance has no effect on how God sees us, but we humans don’t seem to be able to help ourselves and are regularly impressed with what we see. For instance, studies show that taller candidates win the popular vote in American presidential elections roughly two thirds of the time.
Logically, whatever a person’s height, it cannot affect their ability to govern, yet even in the Bible’s Old Testament the prophet Samuel appears to have made the same error when he made a visit to Bethlehem. He was searching there for a successor to King Saul, who’d failed to rule as God wanted. Presented with the many sons of a man called Jesse, Samuel decided that Eliab was the right choice, a man we assume was physically impressive, for God says to Samuel:
“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
In the end Samuel’s search ended in the anointing of Jesse’s youngest son, David, who became a great king in Israel. As it happens David was a physically strong and probably attractive-looking young man anyway, but it was his heart that made him God’s choice.
God said about David:
“I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will” (Acts 13:22). Clearly, whatever David looked like and no matter what others thought, it was his heart that impressed God.
David demonstrated his confidence in God and showed impressive personal courage when he took on and killed the Philistine, Goliath, while all the other Israelite warriors had turned down the challenge (1 Samuel 17). That story of boldness for God’s name is still told today. Yet for all his proven physical prowess, a psalm written by David himself asks God:
‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me’ (Psalm 51:10), showing how much he craved that his inner man should be acceptable before God. ‘Heart’ in the Bible indicates ‘thought’ and ‘aspiration’, and seeing a right ‘heart’ in someone is what God looks for:
‘…the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him’ (1 Chronicles 16:9).
For all the western world’s obsession with ‘appearance’, the Bible hasn’t a thing to say about how impressed God is with how we look. With that in mind, we need to consider what He sees when he looks at us.
While the Bible celebrates that we are indeed ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14) it’s the ‘inner person’ that matters. After all, Jesus told us:
“I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25)
He also had some reassuring words about our physical appearance:
“Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matt 6:27-30).
With so much emphasis by today’s media on how we look, it’s hard to turn from the relentless urge to enhance ourselves with clothes or body-building, and remember:
‘This is the one to whom I will look,’ says God, ‘he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word’ (Isaiah 66:2).
Surely, to have God’s approval on how we are within is worth more than getting ‘likes’ for how we look on the outside.
Joan Lewis