The Gospel According to Botox

The first time I heard the commercial I was confused. It came on in the gap between songs on the online streaming service I use—because I’m too cheap to pay for the ad-free version. The woman’s voice broke through what had been the lull of background music. She invited me to be free of the time and stress of editing holiday photos. Some sort of photo editing software, I thought. And then came the punch line.

The advertisement was for the plastic surgery division of a local medical conglomerate. “Make an appointment today for all of your Botox, implant, and enhancement needs to look great for Christmas, New Year’s, and beyond,” the woman said. They promised confidence, a better time—and of course all of that photo editing time saved.

The first time I heard it, it caught me by surprise. Every time after, it made me angry.

I know that for some people a visit to a plastic surgeon or the use of Botox injections is part of treatment for legitimate medical issues. But that was not the motivation of this advertisement. Far from it.

Here was the gospel according to Botox, the gospel according to cosmetic surgery. Joy to be found in the perfect body. Contentment in nips and tucks. Self-confidence in wrinkleless skin. The gospel that says you’ll be happy if you look different, that you’re more valuable or interesting or attractive if you match a specific definition of “beauty.” The gospel that assumes beauty is found in youth, as if there can’t be beauty in the creases etched by decades of smiles.

The ad made me angry because it preyed on a vulnerability I see in so many people—and one that I have battled myself. It’s a vulnerability based a lie. A lie that says your worth is in your appearance. A lie that says beauty is defined by body dimensions or flawless skin or a number on a scale. A lie that says achieving that ideal is more important than being healthy or finding contentment.

These lies can drive us to distraction—or despair. They make some of us embrace hunger as salvation, willing ourselves to eat less and less, starving ourselves to meet an ideal. They take some of us to the gym, spending hours fighting off calories. They drive us to all sorts of gimmicks—this new diet pill and that at-home remedy. They leave us ever insecure, ever comparing, ever hiding from another’s eyes.

We set goals, thinking that if we get to such-and-such a point, we’ll be happy and stop our efforts. But those gods are not so easily appeased. They demand more. A few more pounds. Another touch up. Inside is the same insecurity, the same doubt, the same convoluted sense of beauty and worth.

And so I sat angry at a radio advertisement. Because there is a better way. There has to be a better way.

What if, instead of buying into this faulty gospel, we encouraged people to be healthy—to eat well and exercise because their body is part of God’s good creation, the most intimate part of his world that they can steward and care for? What if, instead of a quest for elusive youth, we celebrated aging for what it does offer—wisdom, experience, a wealth of stories? What if we taught ourselves to find confidence and value in things deeper than our skin?

It is not wrong to seek to be healthy—which for some of us, yes, may mean hitting the gym or adjusting our diet. And it is not wrong to want to look good or feel comfortable in your own body. But we act on these desires not in order to achieve our worth, not to buy contentment, but from the basis of our inherent value as a child of God, as one who is loved. When we rest in who we are as the beloved, we can care for ourselves rightly—and resist the striving and abuse and obsessing driven by some cultural ideal.

The photo editing I can’t help you with. But confidence and a good time? You don’t need Botox for those.

Dying With A Smile On My Face

I can’t say I’ve ever been a big shopper. I’m the friend who’s ready long before everyone else, aisles perused, selections tried on, decisions made, waiting outside of the dressing room while everyone else finishes up. This efficiency has only grown now that I have a tiny companion. She grows restless strapped to my chest or nestled in the cart in front of me. I keep moving, make my selections decisively, and go through the self-checkout when the lines are long.

On this particular day, we braved one of those big box stores in which I could get everything on my list in one stop. Groceries, toiletries, and a few items for our new living situation were piled in the cart out of reach of my daughter’s curious hands as I briskly walked to the front of the store. In the corral of self-scanning stations, I overheard a customer teasing the clerk on duty. She paused her roving amongst the beeping scanners and rustle of plastic bags to return his sarcasm with some of her own. The twinkle in her eye told me they knew each other. This wasn’t the first time they’d had such an exchange. He left, purchases in hand, with a final quip, and she continued her rounds. Her back bore the gentle arc of age. She was petite, like my grandmother, with a light in her eyes like my memories of her.

She waved a wrinkled hand at the man’s disappearing back. “They’re so mean to me.”

For a moment, I thought I’d misread the situation. Then she laughed, “Aww no, they’re great. They’re just great. I’ve known them for years down at the Elks Club.”

I was quickly sliding along barcodes. The baby was squirming, reminding me that it was naptime. I listened with partial attention, trying not to be rude, but unsure if she was actually talking to me or just to the air. I glanced over my shoulder as I placed plastic tubs of baby food in the bag. She looked me in the eye and kept talking.

“You know, I’ll be eighty-six years old this year, and I try to find something to laugh about every day. Yeah, I know hard things happen in life and things don’t always go like we want, and some people think that gives them the right to grumble and be all miserable and nasty. But I’m old, and I know life is too short to live like that. I just brush those things off and don’t think about them and find something to laugh about instead. When I die, I’m going to do it with a smile on my face.”

With her final statement, she gave an emphatic nod and what I now surmised to be her characteristic grin. I couldn’t help but smile back at her, and I left the store that day still wearing that smile as I walked to my car. Her outlook on life was contagious. But on the way home, I started wondering if I could live like that all the time.

* * *

It is not difficult to see that life can be hard. We face the effects of its broken, not-yet-fully redeemed state every day. The newsreels remind us of conflicts, poverty, and injustice on a global scale. We see it in our own lives in sickness and ailing bodies, in severed relationships and the loss of those we love. Violence, want, and the delay of justice aren’t contained in one part of the globe or a particular neighborhood. They come knocking at our doors as well in myriad forms. Who among us can escape suffering and tears?

I do not believe faithfulness to Christ or a firm grasp on joy demand that we ignore this reality of the pain our existence can bring. We need look no further in the Bible than the Psalms of lament or a book such as Lamentations to see that we are given permission to mourn and to rail against the ways life is not as it should be. We do not need to simply brush our pain aside, to ignore it, to laugh it off. We can sit with our grief, rage, and tears and call it what it is. In fact, we are given permission to bring that grief and rage and those tears in astonishing honesty and rawness to God himself. Repression is not a sanctified action.

And yet. (There is always an “and yet,” isn’t there?) And yet, even in these places in the Bible that give voice to our deepest pain and longings, there is a space held open for rejoicing. This joy does not come because we ignore the parts of life that are hard. It comes because our faith gives us comfort in the midst of a life that is hard. We have hope that is anchored in who God is and in what He has promised. As I heard someone say recently, “I read the end of the book, and that’s why I can keep smiling.”

My store clerk was right—there is no space for grumbling and misery in the face of life’s difficulties. She was right that there is always space for joy. But that joy doesn’t come from blinding ourselves to the world’s ills or numbing our hearts against the painful situations that may come our way. Joy comes from a deep-seated belief that God is who He says He is and He will do what He said He will do. Faith allows us to stare down the hard parts of life while joy still takes root in our souls. This joy is realistic but irrepressible. It is joy that can survive in the dark. It is joy that allows us to die with a smile on our face.

Weakness Under the Spotlight

I stood in her kitchen, with the connecting presence of a mutual friend. She leaned into the kitchen cabinet with the ease of being at home. The warmth of the wood extended an invitation to stay awhile, to sit down with a cup of tea.

I could very much use a cup of tea in someone’s kitchen. We’d been wading through transition, plans, deadlines, and little sleep for months now. “They” say to only subject yourself to three major life events a year. Our list was six points long already, and autumn had only just begun. We could feel the weight of it all. Most of those events were good things—or at least good in part—but even the good piled on heavy. We were tired. Stress nibbled at the sleep our young daughter yielded to us, her nights and naps disrupted by changing places and schedules. My mind tried to keep track of all the details, the bills, the appointments, the tasks at hand, but it was hazy. My usually disciplined mind struggled to remember. I wrote lists and used them as an anchor for my days. It was the only way I knew how to wade through. I needed rest—for body, mind, and soul.

I tried to explain. I talked about our transition, about our life-event overload, about how ready we were to slow down, to settle, to be at home once again.

She smiled kindly. “Well, God puts us in situations like this…” (My mind was finishing her sentence. I started nodding my head.) “…to show us how strong we are.”

In the moment, I didn’t know what to say. They were not the words I was expecting. They weren’t the words my heart needed to hear. Caught off guard, without the relationship to offer the reasons I disagreed with her biblically, I smiled politely and left it alone. But since that afternoon, I’ve thinking about her words.

If all of this is about how strong I am, I’m doomed. There are days I am propelled by a mere combination of duty and adrenaline, habit and love. It is sheer willpower, sheer commitment that keeps me going. There are days I cry from self-pity, I snap at my husband, and I don’t have the energy to call that friend I know I need to catch up with. If all of this is about how strong I am, I’m failing the test. This season is merely showing my own weakness. It’s full onstage, under a blinding spotlight for all to see.

Thank God, this whole enterprise of life is never about how strong I am. It’s always about the strength and mercy and grace of the God I serve. Always, always about Him. It’s about how His strength is made perfect in my weakness. It’s about how He always enters the mess to bless us undeservedly with His presence. It’s about how His grace extends over every lost temper, every moment of selfishness, every doubt of his provision.

As we read the Bible, we find again and again that God uses people who are weak. It’s part of the way He works—taking a unlikely person or an impossible situation and using it to show His glory. He made a post-menopausal woman a mother (Gen. 17, 21) and a disgraced outcast the first evangelist (John 4). He made a murderer into a songwriter whose words have blessed people for generations (see the Psalms). With the sound of His voice, He brought blood and oxygen flowing through the body of a days-old corpse (John 11). We read these stories in Scripture. We see them today.

In seasons when all is well, I am easily lured by a sense of my own self-sufficiency. It’s easy to think I have the power to keep it all together, to orchestrate the smooth running of my life, to meet everyone’s needs, to effortlessly keep up with all of life’s demands. But when challenges hit, when sleep runs low, when I’m swept up in transition or grief or sickness, that’s when I realize what a farce that idea is. That’s when I come face to face with my inability and my weakness. It’s when I acknowledge once again my dependence on God for all of my needs, for my strength, for the Holy Spirit’s empowerment to live a life of love and faith.

I hate the seasons when I feel out of control. I’d really rather the “gospel” that says they are intended to show me my own strength. But my soul desperately craves the Gospel that tells me I don’t have to just pull myself together, to find a way to be good enough, or to put on a show when I can’t so people don’t think less of me. I need to hear the Gospel that takes the focus off my weakness and turns my eyes to a Father who loves me as I am and as I’m becoming and to a Savior who provides all the strength that I lack. This is truly Good News.

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This post is part of the series “The Gospel According to My Hairdresser.” I often hear personal “gospels” as I interact with people around me, in the messages they declare about life and faith and the maxims they find to be “good news.” This series explores these moments personally and biblically as I come to terms with how these “gospels” influence our lives as disciples and how they measure up to the Gospel of grace found in Jesus.