Since Susan Boyle shocked the world with her appearance on Britains Got Talent, singing “I Dreamed A Dream” from the play Les Miserables, there has been a wave of discussion in both the secular and Christian media of the natural beauty of the individual.

After reading numerous articles online, one of the most interesting articles about this trend that will come and go came from Michael Spencer at Internet Monk entitled “
We Interrupt This Religion To Recognize….All The Ugl….Unattra…..Uh, “Ordinary” Christians” where he discusses the common, everyday, ordinary Christian and how over the years, they have served faithfully behind the scenes in Christian service.

If you look at the picture above, you will see two skin-deep beautiful women. In fact, these two women (named Angelina Love and Velvet Sky) appear every Thursday night on a television show called “TNA Impact” on Spike TV. These two women play the role of the young and vain women that every man wants but no man can have (unless he has a lot of money and is good looking). They talk about their makeup, are very ditzy and shallow in their demeanor, use hairspray as a weapon in the six-sided ring, dress very provocatively, and “flaunt their stuff”.

When they are on television, the quarter-hour segment (per the Nielsen ratings) they appear on is the highest rated segment for the entire two hour show. In other words, people want to see them…

And after reading Spencer”s article and my many years of viewing the evangelical church world from the grey tinted transitional lenses of my prescription glasses, it can be easily established that the evangelical church has adapted the same visual mentality. We present a sanitized world of perfect Christians with their perfect bodies, their perfect large families, their perfectlife testimony, their perfect looking home with the perfect minivan in the driveway, their perfect squeaky clean look, their perfect politics, their perfect music, their perfect three-point talk, and their perfect personna in order to be perfectly purpose-driven and perfectly influential in this world that perfectly ignores us as a whole.

We have now come to a dark realization that what is visual is not necessarily spiritual

But as Led Zeppelin said in “Stairway To Heaven”…

And it makes me wonder…

if this new-found appreciation of people because they are just supernaturally natural people…

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(1): Will just be another trend that appears to be cool for a while (like all those Christian cool things were hyped to the church) to be discarded when the new trend comes into popularity.

(2): Someone will object because their perfect church has been infiltrated by these imperfect people and they are now uncomfortable and are thinking about taking their perfect money elsewhere…

(3): Some official Christian WHIRLEDview ministry will tie this mixture of imperfect people and the perfect cloned widget mass-produced disciples to the term diversity and therefore link it to the DEMONcrats and because God doesn”t save DEMONcrats and hates America when the DEMONcrats are in office, purge out all the imperfect people in the name of ””””””””restoring the lost Church to where God can move again

This concept of looking for the perfect people has been around since human nature. It just gotten more noticeable since post World War II after we defeated Hitler and his perfect army of “blonde-hair, blue-eyed Germans”. We had the perfect family on Leave It to Beaver. We saw the Stepford Wives. We saw Robert Palmer”s “Simply Irresistable” video.

We mistaken beauty for perfection.

We saw the Tulsa Church crowd push this mindset physically promising us a mega-blessing of hyper-prosperity. We saw the Pentecostals push this mindset spiritually promising us a end-times revival and harvest. We saw the evangelicals push this mindset physically, spiritually, and politically promising us a Christian theocratic nationfree from abortionists, gays, and liberal athiest secular humanists.

For years, we taught in our history classes about the evils of Adolph Hitler and emphasized the point of how the desire for the master race of the Aryan people consisting of “blonde-hair, blue-eyed Germans” and decreed the horrors of the Holocaust and the killing of people because they did not line up. For years, we taught in our history classes about the civil rights movement and how a certain group of people couldn”t sit beside nor share the bathrooms and water fountains of the real Americans.

Hasn”t the evangelical church done the same exact thing spiritually?

Those imperfect, ugly, dumb, frumpy, poor, normal, and ordinary” Christians were selectively exterminated in the name of creating the master race of the “blonde-hair, blue-eyed Christians”. We mentally and spiritually carried the blame and eventual permanent scars and tattoos of being branded imperfect and unworthy. We went to the gas chamber of hyped-up hot-air preaching within the church walls and saw the dreams die because we could never measure up to the exalted standards of perfection. We were the gospel guinea pigs of experimentation and the hard labor.

As churches (like Randy and Paula White”s church did as documented by ESPN) gave influential people great seats, privileged parking, and personal counseling sessions with the pastors (you try to arrange a session), we were told to sit in the back and / or up in the balcony away from the perfect and influential people. We were not worthy to have our pictures on the web page or in the church ministry brochures. We were young, ugly, and single and wanted the attractive Rachael but they tried to swap Rachael for the uninspiring Leah. We were ignored but they always wanted our number and our money….

Our names on most days are wounded, lonely, outcast, afraid, beaten, nervous, anxious, scared, ugly, defeated, imperfect, rejected, afflicted, confused, tired, addicted, and / or hungry. Never was it Ken or Barbie.

Do we conform or be cast out”?
Do we see ourselves as God sees us?

or do we do like a certain segment of people did…..

Create our own faction of perfection and rewrite the rules

And guess what? We did…

We formed our own factions and wrote the reverse rules. We said ugliness was the real beauty. We said the awful singing voice and awful musicians were the real talent and anointed. We said the downtrodden was the most blessed. We said that the fireballer with his send someone to hell person of the week was the real preacher. And we called it not of this world, the poorer the automatically purer, and the fewer the automatically purer.

All justified by the anointing of David as King teachings.

We said you sold out. We said your leader is a Saul in the Spirit. We said .you compromised for glory, influence, numbers, and money”…

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I”ll admit. I wrote this because without those grey tinted transitional lenses I usually wear, I still look in the mirror everyday and see myself… I”m not the most attractive guy. I””m definitely overweight, a hermit by nature, and socially awkward. I have heard the words no, you don”t measure up, and you don”t have what it takes so many times that it resonates over and over again. I like techno gadgets, computers, fast food, and faster cars. I have spent too much time in loneliness, WILDerness, and isolation because of this aura we place on people who are proclaimed to have prophetic ability that they are supposed to be lonely, outcast, aloof, and misunderstood as part of the typical and normal mentality of prophetic people. I do not live in a mansion nor do I drive a BMW. I have a hearing loss and at times my childhood speech impediments seem to re-manifest at the most inopportune times. I do not have the dream evangelical profession (sales, finance, banking, real estate, stock broker) but I really love what I do for a living.

I have made my share of mistakes that seem to become deal breakers” of future potential opportunities or “Moses Moments” of lifelong prohibitions of certain dreams that I never feel will become reality nor would the mistakes ever be redeemed. I””ve been told noby single Christian women so much that it”s second nature (and there is one at my church I am attracted to and I fear the same response…) I get at least one e-mail a week from someone who wants to see me judged / killed so hard by God because I disagree with them (touched the annoying and did the profit$ harm) and show forth the ugliness of their particular form of Christianity and to give them a comfort that their Christianity is the right Christianity.

But I have come to learn that those same people who describe themselves as the perfected ones and the beautiful evangelical people who try to tell me how ugly and imperfect I am to where God can not move through me or live inside of me are really in a different boat within the same sea. They are really fighting the same battles at their higher level point against people they view as being much higher than they are. Somebody higher than they are have told them they are ugly and imperfect and……

The cycle repeats.

We all fail to see that we are level on the same playing field called earth.

Just like the professional wrestling characters of “The Beautiful People”, the evangelical church has been very shallow of any personality and because of this, lost it”s sense of originality. Like The Beautiful People, the externals are so focused on that the internals are neglected. Like The Beautiful People, we will use any tactic necessary even though it”s against the rules to get the ”three count” of numbers, money, and influence for the unclean win.

And there is a part of us that wants one of The Beautiful People. Men will break up solid relationships for a one night stand. Ugly single men want them as the wife to brag to the dissenters that they got the girl. Church members want them as the Evangelical Eye Candy that will get people to look at their church as a choice of churches to attend to increase the numbers, money, influence, and ratings. But we fail to realize and see the whole picture of “Beauty is skin deep but ugliness is to the bone”.

But we can”t go to the other extreme and rewrite the rules. We need to learn to redefine our definition of beauty to God”s definition permanently. We can not let this Susan Boyle instance become just another fad that had its day in the sun even though it appears that Susan Boyles appearances may just be another day in the sun. We must rise above fad and fashion to see what is beautiful and glorious. We can not let the discovery of the supernaturally natural beauty be politically squashed by the religious right to further their own selfish agendas instead of the Glory of God.

In the midst of Susan Boyle, we have failed to discuss something so deep beyond talent and beauty. Not our garments, BMWs, computers, homes, and material wealth. It”s the heart of sin that He wants to make clean, beautiful, and pure. It”s not the beautiful or ugly exteriors that God wants. It”s the pure and holy interiors of our mind, heart and soul that he desires.

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Tags: angelina love, beauty skin deep, Britain's Got Talent, madison rayne, susan boyle, the beautiful people, tna impact, tna wrestling, velvet sky