Why Care About Your Appearance? Part 1

Anyone who knows me very well will know that I care about my appearance, especially as it pertains to clothes and shoes. Learning about style and finding good clothing affordably is one of my main hobbies. I spend quite a bit of my free time reading about clothing and style, both in books and online. I'll freely admit that I like to look good--and I like knowing I look good.

I hope that anyone who knows me well also knows that I deeply love the Lord Jesus, and desire to honor and glorify him above all else. Any object, love, or passion that would compete with the Lord for my deepest affection is to be despised and given no place in my heart and mind.

Yet to some, these might seem to be competing passions. After all, isn't vanity supposed to be a sin? Of what value is the outward appearance, when the Scripture says, "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart"? Peter indicates that true beauty should and does consist in holiness and godliness, not in clothes and the outward appearance. So what business does a Christian have caring so much about how he or she looks? At the very least, acquiring more clothing than the barest necessities must be "laying up treasures on earth, where moth[s]…corrupt."

In addition to this primary, spiritual issue, there are other reasons why people look askance at a man who cares about his appearance. After all, isn't that kind of…unmanly? It's supposed to be a womanly thing to preen and primp and spend hours in front of the mirror and shopping for clothes. Any man who obviously puts effort into his appearance is usually thought to be less than desirably masculine at best, and a complete fop or homosexual at worst.

Well, I want to take the next several days and weeks to do a series of blog posts answering these objections and explaining why I think it's a legitimate thing for a Christian man to care about how he looks--even a positive good. In doing so, I'll have to go into the nature of vanity, pride, and beauty, think about what it really means to be a man and a gentleman, and examine social conventions and mores that shape our perceptions of style and manners. I'm looking forward to hashing these things out in writing, and I hope it will be a worthwhile exercise.

I Belong

In a very helpful sermon on Ruth 3, yesterday, my pastor Mark Dever asked this probing question: "I wonder whose you would say you are. To whom do you belong? Do you have anyone in your life who directs you, who guides you? Anyone in your life who cares that much? Anyone in your life who points you to the good in the way Naomi did Ruth?"

Mark was directly addressing non-Christians, but the idea of belonging is one that Christians need to remember to think deeply about, as well. As a child, whenever I was about to go spend time with friends and my mother wanted me to be on my best behavior, she often said when I was leaving, "Remember whose you are." She knew that just telling me to behave, to do this or not to do that, would never be as effective as reminding me that what I did and said mattered more than I usually realized. What I did reflected on my family, whose name I share. Most importantly, what I did mattered to the Lord.

I'm reminded again of the wonderful first question and response of the Heidelberg Catechism:

Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

I belong, first and foremost, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

I belong to an earthly family, whose name and blood and history I share; to parents, who have invested their lives in raising me in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

Very soon I will belong to a wonderful wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony.

I belong to the 536 saints of God known as Capitol Hill Baptist Church, with whom I have covenanted and pledged to walk together in brotherly love.

Without these belongings, life would be a cold, comfortless, disconnected and frustrating existence. But by the grace of God, I belong. Thanks be to God.

Goals

Like many people, I believe that having goals and intentionally working to achieve them is important. It's a useful way of ordering my life rightly for meaningful ends. The Bible clearly paints a picture of the Christian life that is ordered, disciplined, and working toward one great goal--knowing and loving and glorifying God in Jesus Christ. This is the great end that every Christian is called to, and in some sense all our other goals should be things that aid us in the task of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.

One interesting and potentially useful web tool for keeping track of goals and desires is 43 Things. It allows you to see how many others are working on the same goal (to a limited extent; they have to be phrased in exactly the same way). I've made a list of goals--some great and all-encompassing, many smaller and less weighty--that you can find here. They appear in no particular order. Whether I use this tool for keeping track of my goals or not, at least the process of thinking through what I want to do and writing some of it down was very helpful.