Last week was a rough week for me. For the first time in my adult life, I looked in the mirror and did not like what I saw. “Not like” is, to put it mildly. I hated my hair, skin, clothes, nails, fine lines, etc. I felt like I did not recognize the person staring back at me. I honestly wanted to hide all day and hope no one would see me. But I forced myself out of the house; that day, I spent time with family, laughed, played games, and lost sight of my earlier frustrations.
If I had stayed isolated, I could have spiraled out of control. However, being around other people and enjoying my life helped me remember a couple of crucial details earlier me was forgetting.
Genesis 1:27, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
What does it mean to be made in the image of God?
To be made in the image of God means we, the creation, are born of the creator. We are a product of God himself, so remember, the next time you want to criticize your looks, know you are criticizing the creator of life. And the creator of all things does not make ugly, he doesn’t make stupid, and he doesn’t make mistakes. Look around at all of creation, the mountains, the ocean, the stars, and see how beautiful it is, yet his favorite of all creation is you.
It can be so easy to get caught up in comparison to what we see through our phones that we start to look at ourselves through a critical lens. “My hair isn’t as pretty as hers,” “I don’t have a nice body like him,” and “I wish my clothes looked like theirs.”
Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
If God thought his creation was good enough, why don’t you? All of the majority of things we get distracted by will fade away. My hair will gray, my metabolism has and will slow down, stretch marks will come, but my soul, my heart, and my faith can never fade.
1 Peter 3:4 says, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”
Peter isn’t saying it is a sin to care about how you present yourself. Peter is teaching us to care more about our inward nature since that is what makes us beautiful in the eyes of God.
It is a biblical command to treat our physical bodies with honor, but it is not a biblical command to put our physical health above our spiritual health. Our bodies are what we worship with; they are not to be worshiped themselves. We make an idol out of our looks by making it more important than our relationship with God.
To be made in the image of God means we can be made like him, not with our outward appearance but our inward nature. We are like God when we show empathy, love, grace, kindness, forgiveness, and contentment; these are just some of the ways we are made in his likeness.
Next time you look in a mirror, know that you are looking at a piece of creation that came from God himself.