It is for this key that people will sell all that they have. Consider the fifteen year old girl in your church. She is totally immersed in a culture that values physical beauty. She flips through a magazine and knows that she is not as skinny and as perfect as the air-brushed models in the ads. She goes to school and notices that her clothes aren't as cool as her friends in the hallway. She goes to youth group and can't help but feel badly when the most attractive girl gets all the attention from the boys, and maybe even from the youth pastor.
The deceptive and worldly value of physical beauty leaves her with a shattered life. Her self-confidence and self-image are shattered as she struggles with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. Her relationship with her parents is shattered because she can see the shallowness in their one-line platitudes ("Honey, it doesn't matter what you look like."). And she begins to harbor bitterness against them for not providing the means by which she can keep up with her fashion-conscious friends.
Where can she turn? To the church? Maybe, but have we bought into the same lie?
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