My wife is an awesome, smart, beautiful woman. I love her to infinity. Regrettably, we all have our moments when the lighting and cheap digital cameras we have to take snapshots with don’t show us how attractive we actually look. My wife has been dealt the card of “not-so photogenic for life.” She looks much better in life than in most of her pictures.

For this reason, I am here to help sweeten her pictures from time to time. Here’s a recent shot I took with a before and after treatment in Photoshop. This is a simple cleanup in Photoshop, and it’s not very difficult if you know what you’re doing in the application on a Mac or PC.

Why do we care about the way we look? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? I think not. There are fundamental consistent values we all think deem something beautiful. However, we often confuse beauty with our personal tastes and preferences. There is a subjective and objective quality to beauty at the same time.

If God sets the standard for good and evil (right and wrong), and deems the nature of man to be attracted to one thing and disgusted by another, there is an objective standard of beauty for all. Phyisical beauty is often a reflection of our condition with God and men. What we care about is reflected in our general appearance and attractiveness.

Even so, it is also true that physical beauty can be misleading, and is thus subjective in every case. For all the examples God places significance on physical beauty in His creation, there are as many examples of beautiful things that are dangerous or wicked. For this reason, inner beauty is more significant than beauty that is skin deep.

Ultimately, we should enjoy all the beauty in creation — and in so doing, indirectly enjoy the artistic qualities of the Creator and how He sees the physical. Beauty, both physical and spiritual, should never be more important to us than God and His standards for beauty in the first place (i.e. don’t worship the creation rather than the Creator).

What are your observations?

The Bible talks a lot about inner and outward beauty. God frequently expresses His own attraction to both in many examples throughout Scripture. Are there examples in the Bible that you have come to appreciate for a special insight into the nature of beauty?