Heath Lambert: One of the questions that we have received here lately at ACBC concerns how to minister to your spouse when your spouse has body image concerns. And when we talk about body image, we’re talking about difficulties with the way they perceive themselves. They look at themselves and find themselves to be ugly or too fat or too thin or whatever it is. And that can create a real set of tensions not only in the mind and the heart of the person who’s struggling with the concerns but also in the relationship between the person who struggles with concerns and their spouse. And the question is, how do we deal with that in marriage? And so, we’re going to talk about that this week on the podcast and how to think about and minister to your spouse that may be struggling in this area. And what I want to do is mention just four things that you could keep in mind as you try to deal with this situation.
And here’s the first one. We need to be honest about a culture of comparison. So, we live in a culture where most people compare themselves to other people. A person doesn’t so much have a body image problem but has a comparison problem. A person who was alone on a deserted island and never saw another human being would not have a body image problem. But as soon as you place yourself in a culture with advertising, with movies, with pornography, as soon as you place yourself in that world, you start this problem of comparison. And it’s not about what I look like so much as about what I look like over and against what he looks like or what she looks like. And so, we need to be honest that we do live in this culture of comparison, and we need to be honest about a few things within that culture. First of all, everybody gets older. This is the way it is. You can’t stop it. This is the curse of humanity that our bodies grow old and eventually, we die. And that getting older means wrinkles happen, muscle tone weakens, your body spreads, your organs get weak. Everybody gets older and your appearance changes and there’s nothing you can do about it. In fact, even the people who try to spend loads of money to stop it wind up at a certain point looking ridiculous. And so, there’s nothing you can do to stop the advance of age and its effect on your appearance. That’s the first thing we need to be honest about.
The second thing we need to be honest about in this culture of comparison is that everybody looks different. God did not make one body type. He didn’t make one hair color. He didn’t make one eye color. He didn’t make one nose shape. He didn’t make one height. He made everybody different. Everybody looks a little bit different. And we undermine the integrity of God as the Creator when we try to mandate one physical appearance as the norm or as the beautiful one. As a matter of fact, we need to honor the Lord in this issue by honoring His creative expression, if you want to call it that, and His Creator’s rights to design human beings exactly the way, and in all the different kinds of ways, that He has designed them. And so, everybody looks different and since everybody who looks different is made in the image of God, then that means everyone’s beauty is found in their creation by God and not in the fact that they might look different than somebody else, in fact, that’s the point.
A third thing we need to be honest about is that nobody meets the cultural standard of beauty. In this cultural comparison that we live in where there is a certain kind of beauty that’s held out, nobody meets that standard. Here’s what I mean by that. Even the people that you look at in magazines, even the people that you see on television, in the people that you might be, though you shouldn’t be, looking at in pornography, nobody meets that standard. I read an article several years ago about all of the work that has to go into making models look the way models look. They have to starve themselves to death in some situations. They have to endure hours of makeup and chemical treatments. They have to endure surgery. And then after all that, they put their picture on the magazine, and then they have to be airbrushed to get the quote-unquote imperfections removed from their skin. This is the case in any kind of public presentation, whether it’s a magazine model, a movie, or whatever. The point is even the models that we’re looking at they don’t look that way naturally. It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money, and then they’re going to get older too. Nobody can keep up with this and nobody looks like the standard. It’s all a lie. It’s all a presentation. And we need to be honest that as soon as we enter into this culture of comparison we enter into an unattainable reality and even the people who we hold out as the ideal can’t reach it.
Here’s a second reality we need to think about, remember, and talk about, and that is you should, as you’re married to somebody who struggles with these things, you should encourage all kinds of things in your spouse. Since nobody meets the ideal, since everybody looks different, and since everybody gets older, beauty is going to fade. Beauty is going to be this transitory thing in the physical sense. And so, you need to encourage all kinds of things in your spouse. One of the errors that people can make in this regard when they hear that their wife is struggling or their husband is struggling is they will sort of hyper encourage. “Oh, you look so good. There’s nobody prettier than you are.” And it’s all about their body or even about their sexual performance. I’m not saying there’s not a time and a place to encourage in that regard and you should encourage your spouse that you think they are pretty, you should encourage your spouse that you think he, or she, is pleasing to you, but you have to be careful that you not underline a negative reality, lust, a sinful desire in their heart, by only focusing on their appearance and only focusing on realities that might be sexual. You should work to encourage your spouse’s godliness. You should work to encourage your spouse’s parenting. You should work to encourage what a great friend they are. You should be looking for areas where they’re tender and kind and say, “You know, that’s so wonderful when you do that. I’m so glad to see you doing that. I’m so glad to see that in you.” You don’t want to get into the trap of thinking that you can correct the body image problem with your own personal encouragement. In fact, that can narrow the focus in their life and you want to help remind them that you’re more than a person who looks a certain way, you’re a parent, you’re a follower of Christ, you’re a friend, you’re my spouse, and I love it when you’re nice to me, and I love it when you take me out to dinner or prepare a meal for me, or whatever it is that you do. And so, encourage all kinds of things in your spouse and don’t fall into the trap of focusing on that one area.
Here’s the third reality. You have to pursue purity. If you are married to someone who struggles with their body image, one of the most important things that you can do is to pursue purity in your own heart and put to death any desire for any person that is not your spouse. In Proverbs 5:18 this is what the Bible says, “Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving deer, a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; be exhilarated always with her love. Why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?” The point here is that the author of Proverbs is saying you are supposed to be attracted to your wife. You’re not supposed to be to somebody else’s wife. You’re not supposed to be attracted to somebody you’re not married to. You’re supposed to be attracted to the person you are married to. This means whatever your spouse looks like is your type. Sometimes, people say, “What’s your type?” and they’ll give this description and it’s a reflection of the culture of comparison. In the biblical worldview, your type is whatever your spouse looks like and you are called to put to death the desires for any other kind of person. When you are pursuing purity and you are focused on, as this text says, delighting in your spouse’s physical appearance, desiring in the body of your spouse, when that is what you desire, that is what you will be grateful to receive. When you’re entertaining desires for other things, however, that’s when you’ll be disappointed, when your spouse presents you his or her body and you’re going to feel let down. So, the reality is you need to pursue purity. Sometimes our spouses struggle with body image issues because we have nurtured an impure heart and are really secretly or not so secretly desiring something other than the good gift that the Lord has given us. And so, you need to pursue purity.
And then finally, you need to emphasize gratitude. You need to do this in your own heart, it’s related to what I was just saying about pursuing purity, you need to be grateful for what the Lord has given you. The body of your spouse is God’s gift to you and you need to be grateful for it. And as you overflow in gratitude for God’s good gift to you, you need to help your spouse who struggles be grateful to God for what He has given them. The reality is the bodies we’ve received are God’s gift to us and at some point, somewhere in their heart, a spouse who is struggling with body image issues is failing to be grateful for the gift of the body they’ve received from God. And so, this makes the issue one of gratefulness in their heart to God. We need to encourage our spouses who struggle to be grateful to the Lord for all that they have received. And as soon as you’re aware of that, then you’re aware that this is an issue of the heart that requires Jesus. Gratitude is spiritual fruit that we need the Spirit of Jesus to produce. So, the most important thing we’re going to do with the spouse who struggles with body image issues is to point them to Jesus Christ. To point them that Jesus has done what is important. He has forgiven us our sin. He has made entrance available to us into eternal life. He will glorify our bodies so that even where our bodies fail because of a world stained by sin Jesus is going to make all that right. He won’t make all of us the same, but He’ll make it all wonderful. And then we need to look to Him and depend on Him and ask Him for His forgiveness where we’ve failed to be grateful for the good gift of a body He has given, and we need to ask Him to fill our hearts with gratitude for that good gift. And so, ultimately the solution to a body image issue is to look to Jesus Christ and to be found in Him.