Why You Shouldn't Court, Date or Even Marry for Outer Beauty

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A good topic to talk about this love month is courting and marrying based on physical appearance than one's character. Now, this isn't a call to condemn outwardly beautiful women and telling men to marry the ugliest woman they can find. This is rather a call to marry based on inner beauty regardless if said woman is outwardly beautiful or ugly.

The problem of marrying for beauty than character was recorded as far as Genesis 6:2 where it says, "That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they took them wives of all which they choose." This isn't about angels marrying human women. Rather, this is about the descendants of Seth marrying the beautiful descendants of Cain. We know Cain's descendants were ungodly and followed in the path of their ancestor. The path of Seth was the godly line. Remember Seth had several sons and daughters though only Enos was mentioned. Then we know that this line was polluted because the descendants of Seth began intermarrying the line of Cain for their beauty.

We can't deny that some of the most godly women in the Bible were also outwardly beautiful. These happen to be Rebekah, Rachel, Deborah, Sisera, Ruth and even Bathsheba (though she had a bad start). Yet, the Bible also records some outwardly beautiful women who were wicked such as Mrs. Potiphar, Delilah, Jezebel and maybe Athaliah. But it's not about the beauty that makes a woman righteous or wicked - it's all about one's character. Yet you have women who are so ugly on the outside yet they have all their men.

The men also records handsome men of wickedness and character. The handsome good guys of the people are Joseph, Moses, David and Solomon. Yet we also read of wicked handsome men such as Eliab (who Samuel mistook was God's choice based on appearance), Saul, Absalom and 2 Samuel 23:21 talks about a handsome Egyptian man who was an enemy. David was indeed handsome but God looked at the latter's heart as choice to replace Saul for next king of Israel. Yet you also have men who aren't attractive but possess the wickedness such as womanizing.

There is a statement that outer beauty fades when one grows old. True, it does fade but not entirely. Some of the most beautiful women today are in their senior years or have even reached 70 to 80 years old. They still look beautiful in spite of the obvious signs of aging. Some even look better than some of the younger women around them. Yet, we can't deny that a certain degree of that physical beauty faded. But we know that a beautiful old woman with a good heart is still beautiful because of the heart. I'd even want to imagine internal beauty as a reason why some old women still look beautiful for their old age. What can be sometimes amazing is when an elderly man takes an ugly mistress while he has an aging with grace beautiful wife with him.

So what's the advice for people then then? Just treat physical beauty or ugliness as ordinary. Remember that it's all about the inside that counts whether one is physically beautiful or ugly.

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