Quote:
Originally Posted by KeptByTheWord
If you apply makeup or camouflage paint as a male because you are going hunting or are in war, what is wrong with that?
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That kind of make-up is not cosmetic in origin, design or purpose. It's not intended to beautify.
Quote:
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If, as a female, you use makeup much like adding a belt or a scarf to your outfit to compliment your attire, what is wrong with that?
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If as a female, you use make-up because you feel a need to overcome a sub-conscious, psychological inferiority complex regarding a perceived sub-standard physical appearance, what's wrong with that?
If as a female, you use make-up because you feel a need to conform your outward image to the world due to peer-pressure and a need to comply to antichrist standards of what it means to be accepted by your fellow human being, what's wrong with that?
If as a female, you use make-up because your mother made you wear it from the time you were a child because no self-respecting female would dare go out into the world without her "face on", what's wrong with that?
If as a female, you use make-up because it garners positive attention from men and because among other female friends and colleagues, it gives you a sense of having confidence with your place in the world, what's wrong with that?
If as a female, you use make-up because you want to have an edge in the looks department over those who don't, because glamorization of self as an act of pride and lust just doesn't matter to you, what's wrong with that?
If as a female, you use make-up because you want to accessorize and artistically redefine your appearance into something more fashionable because it's the hip and cool thing (in your eyes) to do, then, what's wrong with that?
See how this works?
I can't think of any morally justifiable reason why a Christian woman would go out of her way to purchase and implement cosmetics except for one or a combination of the above reasons.
Does it speak to the motive of the heart? Absolutely! But what does Scripture say about the human heart? Desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, right?
What it comes down to is this:
God never demands that a woman accentuate, glamorize, beautify, or in any other way, amend her personal appearance with or through make-up, in order to be accepted with Him.
No church with a right-standing with God would ever demand a woman to do so, either.
No saint with a right-standing with God would ever demand a woman to do so, either.
So where does the pressure come from? It's either from within (making it a psychological reason) or from without (making it a worldly, antichristian reason based in the culture).
We are to be conformed to the image of God's Son. Holy in all manner of lifestyle. Holy means separated unto God for consecration and dedication. Does this mean that God refuses to consider a woman holy if she wears any amount of make-up? That's not my call. It's God's.
But we can say the following, because the Holy Scriptures say as much:
We are not to act like, talk like, look like, or be like the world and all its sinful mess. We are not to be "conformed to this world" (
Romans 12:2). Conformed means to not shape and
fashion yourself the way the world does.
The modern, Western world and the cultures being represented by such a world, hold as fashionable the use of make-up on women to glamorize and beautify themselves. As such, while there is no one verse of Scripture saying "thou shalt not use cosmetics", a principle of the Word nevertheless instructs us on how we should and should not appear.
The world must be rejected at all costs, because the world is perishing and will be lost. Even the planet itself is going to be destroyed!
Does it mean a woman has lost her soul with the world? Again, that is God's decision.
But remember the heart and what God asked through Jeremiah, after He declared it desperately wicked and deceitful above all things:
He asked: Who can know it?
The average person, even a saintly woman of God (or man for that matter) can't always, or perhaps even ever, peer into their own heart and know exactly what's going on in there and why.
So what do we do? Rest in the knowledge that YHWH searches the hearts and tries the reins. He knows, and if and when He sees worldiness in the heart of a make-up wearing woman, be assured He will, in His own time and place, address it, not because make-up is inherently evil, but because its use can and often is, an outward symptom of an inward obsession with the very world that perishes.
So, is it any wonder that God might have a preacher condemn the use of cosmetics? Their use and association, IN SO MANY WAYS, is just as bad as the use of alcohol to get a woman more pliable to a man's seductions, because the woman often wears and applies the cosmetic to make herself more readily available for seduction.
Why this stuff is so hard to comprehend and agree to by other Spirit-filled saints is beyond me.
Hybrid Mode
