Consider how counter-cultural this vision of beauty is. While the culture emphasizes youth and proportional beauty alone, consider what Proverbs says: “Take pleasure in the wife of your youth. A loving deer, a graceful doe—let her breasts satisfy you; be lost in her love forever” (Prov. 5:18b-19).

All of us have heard the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but what if the beholder’s eye is distorted to where beauty doesn’t seem beautiful? I find this to be the case often when I am counseling men who have struggled through an issue with pornography. Oftentimes, in the midst of the struggle, they will say something like, “I really am having a hard time being attracted to my wife. She just doesn’t look like she did when we first were married, and I’m just not attracted to her anymore.” I’m afraid that many of us who counsel men regularly encounter this issue with husbands, and there is often mixed messaging in the way we think about physical beauty. However, the Scriptures give us a foundation for beauty, offer a better focus for beauty, and help undo the distortions caused by our sin in our perception of beauty.

Beauty’s Foundation

A parasitic assumption lies behind this type of husband’s assessment of his wife’s beauty. “My attraction to my wife stems from her conforming to a particular ideal of beauty and proportion that I have set. She used to look that way; now she doesn’t.” This assumption stands against Scripture’s witness to God’s good design of marriage. Biblically speaking, where is beauty rooted, if not in “the eye of the beholder,” namely, the husband? The root of all things beautiful is God Himself. Holmes and Reju, in their chapter on beauty in the midst of pornography addiction, write, “To find out what is truly beautiful, we need to understand God’s perspective on beauty.”[1] God is the one who sets the agenda for assessing beauty, not our own perspective. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we must remember that the eye of the beholder should be governed by the God who has created his wife to be beautiful. God is the one to whom all beauty points because He is the author of beauty. He is the preeminent standard by which all things are judged true and “beautiful.” And God’s conception of what is beautiful should drive the very way in which our counselees perceive their spouses. Our culture focuses on youth, proportionality, and affluence. However, God declares things beautiful because of what He sees in the inward heart (brought about by His own power), His creative design of her body and personality, and His command for the covenantal aspects of love.

The Focus of Beauty

Beauty draws attention because it is distinguished from the normal and mundane. There is a reason why people drive thousands of miles to visit the Grand Canyon, make yearly treks to sunsets on the beach, or travel in autumn to see the leaves change in Vermont. These visions of beauty are distinguishing marks. They are unique to those places that people will go far and wide to experience. What about our wives is distinguishable? This may sound counterintuitive because your counselee’s wife is his normal. She is the person they interact with most, but this betrays that they have already thought wrongly about what distinguishing features should come to play in their concept of beauty.

When husbands look at their wives the way Scripture calls them to, the normal person in their life IS the distinguished one in their life. If we look around our world, it is filled with other people. Humanity is comprised of billions of women, but this one woman is his wife. That is part of a scriptural concept of beauty. She is his wife. Let me break this down into two parts.

Read More