Romans 6: Beauty Contests

Most people can quote Romans 6:23, and as a consequence of being able to quote it, I think most people use it as a distilled truth: that if you sin, your punishment is death; otherwise, you can accept God's free gift of eternal life in Jesus. I don't think that's an untruth, or even really a partial truth -- it's a fair understanding of what the verse is saying -- but the context of Romans 6 really paints that truth in wider swaths.

Romans 6 is a chapter about slavery and freedom. The highlights are that "as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death." And "if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead, dies no more." The chapter talks about Sin and Death as personified masters, claiming that "Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once and for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Paul then explains his allegory, saying he is merely speaking "in human terms" because of "the weakness" of our human condition. He talks about slavery and freedom -- that we were all slaves of sin, and were free in regard to righteousness, and that the wages of that slavery to sin was death, and how in the other plantation, our slavery to God bears the fruit of holiness and everlasting life.

I think being a slave to sin is like being trapped in a beauty contest. There's a pivotal scene in that Little-Indie-That-Could, Little Miss Sunshine, where a disillusioned fifteen-year-old reflects for a while, then says, "Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another." And sometimes I think we feel like we're in a sort of moderate place where we're neither trapped by sin nor convicted by God, but there are a lot of times when we're in beauty contests, trying desperately to please, and feeling more strongly like slaves than anything else.

I like beer, but sometimes at parties, I'm just in a beauty contest. I feel self-conscious and appraised, and I minimize that by having a red plastic cup in my hand, which has to contain beer, even if I don't really feel like drinking it. I have to laugh at people's jokes, or when they quote a Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler movie for the fifteenth time that night. I have to keep drinking at a minimum steady rate because otherwise it's like walking during a marathon when everyone else is running past you and giving you the dubious eye. And I have to stay until the party's critical mass begins to leave, and no earlier and no later, or else people will notice me as the odd one out. Isn't it weird that people (college freshmen) go to parties partially to establish a cool reputation in the eyes of their peers and cope by becoming as inconspicuous and indistinguishable from other party-goers as possible?

Sometimes being a Christian among Christians can become a beauty contest. When your peers in your bible study talk at length about some new Christian book you haven't read, or promise rings for their long awaited future spouse (especially if your own track record isn't the purest), or how they and twelve other popular Christian girls are called to a Season of Celibacy (but maybe you aren't?), I think that it could be frustrating for you if you spend a lot of time grappling with sin. You'd probably wonder why your friends don't have to wrestle with their habits or blunders or mistakes or doubts. You'd feel like you were losing the beauty contest of the Kingdom of God, and you'd probably feel trapped, forever relegated to Christian mediocrity, an only partially-freed slave to sin. What if you were a Bible study leader or a pastor and addicted to, say, pornography?

My friends have described addiction to pornography as binding, gripping, and inexorable. Any closeness with God seems shattered by the jarring "reality" of a desperate, recurrent need to close the door, turn down the speakers, and double-click Internet Explorer. I think it wouldn't be too hard to feel like a slave to sin if you were grappling with an addiction to pornography.

Sometimes it feels like smooth sailing, that sin is something that can throw off your groove but not really get you down, like a parking ticket or late fee. But I think sometimes, especially when we find ourselves in beauty contests, we really understand Paul's metaphor of slavery and understand what he means as he explains,

"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, I do." (Romans 7:14-15)

I've read over this passage several times, but I never really thought about the significance of verse 17:

"But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."

And again, in verse 20: "Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."

He finishes, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

We were slaves to sin, so when we used to sin, well, it was what we did as a function of our slavery to sin. But now we are slaves of God, and when we sin, it's not a function of who we really are as much as it is us forgetting who we really are in Jesus. Now, we have been remade in the likeness of Jesus. Being remade in perfection and grace means that there is no more beauty contest for us because Jesus has fundamentally and irrevocably removed any trace of ugliness from us. Being remade in the likeness of Jesus also means there is no beauty contest because Jesus Himself was probably physically unattractive (Isaiah 53:2-3) and never bothered to try to make Himself look good to anyone while He was here.

I'm convinced that there's no place for competition within the Kingdom of God. And if that's the case, there's certainly no place for beauty contests.