Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 404 | Should Christians Get Botox? | Q&A

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Today we'll be answering audience-submitted questions! We'll talk about whether Christians can or should get Botox treatments, whether Christians should follow the crowd and put pronouns in their bios, what the future of America holds for all of us, and a few other great topics as well. --- Past Episodes Mentioned: Ep 335 | Understanding the Biblical Telos of Gender https://apple.co/3wXPs9a --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hello, hello. Welcome to Relatable. We are back today with another Q&A episode. You guys have a lot of good questions for me. We are going to talk about Botox, putting pronouns in your bio, communal repentance, what will America look like for our children, all kinds of good stuff, a wide range. So let's get to this first question. Should Christians get Botox? Should we get lip fillers? Should we do these kinds of surgical or semi-surgical procedures to make ourselves look better. So I know Christians who do this. I know Christians who genuinely love the Lord and who get Botox because they don't want that line in their foreheads or they don't want the line around their mouths or they get

juvoderm or they get lip injections and things like that. And I think their argument would just simply be that it's not that they idolize their appearance. It's just that this is something that they want to do, just like getting your nails done or just like getting highlights or, you know, putting on clothes that you like wearing makeup and things like that. That it's just kind of, you know, something aesthetic that they've chosen to do has nothing to do with the fear of getting old or anything like that. So I think that's one perspective. And I would certainly not question anyone's love for the Lord or the sincerity of their faith because of that. Because it's true. Of course, we as women do all kinds of things to make ourselves look better. I've never

gotten anything like that. I've never gotten Botox or injections or anything. And I don't ever plan to do that. And I'll explain why. But I do get highlights in my hair. I do wear makeup. There was a time when I used to do more. Like I used to get spray tans. And back in the day, I used to get my eyebrows wax. I don't do that anymore. People ask me about my eyebrows a lot. The fact of the matter is, is that I really, I just inherited these babies from, I don't know, my ancestors. And I sometimes pluck them. People ask me what I do with my eyebrows if I get them threaded or something like that. I do not.

I don't fill in my eyebrows. I actually really hate it whenever I get my eyebrows, like filled in if someone's doing my makeup. I already have dark eyebrows. That's just an aside. These are just the eyebrows that I was born with. I really don't do anything to them. And I'm just kind of like a simple gal anyway. Like even if I was all on board with Botoxin injections and things like that, I just don't

think that I would do it because I'm lazy. And as you can probably see if you're watching on YouTube, my nails aren't done. I've just not, I've never been that kind of person. I've definitely gotten girlier, I think that as I've grown up, like when I was little, my mom can tell you, I've two older brothers. So she was so excited about getting a girl. Of course, you're so excited about all the bows and all the frills and all the dresses. she was sorely disappointed by the time I was like two years old and I decided that I was mature

enough and independent enough to make my own decisions about my wardrobe. And of course, there were times when I acquiesced and I wore the dresses and the bows and things like that. But I hated that. All I wanted to wear was jeans and a t-shirt. I was embarrassed by dresses and frills and things like that. I'm still pretty simple. Like I don't like anything loud. I don't like a bunch of jewelry. I don't like anything big. I don't like makeup that is like really obvious. that I'm wearing makeup. I like things to be like extremely neutral, extremely simple. So I just want to be honest about that, that I'm, when I say that I'm not going to ever get juvederm or Botox, I don't want it to sound like I'm being self-righteous. The fact of the matter is, is that's just probably

not something that I would do. It's not really my style. That's not my personality. That's not how I have ever been. That's not how God made me. But I do think that there is a spiritual conversation, a theological conversation to be had about getting Botox and Juvenan things and things like that. Fillers, facelifts, I don't know, cool sculpting. What else do the kids do these days? I have no idea. Other kinds of cosmetic surgery or augmentation that people get. Now, the Bible does talk about conceit.

The Bible does talk about vanity and caring too much about what we look like. 1 Timothy 2 9 does speak to not wanting to as women. We shouldn't want to draw attention to ourselves based on how we look. Women should adorn themselves. This passage says, in respectable apparel with modesty, with self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire. And of course, we read that passage to mean not necessarily literal braids or not necessarily literal gold.

I'm wearing gold earrings right now. but it is talking about this kind of boisterous or ostentatious style that is meant to draw attention to you rather than to your godliness or to your virtue or to the gifts of the spirit that the Lord has given you, but rather draw you to kind of draw people to your superficial characteristics. Now, I don't think that that means that beauty is bad. Like God created women very beautifully, created women to be attractive to men, to be attractive to our spouses. And so it is important for men to be attracted to the person that they end up with. But we also realize that the beauty of our youth is going to change.

I don't like to say that it's going to fade, although I guess that's true and I guess that's biblical, but it's going to change. We are going to come into new stages of life where our skin isn't quite as firm as it used to be. It's harder to lose weight. Our metabolism slows down. We get wrinkly. and we just don't look how we did when we are 25 years old.

And I think the better way to look at aging is not to see it as a necessary evil, not to see it as something that we are trying to avoid, but something that we should be thinking God for. Now, I know that's really difficult when it comes to appearance, especially for someone like me who sits in front of a camera every day. I mean, it's so easy to compare myself to other people who look younger than me or they do get these kind of aesthetic procedures and to wonder, well, should I do that? Like, is it something that I need to do in order to stay appealing?

Is it something that I need to be thinking about or investing in? But I think that probably the right way for us to look at aging is with a heart of gratitude and humility that every day that we have, every wrinkle that is added to our face is a gift from God because some people, a lot of people, millions and millions and millions of people throughout history have never gotten to the age of being able to see their skin degenerate. Like God hasn't granted them the days on earth to be able to see a wrinkle, to be able to see a laugh line, or they haven't had enough joy in their life to be able to have laugh lines. God did not give them the years in their life to be able to experience the effects of aging.

Every day, every breath, every year that God gives us is a gracious gift that is supposed to be filled with purpose. And the aging of our faces, the aging of our bodies speaks to the grace that God is giving us and allowing us to live a little bit longer. And I'm just not sure if we are supposed to be erasing the signifiers of the gift of life that God is continuing by his sovereignty to give us. And we also know that focusing too much on outer beauty is just not something that Christians are called to do like we read in 1st Timothy, but also in Proverbs 31, that classic passage about women. Charm is deceptive. Beauty is fleeting,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. 1. Peter 3,4, that it is far better to focus on the inner self, the unfailing beauty of a quiet and gentle spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. So again, I don't think this means that beauty doesn't matter and that God didn't create us with purpose because he did make some people more physically beautiful than others. But God also makes clear that what he cares about most of all would actually last. What's actually really attractive and really appealing about someone is the work of the heart, something that's going on in the inside. And if that is our focus, I'm not sure that the wise way to steward our money is through these kinds of aesthetic procedures. Now, at the same time, it gets a little muddied or

it gets a little confusing when we think, okay, well, why is it a waste of money or why is it kind of, you know, not glorifying to God or grateful to God for the years that he's given us to get Botox, but it is okay for us to have highlights or it's okay for us to wear makeup. And I think that there are a lot of possible answers to that question. And maybe you think that it is just hypocritical altogether. And I do think there's a conversation to be had about that. By getting highlights, am I saying that I am like grummel? against God for the kind of hair that he gave me. Am I saying that how God created me isn't good

enough? By wearing makeup, am I saying that I don't appreciate the natural look that God gave me? Or is it just a way to kind of enhance how God made me? I think there's a conversation to be had there. And I certainly think that it has a lot to do with our motivations. I think it has a lot to do with our heart. I think it has a lot to do with the why, like I said, behind why we're doing what we're doing, how much of our budget we are spending on those things, how focused we are on those things. If we are more focused on our outward appearance than we are on our inward sanctification, then that would be a problem. That would be idolatry. So I don't know if I answered as clearly as I would like to on that, but I hope I gave some biblical direction for this.

For me, I just, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'll make that pledge to you now that I might wear the face masks. I might do the retinae at some point in my life. But I just don't. There's something biblically. There's something spiritually that I just not on board with when it comes to those kinds of procedures.

And maybe I'm a hypocrite for also getting my hair done. I don't know. That's why I don't stand in a place of judgment or condemnation on. these things and I'm trying my best to understand, but I hope I gave you at least something to think about, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well. Here's another contentious topic that is pronouns in your bio. So this particular person asked me about Christians putting pronouns in your bio. So this is the kind of question that I've gotten a lot.

And I will, I'll talk to you about, well, actually, I've already talked about it, and I'll probably talk about it more in a future episode. But we did an entire episode called The B, Bills, and I'm a Bills. biblical tellos of gender. The biblical tellus of gender. And I'll try to remember to put the link to that episode in the description to, um, of this podcast. But we, we answer this question very thoroughly. Like, what does the Bible say about gender? Like, why do we believe in male and female? We've talked about that a lot on this podcast before. Go to my website, Alliebethsducky.com slash podcast. You can click on culture, I think, or you can click on any of the categories. Then you can click on gender and sexuality,

all of the episodes about gender and sexuality will pop up there. That's just a little trick if you didn't know that I've got all my podcast categorized on my website and you can go check them out. But what we talked about in that episode and what I still believe today is that Christians, we don't need to be saying what our pronouns are. And the reason for that is because that affirms this idea, which is not a biblical idea, that gender identity and sex are different, that it is actually possible to identify as something other than the sex that you are born with, something other than your chromosomal makeup.

And we just don't believe biblically that's true. Yes, we know that there are abnormalities. We know that people have disorders in which they have hormone disorders or they have chromosomal disorders where they can technically be categorized as intersex, but you don't use an exception to prove the rule. For example, we say that human beings have two arms and two legs. We have 10 fingers and 10 toes. Does that mean that there are no people without 10 fingers and 10 toes? Does that mean that there are no people who weren't born, who were born with one leg? Of course. We know people who are disabled. We know people who were born without an arm or without a leg. But that doesn't

change the fact that we say that as a rule, human beings are born with two arms and two legs. that human beings are bipeds. There are some people because of cancer treatment that do not have hair. Do we say that those people, that they lack that one characteristic of being a mammal? Or do we say that, well, not all mammals have hair or not all human beings have hair? No, we say human beings have hair, even though we know that there are some people who do not. And so we don't allow the exception of people who are intersex and who should be treated with all the kindness and their respect of the world to then define the rule for all of humanity. The rule for humanity is that there is male and female. And that is a Genesis 1 issue. It's not

just scientific. It's also theological. And if we cannot accept what God tells us in Genesis 1 and then is reiterated throughout scripture, even by Jesus himself in Matthew 19 as he's answering a question about divorce, that God made them male and female, then we cannot be expected to stand up for the issues that are far more controversial in the Bible, namely the gospel. The gospel, the gospel, the gospel, we are all dead and sin apart from Christ is far more offensive than what Genesis 1 says about God making them male and female. And so do not kid yourself. Like if you can't stand up for this basic truth, basic scientific truth of male and female, basic theological tenet of male and female, then I don't think that it is, I don't think that it is true that you will be able to stand up for

something which is far more controversial, which is John 146, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And so saying what your pronouns are, and I understand, like, some workplaces make this very difficult, but they can't really compel you to say something. They can't compel you to define your, to define your pronouns. I mean, it's ridiculous, obviously, but it's also not great corporate policy. There's a possibility that there could be a lawsuit on their hands. I would look into that if that is your situation. But stating your pronouns, like when your pronouns are obvious, it's just giving credence to a gender identity theory, again, that your gender identity can be separate from your biological sex that Christians just don't believe. Remember, also as we talked about

in that episode, biblical tell us of gender, the idea that gender identity is separate from sex, that gender is actually a product of your feelings or environment, was first established by a doctor, Dr. John Money in the 1960s. He started the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins. He came up with this idea, not based on research, but based on some theory that he had. He tested the theory on twin boys, one of which he convinced the parents of to castrate him and to raise him actually as a girl because both twins actually had a problem with their like, with. with their urinary tract and with their tools down there. And so he decided that one thing that they could do for one of the boys, one of the twin

boys, was actually to castrate him and to raise him as a girl named Brenda. And so that's what the parents did. And while these boys were young, and I've got the, like I said, in that, we talked about it in this previous podcast, you can see the link to all of that, all of this story in the description of that podcast. I mean, this is all just like basic knowledge that you can find just by searching online. But he experimented on these twin boys when they were kids. They, he forced them to do sex acts on each other.

We're talking about twin boys. One, that he convinced the parents to raise as a girl while he was observing these sex acts and while he had other doctors observing these sex acts. And what happened to those two boys while the boy that was raised a girl, he knew he was uncomfortable as a girl. He was a teenager and he didn't want to be a girl anymore. He felt and knew that he was a boy. And so he actually ended up getting surgery later in life to reaffirm his biological sex. He ended up getting married. But both boys ended up committing suicide. Of course, because they were sexually traumatized from a young age. They're, I don't, I'm sorry,

this is not very loving, but their weirdo parents were convinced by a weirdo perverted doctor to do something to them that harmed them for the rest of their lives, sent them into a spiral of depression. They committed suicide. Not only that, this guy who came up with this concept of gender identity, which I say was a very failed experiment, considering that his subjects both killed themselves as a result of that. He also, in research, and I put that in square quotes, he had pedophiles, known pedophiles, write him detailed accounts of their interactions, sexual interactions with children so he could have, you know, robust research on pedophilia. He was a pedophile advocate because of these things. The guy was a pervert, Dr. John Money, and he's the guy who came up with this

idea of gender identity, and we have just carried it with us through all these decades, and now we're trying to apply it to our lives and apply it to children. It's insane. It's insane. So for Christians to in any way, give any credence to this idea that gender identity, is something that is different than the sex that God created us to be and how God made our bodies by saying, oh, here's my, here's my gender preference. Or here's my pronoun preference. I think it's ludicrous. I think it's wrong. I think that you should resist it. I don't think in any way that you need to give any kind of credibility to that. You're a man. We know what your pronouns are. You're a woman. We know what your pronouns are. Next question. What should I answer?

or okay, this idea of communal repentance. So we've heard this a lot in conversations about race and within the church, so-called racial reconciliation, Tim Keller, Latasha Morrison, Jamar Tisbee. A lot of these leaders have talked about the importance of communal repentance. And what they're typically talking about is white people repenting for the sins of racism and systemic racism and paying some kind of reparations, whether via the government or not, to black people because of the sin of slavery, because of the sins of Jim Crow, and the systemic discrimination that they claim lingers because of that. And they typically cite, for example,

Latasha Morrison talks about the book of Ezra, talks about the book of Daniel, how the people were called to repentance. Their communities were called to repentance for oppression and for injustice and for breaking God's law. The fact of the matter is, is that there is no biblical precedent for communal repentance that is based on your skin color. That is not what we see in Ezra. That's not what we see in the book of Daniel. That's not what we see in ancient Israel. When you look at the book of Ezra, when you look at the book of Daniel, they are asking the community. God is telling the communities to repent of sins that they were actively committing, not that they were passively committing or that people who looked like them may or may not

have committed a number of years ago. He was talking about direct and actual sins that were actively being committed at the time. That is what God was asking them to repent of in both of those books. Another thing is that if you look at the communal repentance of Israel, that does not correspond with communal repentance of white people today because white people are not God's chosen people, I think. Everyone would agree with that. But any people of any skin color, of any melanin count, do not correspond to God's chosen people of ancient Israel. And so we are not God's covenant people based on our skin color. Of course, we are God's covenant people as Christians bought by the blood of Christ.

But we do not correlate or correspond to Israel, whether we are white or black. And so the call to God's covenant people to communally repent of something cannot therefore be applied to people of all the same skin color in one place. And that is not God's definition of justice, which we have talked about so many times, which is direct, which is impartial, which is truthful, which is proportional. To say that all white people owe all black people something in the United States is to negate all of those definitions of what God tells us that justice is, because we don't even know. if you're a white person in the United States, you have no idea if your ancestors played any part in slavery.

If your ancestors played any part in Jim Crow, you could have come from a long line of people who have been oppressed themselves, who have been poor for generations. You might still be a product of the oppression that your white ancestors or any other kind of ancestors have endured in the United States. You have no idea if you are anyone that you know has any culpability in the kinds of injustices that we have seen against black people in the United States. And so for you to say that the family in Appalachia owns or owes reparations to Kanye West, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That doesn't sound a whole lot like justice, does it? Of course not. Like, I'm not sure, well, I actually know for sure that that's not how God defines oppression. That's not how God defines how we seek justice and love mercy. And if you're a black person in the United

States, you actually, I mean, you might know. Maybe your ancestors were slaves, but maybe they weren't. Like, maybe you're not from Africa. Maybe you don't have a lineage of slavery. Maybe you actually come from a long line of very successful Americans and that you have not been under the thumb of oppression that other black Americans and some white Americans and some Asian Americans have been under. Maybe you have. Maybe you have it. It could be that you have ancestors that actually sold other Africans into slavery in Africa. It could be that you have ancestors that own slaves, black ancestors, that own slaves here in the United States. Same thing if you're a Native American. The reality is, is that the history of the world is people oppressing others and

people being oppressed. People of all skin colors, people of all creeds, people of all nationalities have been oppressed and have been oppressors. And so when we say today that people who are are born today have pre-packaged grievances against someone of another skin color that somehow someone at the top has to like re-engineer and rearrange their lives in the hopes of achieving some kind of equity and the hopes of trying to write past wrongs. And when we use communal repentance to justify this, I'm just not sure that it has any basis in the Bible, of course, but I don't think it has any basis in logic either. And there are a lot of questions, by the way, there's a lot of debate around this idea that every disparity that we see between white and black people in the United

States today is due to the legacy of slavery, even the legacy of Jim Crow. As we've talked about many times, both the white and the black family began deteriorating at rapid rates in the 1960s. And while the black fatherlessness, the rate of it has been higher than white fatherlessness in the United States, white fatherlessness has increased at the same rate since the 1960s is black fatherlessness. And the divorce rate among black families before the 1960s was actually lower than that of white families. How is that possible if truly it is slavery that is to blame for the deterioration or fatherlessness in the black community? How is it possible that actually family togetherness was better among black families before the 1960s than it was

among white families. And you also have to remember that it's not just black people and white people that live in the United States, that family togetherness is much higher in Asian communities than it is white communities. And in fact, in virtually all categories, Asian people in general in America are doing better than white people in America. They've got a higher median income. They've got a higher graduation rate, a lower divorce rate, a lower crime rate, higher test scores. And so if the problem that we are facing today is white supremacy, like how do you explain that? And if systemic racism is to blame for all disparities between white groups and black groups, what's to blame for the disparities between Asian groups and white groups?

And so again, there are a lot of conversations to be had about some of the claims that are made about what certain groups have to actually repent of and why in this country. So that's part of the problem, not even whether or not communal repentance is good or biblical, but also the question of what is being repented of? what are the problems we're facing today and what is the actual cause of them. All right. I'm going to do one more question. What will America look like for our children?

So, of course, I don't know for sure. I don't claim to be a profit. I don't claim to be a prophetess. But I think it can go a variety of directions. So either the powers that be can have their way. And when you think about it, when you think about the likelihood, of the country becoming more conservative or becoming more godly or becoming just more sane in any way. It seems very unlikely.

The same form of progressivism, of social justice activism, which is chiefly concerned with performative activism in the United States, not at all concerned that their supply chains, for example, at these major companies, are characterized by slave labor in China. that characterizes, that describes most of the powers that be in this country. Most of the cultural powers that be are dominated by that form of leftism. Whether you're talking about big tech, whether you're talking about major media corporations, most of the federal government now, a lot of the intelligence community, as we've seen over the past few years, even portions of the military as we've seen in the past year or so academia, the public education system, social media, mainstream media, all of these entities and institutions are

almost completely dominated by that form of leftism. We're not talking about the natural liberalism that basically says live and let live. We're talking about ideological leftism. And those same entities are telling people that really the biggest fear that you have to have are conservative Christians and people who voted for Donald Trump, who have no institutional power, by the way, like have no cultural sway, have no social capital whatsoever. They're telling you that they're the real threats. And so the people who say that they're so scared of fascism are pointing fingers at conservative Christians, when really they need to be looking at the wedding of corporate media and government power that's happening on the left.

That's the definition of fascism, by the way. But it's all kind of a farce. It's all kind of part of this revolution that seems to be coming on. quickly. So when you think about all of that, you think about, is it possible? That in combination with actual communist regimes like China, who is about to be the world's superpower, how is it possible for us to push back on that kind of stuff? And of course, I don't know. I wish I could say that I am completely optimistic that things will get better. I do know that God is sovereign. Things could get worse and worse or things could get better for a little while, as we've seen throughout history,

then get bad again. I mean, history and the church in particular has gone through cycles of liberty and cycles of oppression. I would say the church's history has been characterized mostly by persecution and oppression than liberty, but history goes through cycles

of really good and bad. Like history has been really bad before. Humanity has gone through some really bad stuff worse than way worse, a thousand times worse than what we're going through right now. People around the world have seen more suffering than you and I

can probably... imagine. And so it's possible, certainly, for things to get better. History tells us that and that it's possible for things to crumble again or it's possible for things to crumble and then possibly get better. It's really hard to say. But I actually do think that pushing back against critical theory, pushing back against Marxism, pushing back against the absolute sexual insanity that we are seen in a curriculum that we are seen represented in the mainstream, I actually do think that it's having some effect. I think that the left overplays their hand when they say, yes, biological boys can play girls' sports. Yes, this man can enter into the girls' restroom. When they start

questioning parental rights, when they start to get too controlling too fast, I think that they overplay their hand and people start to push back. I mean, there are already people that we've seen who regret voting for Joe Biden because of how radical his administration has already been. whether or not they're going to have amnesia and forget about this when it comes to the next election is yet to be seen. But I do think it's possible that raising the alarms about the things that are going on, comparing it in a very realistic way to the leftist social revolutions that left much of the world in shambles in the 20th century, I do think it can be effective. Because think about all the institutions that I just told you were completely dominated by one form of progressivism. And the fact that almost 80 million people voted for Donald Trump, like there are still tens of millions of people in this country who do not agree with the values of those companies and those institutions. That's pretty amazing that so many people are still unaffected or at least unpersuaded by the propaganda that we're seeing coming from all those mainstream institutions.

And of course, that's why we're seeing so many power grabs come from the Democrat-dominated Congress. That's why they're trying to change voting laws. That's why they're trying to make it easier to come into the country without any path to citizenship or any need for citizenship. That is why they're trying to dominate as much as they possibly can because they know that their ideas are not popular. Their most extreme ideas are not popular with most of the country. That's why they have such a, they lost seats in the house despite so much anti-Trump

hatred. That's why they have such a slim majority in the Senate because most of their ideas, their most radical ideas are not popular. So they've got to shove it down your throats and to say that the voices of 80 million people at least just don't matter. So that's why we're seeing what we're seeing. It's just a matter of how much they're going to be able to get away with. But do not discount your ability to have influence in your kids' school, in your community,

in your area speaking up about that which is not true, that which is not fair, that which is not right, that which is not safe. You absolutely have a voice and you have influence. All right. That's all I've got to say for today. I will see you guys back here soon.