John Piper Says You’re Ugly So That Others Can Be Reminded of Sin and the Devil
In a recent episode of ‘Ask Pastor John’, John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church has sparked controversy in a listener’s question about the travails of being unattractive, telling them that their ugliness is on account of the fall, and so people can see a physical representation of how ugly Satan and sin is.
Question: “Why did God make some people ugly and unattractive? How can I accept the fact that God though capable of making me beautiful or at least average looking, chose to create me in an unattractive manner?”
Piper begins with a bit of a humblebrag, sharing that he’s never really been called that before, and then explaining that being ugly is just the ‘tip of human suffering’ when compared to the breadth of physical maladies and disformities people can have.
“When I hear a question like this, it makes me groan partly because I can count on three fingers, maybe, maybe less, the people who have ever called me, ugly, or handsome. In other words, I groan because I know I’m being asked to speak to a sorrow that I’ve never tasted.”
Piper responds further:
“Very few people escape the relevance of this question at some point, I think the deepest answer to the question why there is so much ugliness, and deformity and injury and disability and misery in the world is found in Romans 8:18-23.
I think that’s the most important passage in the Bible, for our friend to think about. Ugliness and disfigurement have their roots in the origin of human sin. Now, listen carefully, because this could be so easily misunderstood. Not in a person’s particular personal sin, but the origin of human sin in Adam and Eve which infected the whole human race. In his wisdom, God decreed that there would be physical manifestations of the horrors and outrage of sin against God. This does not mean that everyone’s disability or everyone’s disease or everyone’s disfigurement is because of their own sin.”
Arguing that people are unattractive so they can serve as avatars of the unattractiveness of sin is a hot take indeed, but Piper presses forward:
“God brought the physical world, the bodily world into sync, into correspondence with the moral world. He made physical ugliness and misery correspond to moral ugliness and misery, even in some of the most godly people on the planet. Every bodily or material burden in the world should point us to the burden of sin. Every ugliness should point to the ugliness of sin and Satan. Satan is a real secondary cause under God. He is immediately responsible for many physical horrors….So all physical ugliness, and deformity and misery points to the moral ugliness and deformity of sin and Satan.”
One would be forgiven for concluding that Piper is basically saying the uglier you are, the worse the sin you are representing. For many, the notion that a child born with down syndrome is “physical manifestations of the horrors and outrage of sin against God’ is more than a little troubling.
Piper does not share how on account of sin, our standards of beauty and what is good and pleasing are compromised, but rather paints a theology where the world’s standards of beauty are assumed, rather than challenged. There’s about 10 other response that he might have said about this, and apparently, he’s gone with this one.
It’s for this reason that a man or woman with characteristics such as lazy eyes, hooked noses, buck teeth, and asymmetrical features aren’t viewed as part and parcel of God’s good design. Instead, he seems to be suggesting that all the 1-5/10 are meant to remind of us sin and the devil, with the more attractive 6-10’s/10 meant to remind of… his greatness and glory? He concludes:
Christ is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him, especially in our temporary ugliness.
NATURALLY, this has garnered a fair amount of pushback, with the following tweet summarizing most the bulk of the responses.
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This man is not nearly as wise, profound or biblically sound as the credit that has been lavished on him as such. As time goes on he only gets worse and worse.
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What a stupid, unbiblical take. Piper clearly needs to find another profession.
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I had read this article as well, but I wasn’t nearly as offended by it as you clearly are. I walked away thinking that if I had addressed the subject, I would have kept it to a very simple truth: everything God creates is done in the way that will give Him the most glory. When He chooses to make a person with down syndrome or horrible, debilitating physical deformities, it’s because He plans to use that to display Himself. As He does in every area of creation. However, while I might have kept to that angle, I think you’re exaggerating the truth here. And you’re taking Piper’s words out of context.
For example, you said: “One would be forgiven for concluding that Piper is basically saying the uglier you are, the worse the sin you are representing. For many, the notion that a child born with down syndrome is ‘physical manifestations of the horrors and outrage of sin against God’ is more than a little troubling.” But, in the article, Piper clearly said (more than once) that each person’s beauty or lack-thereof is not a representative of their personal sin. He said that all ugly [aka: imperfect] things point us to the realities of this sinful world. He also said that all people will deal with ugliness at some point if they live to be old enough to suffer the infirmities of old age…which is true. Aging and death DO point us to the effects of sin in this world.
Also, while the world’s standards are certainly sinful, there will be no physical defects among the elect in eternity where everything will exist in its perfect, glorified state. I think some of the objections stem from a very post-modern (and unbiblical) view that God looks at every person and finds them to be equally attractive. (I used to see this a lot in quasi-Christian women’s literature, which I now avoid.) The hard truth is that God intentionally makes some people less attractive, less talented, less intelligent, etc. But Piper is right – some of these less-endowed people in our temporal sphere may be the most godly people, destined for the greatest glory in eternity.
So, while Piper occasionally does or says something with which I don’t agree, I believe that this article is a distortion of his words. Lastly, taking his words out of context and constantly presenting him in the worst light looks like a personal agenda. Especially when you ignore MacArthur’s arrogance and his attempts to avoid addressing things that he’d rather not talk about. Both men are right about many things and wrong about a few. Please adopt a less jaded, biased view. It undermines your credibility in all things.