BitterSweetLife

Sometimes I wonder what we’d look like if we really looked like us. Most of us know attractive people who are, sadly, somewhat neurotic and self-obsessive. They don’t look like themselves, because if they did, we wouldn’t find them attractive. Soul-equivalence is temporarily lacking. That’s why gorgeous egotists aren’t barred from the “Most Beautiful People” lists, an unfortunate but understandable oversight.

On the other hand, if we’re lucky, most of us have met people who should be beautiful. They’re kind, discerning, humble, clever. Cinderella types who don’t look like Cinderella. That they don’t is somehow discordant. Prince Charming may be working the late shift, regrettably acne-ridden. Brutus, meanwhile, heads up the Oscar nominees; witches pose for glamour shots.

So far all this is mildly interesting. We don’t necessarily expect attractive people to be really admirable. Quite the contrary, we’ve learned to anticipate the scandals that dog the heels of Parises and Helens. We almost want those 24-carat lives to be double. The Why is another question. Because we’ve been disappointed too many times? Because beauty and virtue can’t correspond, simply can’t—since that would be too painfully unattainable? Or perhaps for baser reasons.

Whatever the case, I think at some point, however far back we’d have to look, most of us had the naïve idea that handsome people were, well, good. Isn’t that a source of pain in most adolescent break-ups? Chalk up countless broken hearts to beauty that didn’t pan out.

My whole point in writing this is to savor the subversive nature of goodness these days. Judging by appearances, moral character doesn’t have a lot going for it. As Paul of Tarsus said of the first-century church, “I don’t see many of the ‘best and brightest’ among you” (1 Corinthians 1:26, The Bible). Not much has changed since then. If virtue were a person, she would be 5’3,” a too-thin girl with glasses. And there’s the present beauty of it. Those pursuing her for illicit reasons tend to self-destruct.

Today, to be good is not necessarily to be stunning. Skin-soul discrepancy is everywhere. People with skins like Hercules swagger off like world-beaters. People with souls like Christ go quietly about their business. The inequity of this arrangement will, at some point in the imminent future, become glaringly clear.

When soul-equivalence arrives, there are going to be some shakeups.