Expert: Pastor Don Carpenter - 9/17/2008

Question
I am a very overweight teenager and I am very depressed. I am very ugly too. I am 17, I am in a Christian family and we go to church and are devoted to God. There is something that I cannot understand, though, and it is depressing me a lot and I tend to dwell on it a lot.

It is about my weight, and the way I look. First off, I know that everyone sins, but I believe that I am a very good person. I try to always do the right thing. I have never drank or done drugs and I plan to stay a virgin til I am married. I pray to God on a regular basis and one thing I pray about is my weight. I have been struggling to lose weight for over two years. I have been exercising 4-5 days a week for the past year and following a diet plan set out by a doctor. I have been doing everything right. Yet I cannot drop a pound no matter what I do. I am so depressed and I hate the way I look.

What depresses me even more is, I am a good person, why can't I have just this one little thing? Is it just too much to ask? What makes me so angry is that there are people out there with NO morals -- celebrities who are greedy, porn stars who are basically prostitutes, etc. -- and THEY are the ones who are thin and beautiful. A guy in my class was playing a joke on me and he emailed me a picture of a porn star and said to me, "don't you wish you looked like her" and I was so upset. Why should a PORN STAR have a thin perfect body and tons of hair and a pretty face (well she looked trashy, but she was STILL prettier than me) yet someone like me, who tries to be a good person and has faith in God looks like a whale? I am not saying that if you are a good perfect Christian then you should be thin and beautiful, but...why not? I know quite a few Christian people who are unhappy with the way they look. It's just not fair. Good people often do not have the looks or the fame, and yet all the greedy celebrities and porn stars and the like seem to have everything.

I pray for a lot of things, but I also pray for ME, that I want to lose weight. It seems like God is against me, when it comes to my looks and my personal goal of losing weight. I just don't understand it. I am not asking to be "rewarded" with good looks just because I am a Christian, but...why do all those evil people have looks and great bodies and everything? Why should a PORN STAR have a thin body, and I don't?? You would think God would be on my side. If you are truly beautiful on the inside, you should be beautiful on the outside. I know that is not how life really works, but I cannot get over this. I get so angry that I am so fat and ugly.

It is just not fair!!!!!

Can you help me understand what I am feeling? My mother says I should not live a good life because I want to be rewarded. But I don't feel that way! I live my life good because that is the way I want to live it. I just don't understand why I seem to get NO rewards at all.

Answer
Hi Lara,

Thanks for this great question.  I am very sorry for this late response.  I am also sorry for your pain.  There are some things I cannot explain.  I was always the ugly kid.  No one wanted to have anything to do with me.  For a while I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.  When I realized that God made me the way I am because that is how He loves me.  I also have learned that outward beauty is very temporary.  Those porn stars look old and worn out very young.  They do not look so sexy when their bodies are wracked with the pain of the aids virus.  You need to see beauty the way God does.

Proverbs 31:30
30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

I know that this just doesn't seem like a good explanation, but it is all I know.  If you surrender to accepting to be who God made you, it will go a long way toward your happiness.

I hope that this helps you.

In Christ
Pastor Don