Here in Michigan, we have lots of sand dunes. And I remember climbing the dunes one time when our kids were young. And instead of looking around at the beautiful creation that was surrounding me, I was looking at the woman ahead of me climbing the dunes. And I remember saying to my five-year-old, Lindsay, hey, look at that lady up ahead, you know, who is fatter? Is mommy fatter or her? And so little Lindsey, you know, kind of stands looking back and forth between this other woman and me and, you know, trying to size this up with her

eyes and she goes, well, mommy, I think you’re just a little bit fatter. And I was like, oh, thanks, Lindsey. You know, last time I asked you to play my little comparison game, but my goodness, what an obsession I have had with what I look like, you know, comparing myself to other women or even comparing myself to what I’m supposed to look like. And I wonder if you relate. Do you spend your life thinking about what you ate? You know, do you wake up in the morning thinking about what you ate last night or how your skin looks compared to how it looks 10 years ago?

Has your lifelong obsession been to finally like what you see in the mirror. And really what we want to know is, what does Jesus say about our efforts to get healthier, to finally look the way that we want to? What does Jesus say about our obsession with our appearances? Well, I’m so excited about the new release of Comparison Girl for teens. You may know about my book Comparison Girl, Lessons from Jesus on Me, Free Living, and a Measure of World, which came out a few years ago. But this book is the teen version.

So in celebration of this new book, which I co-authored with Lee Mienhuis, this series is on comparison. And for most of the episodes, we’re going to look at comparison stories that Jesus told. But for this episode, we’re going to be talking about appearances. And so instead of a story, we’re going to look at a metaphor Jesus used. It’s the metaphor of whitewashed tombs. I hope that as you’re listening, you’ll be thinking of a teen that you can encourage with some of the thoughts that we’re going to share today.

on Sarah coming out soon. And Heather also hosts the Compared to Who podcast. I got to be a guest on that podcast and so enjoyed Heather as a host. You should check that out as well. So Heather and her fighter pilot turned pastor husband, Eric, and she have four children and they live in Austin, Texas. Heather Creekmore, welcome to Live Like It’s True.

Oh, thanks Shannon. It’s so great to be with you.

It’s such a joy. I think I first met you when I was a guest on your podcast compared to who, right?

Right.

That’s right. Yeah. And do you remember that funny story you told me at the beginning, like how you had first heard about my book?

I remember that.

I can read to home. Yes.

Tell it. I have a feeling it has something to do with comparison. It is. You were like, wait, there’s another comparison book?

That’s right. On Amazon. And oh my gosh, I could totally relate. I would feel exactly the same if someone else had written a comparison book after my comparison book, but you know, you and I have both written on this topic and there’s room for a dozen more authors to write on this topic and we still won’t scratch the surface of all God needs to, you know, help us see. But I think from a young age, I struggled with what I looked like and comparing myself

to others. You too, Heather? Absolutely. I remember third grade is my earliest memory of deciding that my legs were too big and going to school and comparing the size of my legs to the size of the legs in the other little of the other little girls in my class and deciding they were too big and so I needed to take action and and taking action and I’m using that in quotation marks that kind of characterized really the first 25-35

years of my life. Hmm taking action so what sort of actions did you take? Like as a third grader, what’d you do? Yeah, so my mom was a good dieter. So I learned pretty early what dieting was. And so I don’t think I actually took action as young as third grade, but certainly by middle school, I was dieting along with mom. I remember there’s this picture of me, Shannon, and we’re about the same age. You remember Get In Shape Girl? It was a toy. It was marketed as a toy in the 1980s. And so there’s a picture of me, probably about 10 years old with my, like, leotard

with the tights on underneath it and my Get In Shape Girl mat, and I think it had like a free weight with it that you had to put water in or something. Cause otherwise it didn’t weigh anything. And so like that was my first entree into like fitness. And then I was dieting with mom. By high school, I was such an overachiever, Shannon, that the diets weren’t enough. And so by high school, I decided, you know, really it’d be best if I just went without food.

Like I could see how long I’d go without eating and then my body would look more like I wanted it to look. And this was, you know, the early 1990s, there wasn’t an eating disorder category for people like me because I wasn’t a very thin anorexic and I wasn’t throwing up. I wasn’t purging. So, you know, really my story just kind of was one long attempt for decades. And as a believer, I’ll add that caveat, Shannon, I had Jesus. I grew up in a Christian home.

I started going to Christian school in seventh grade. I knew the God and Jesus answer. I knew I was knit together fearfully and wonderfully in my mother’s womb. I knew God looked at my heart and not my genes. I was like, I knew all the things. But this was a secret quest of my life to try to change my body. It’s what motivated me. It’s what consumed my thoughts. It’s what drove most of my actions. It was an obsession. I was diagnosed with an eating disorder as a teenager too, and went through different phases of that sort of obsessive behavior also. It can just be so damaging.

And so I think really what we want is freedom. We want Jesus’s perspective. He’s our creator. We want to know what he thinks and how he responds. And so we don’t have a passage in the Bible that we can turn to and say, oh, let’s open up where Jesus pulled together all the middle school girls and said, you are fearfully and wonderfully made and I made you with curly hair and you with straight hair. You know, we don’t have that passage.

I really wish we did. But we do have some passages where Jesus is interacting with people who put a lot of emphasis on their exterior packaging, if you will. The Pharisees is who he really was, used some of the harshest language toward these Pharisees, these religious leaders. There’s this warning in his language toward them, like, your bridge is out, like you are headed for disaster. And sometimes I think that sort of language is appropriate for us because this whole thing

with body image and, you know, being obsessed with what we look like and changing, like you’re saying changing my appearance, like that consuming my whole life. I don’t think we realize it’s as serious as it is. Do you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. I think we actually, and I wrote about this in my first book, I think it’s almost just like an expected part of life. Like it is a normal female experience to have to worry about your body and worry about your

food and always try to be smaller. And like that’s just the way it is because I was born a woman.

That’s my plot.

Yeah.

Yeah. So like church ladies, you know, sitting around talking, whether you’re girls in your small group or friends, like if you mention you’re on a diet or you’re working on this or that, nobody is going to turn to you and say, well, tell me more about that. That’s unusual. No, this is just commonplace, right? And so I think that’s how it was among the Pharisees, too. I think this was commonplace.

I think this was just their way of life of focusing on the external and not the internal. And Jesus is going to turn our attention, you know, to the internal. So I just I want to set the context for these verses we’re going to read in Matthew 23. So this is like the Tuesday before Jesus was crucified. You know, we’re coming up on his last hours, his last like, he’s been more gentle with the Pharisees, you know, like in the Sermon on the Mount, he’ll be like, there are some who you know, he doesn’t call them out individually. Now, here we are at Matthew 23, he is going to say,

woe to you Pharisees, woe to you Pharisees, like teachers of the law. I mean, he is calling for action and using some very stern language and really the chapter starts with this upside down statement. You know, he’s talking about all they want is to be seen. They’re doing all this stuff to be seen, to have attention. I arranged Comparison Girl, the original study, we’re releasing this teen version of Comparison Girl, but the original study was really arranged around upside down statements like these,

this one that Jesus used, where he said, whoever exalts herself will be humbled, and whoever humbles herself will be exalted. So Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and he’s about to give these woes, like, woe to you, woe to you, woe to you. And he talks about his kingdom. Does that strike you as surprising or unusual, Heather?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It’s striking, right? There’s seven woes. That’s perfect number, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It’s not just kind of like a flippant, like, hey, Pharisees, you should probably watch out for the seven woes. Like that’s, he’s really hitting them.

Yes. It’s like, watch out, watch out, watch out. And whenever he’s talking to people who are comparing in the Bible, he uses these upside down phrases because he’s like, yeah, I get it. That’s how things are in the world. But in my kingdom, it’s different. It’s like, set your eyes on things above because in heaven, things are different. Like we can’t emphasize that enough.

There is this contrast between the way things look in the world, what’s important, how we respond in the world, versus the way things look in heaven and what’s important there, what’s valued. We’re going to read just a couple verses here in the same context. It’s Tuesday morning. Jesus is at the temple. He is talking about the Pharisees, and they are in his presence. You know, there is a crowd of people listening, and the Pharisees, the scribes are among them. And so could you read 27 through 28 of Matthew 23? Absolutely.

It says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Okay, so what would the audience there standing on the temple steps, what would they have found surprising about these words of Jesus? Well, so remember, the Pharisees, they started off kind of with good motives, right? The Pharisees, they wanted the people to better be able to observe God’s laws. And God’s laws, some of them they felt were difficult to observe. So they put into place 613 extra rules for the purpose of helping people

observe the law of God, right? So it’s just not face value thinking about that. It’s like,

You know, they’re helping us.

They’re so committed, so dedicated to following God’s rules that they’re just kind of getting us all on the right path. So I think to anyone listening, you’d be like, but wait, these people are the gold standard. Like they’re not just doing it right.

They’re doing it really right. Abstract right. Yeah.

Right? Like, wow, we want to be like them, we want to look like them, we want to act like them. And so for them to be called out in this way, it had to have been shocking. Absolutely, I think it was shocking. And you know for him to use this harsh language, tombs, let’s talk about tombs. Yeah. So they used to whitewash the tombs, it was like this you know whitewash that they would put over the tombs in the spring when they were getting ready for Passover, because there would be this influx of all of these people traveling into Jerusalem at this time. And the whitewash was signaling, okay, this is a tomb, stay away, because if you touch

a tomb, if you touch something contaminated with dead things, right, then you are unclean. There are all these rules about clean and unclean in the Bible. And so the whitewash was like, stay away. It looks pretty from a distance, right? I’m sure I’m sure where Jesus was standing, you know, you could see these whitewashed tombs in the distance. You know, they had just been whitewashed for Passover, the night that Jesus died as Passover. What is surprising about him calling them tombs?

You know, what do you think is, I don’t know, shocking or what would have what would their visceral response have been do you think? Well, again, they are the most alive of the alive They found their their righteousness their form of righteousness. That was their identity. That was their livelihood Right. So so they are exhibiting all that is alive and to be connected to something dead and unclean. That’s not a comparison they want to see made. Yeah, yeah, like God’s laws for his people were so that they might live, that they might flourish. And so these guys like extra flourish because of these extra

600-some rules. They’re the dead ones, you know, like they look pretty on the outside. It’s like there’s basically this thing where the outside and the inside don’t match, you know, where you look nice on the outside, you know, you guys are all cleaned up, but the inside, there are dead things in there. Do you think, does that apply to us, Heather, with our obsession with appearance, the outside and inside? Oh, it sure does, Shannon. I mean, because let’s just be honest, when we see women who match culture’s standard

of beauty, what do we immediately project on her? She’s thriving. She’s doing everything right. She’s got it all together. We walk out of the grocery store and we see those magazines on the checkout stand and we think, wow, that’s life. If I could just look like that in a bathing suit, whoa, the life that would be available to me then, right?

Or even, you know, that might be too far for some. So let me rephrase that for part of the audience. Part of us look at that and we think, if I could just look like that, whew, then at least I would be able to rest because I wouldn’t have to worry about my food and my body all the time, right? I really think the cry of the dieters heart is rest.

We don’t go on a diet so that we can be on a diet for the rest of our lives. We go on a diet because the promise is rest if the diet quote-unquote works. Right? So, so yes, I think we have a huge problem as Christian women believing that our outsides are our business cards, that what someone looks like does tell us a whole narrative about their life and then maybe even in the church about their spiritual life too.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I remember hearing about a young mom who like there was absolutely no indication that anything was wrong. She looked perfect. Her family was beautiful. She had beautiful children, a high achiever, you know, like a perfectionist.

Her home looked perfect, everything. And she committed suicide. It’s like the two didn’t match. You’re like, her life is a dream come true. She has achieved the ultimate. Why? But there was death inside. There was a superficiality to her life and perhaps this obsession with the outside. It is this death. I love that you focused on there’s no rest, you know, it’s ugly. There’s so much self-loathing, self-depreciation. Let’s talk about like, you know, the thing about these tombs is you were supposed to keep your perimeter, right?

You know, just stay away, don’t get too close. And do you see that too as being a way that we want to project perfection, but please don’t get too close? Do you see that?

Right.

Oh, absolutely. I would say that was part of my story and that now I kind of joke with people like if you want to pick out the women with the with the worst body image issues you look for the women who look like they have it all together Because it’s a guard. It’s a wall, right? and and then that’s just great irony Shannon right where I think a lot of us are like if I could just look more Perfect if I could just be more perfect if I could but then But then reality is once you attain a certain status in that arena, how does everyone feel about you?

It’s not you don’t get the love and approval you went there seeking. But everyone’s like, oh, she’s too perfect. I can’t hang out with her. She makes me feel inferior.

Right.

And so it’s nonsensical. But yes, I think we can certainly use a focus on appearance as a wall to separate ourselves from others. Beyond that, I think what drives us into body image issues a lot of times is this, I would say maybe confusion over feeling rejected by others and having to like make up for that or this desire to be approved of by others,

but this fear of intimacy or this fear of really being known by others that that wouldn’t be safe. So there’s a lot under the surface here. When we struggle with a focus on the appearance, it’s almost like a natural thing that we’re

wrestling daily.

Yeah, I’m thinking of social media. We want to project, you know, we get the angle right and the lighting right so that that’s what people see when they look at us. But yet that isn’t what people see when they look at us in person.

I love that you said that.

Right?

Yeah.

There are so many angles that I don’t look like the way I look on social media. So many.

You know, if there’s a hundred shots being taken of me, I’m going to like one of them, right? And that’s the one I’m going to share on social media. And there’s this perimeter where I want to project perfection, but the more I’m focused on that, on having you see me look the way I’d like you to see me look, there’s this fear of, well, then what if you see what I actually look like, you know, with my muffin top or my wrinkles or whatever it is like, please don’t show up on a random Tuesday morning at my house because whoever comes to meet you at the door, you might not recognize her if you’ve only

seen what you saw on Instagram this week, you know, and I mean, I do try to be careful. Like I don’t I don’t use lots of filters or things. I try to be careful to be who I am. I don’t want to show up to speak somewhere and have people be like, I don’t recognize her. I don’t want people to not recognize me when I show up at a speaking event. But this thing of whitewashed tombs and keeping a perimeter, you know what that reminds me of? The difference between Satan’s agenda for us and Jesus’s agenda. Like Satan really wants us to keep that perimeter. He’s a celebrator of death, right?

He appears as an angel of light, right? So he’s a deceiver. Satan is preoccupied with death. You know, remember that guy who was demon possessed? Like that’s, that’s satanic and he’s living among the tombs, you know, he’s cutting himself. Like there’s just so many images there of this is what Satan would want for you. He wants you to be preoccupied with death, not life. And even in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve were faced with this tree where God

said, if you eat it, you’ll die, Satan’s like, yeah, you should have some, right? He’s preoccupied with death, whereas Jesus loves life. He wants to give us eternal life. Jesus is all about truth. Also, you know, Satan, he’s not, right? He’s the prince of darkness. And so Satan, like the tombs, the dead things, that’s where he dwells. And he wants to suck us into like living this tomb experience, right? And Jesus wants to throw open the doors and flood us with life. And part of that has to do with vulnerability.

Like Jesus wants to come in, you know, he wants for us to be honest and real versus superficial. And so I bring all of this up because I think one of the best things we can possibly do is to be vulnerable, first with Jesus, but also with other people, like the perimeter. That’s exactly the wrong way to respond to our body image issues. Do you agree with that? Absolutely, because shame is healed in community. Shame is healed when I hear you say

that you didn’t like how you looked in a picture. And I think, oh, yeah, I don’t like how I look in pictures all the time. Well, I guess I’m okay. I guess it’s not just me. Whereas the enemy is whispering into our ears, you’re the only one who does this. You’re the only one, you should never tell anyone this.

Yeah. This is just you.

And it’s all lies.

Yeah. Keep that perimeter, girl. Don’t let them in. That’s what Satan wants for you is keep that perimeter. Don’t let her close. But I just think it’s absolutely ridiculous for us to think of ourselves of doing battle with someone so evil who wants to destroy us all by ourselves in a dark room like that’s really foolish, you know. And so with our teen book that’s releasing, you know, one of the things that we’re telling girls you have to do is you don’t fight these battles on your own in a dark corner. No, you invite vulnerability.

You find people that are trustworthy, who are going to point you to the truth, who are going to remind you what Jesus says about you. And those are the ones you welcome in. And Jesus himself, you can bring these hard, horrible feelings about yourself straight to him. So OK, so back to our verses, though. Jesus says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs. You appear outwardly beautiful.

Inside, you’re full of dead people’s bones and uncleanness. Any other thoughts on what’s surprising here? Anything else you want to talk about with that? Yeah, I believe, Shannon, that I have seen this desire among Christian women to be healthy, right? Because we know better, right? We know we can’t say we want to be hot, even though when I speak to groups, I’m like, okay, how many of you want to be healthier? And everyone raises their hands like, okay, now who’s willing to be vulnerable and honest? How many of you really just want to be hotter? And then, you know, like, and half the women are willing to give me that, like, yes, please. Right. But I think we have

almost bought culture’s lie and blended culture’s lie into scripture in such a way where there is that your physical beauty, the way you look on the outside, does symbolize the state of your heart or how together you have it. And the outwardly appear beautiful thing is a little shocking that Jesus would call it out.

Now, I think a good juxtaposition here is the fact that what does Isaiah tell us about Jesus? There was nothing about his appearance that would draw you to him. And I talk to women every week and I’m like, okay, so who would you rather look like? A Pharisee or Jesus? And most of them are like, oh, well, I don’t know. That’s kind of an uncomfortable thing.

You know, I have women find my website because they Google, I would rather be Rachel, not Leah. What do I do if I feel more like Leah? Right.

And again, in that story, I don’t know, as I read it, like Leah kind of comes off, she wasn’t the prettier one.

Right.

She comes out better in that deal.

She does. Rachel’s story, I, that’s one of the, I studied both of those women in my book, Control Girl, and it was so surprising to me that Rachel’s story is so unappealing. Like it ends just there’s nothing satisfying in her story just a thirsty girl always wanting more and never achieving it and yeah and God blessed Leah you know it says that he saw her and I don’t know. Would you want to be healthier do you want to be hotter? I think being hotter is all about having others eyes on me you know like being a head-turner do you want to be hotter? Like that’s, and the older I get, the more I’m like, no, I would rather just not be,

have anyone’s heads turn, you know, like I, I’d rather them look elsewhere, but healthier. That to me, uh, doesn’t have to do with head turning. Do you agree? It gets really nuanced, Shannon. It gets really tricky because a lot of the women I work with are our age or older. I work with younger women too. But so hot might not have been the best word. Right. But they get stuck with wanting to approve of their own appearance. Right. Where I’m asking them questions like, so is your husband upset with how you look? Oh, no. He’s you know, he loves me no matter what. OK. Are kids saying like, Mom, come

on, like, we don’t like how you look. We’re really embarrassed. No, no, no. You know, kind of giggle like, no, my kids aren’t upset about how I look. Like, okay, well, then who’s really upset about how you look? Well, it’s me. Like, I’m upset about how I look. Like, I want to change how I look so I can look in the mirror and feel, you know, joy, contentment, peace, all of those things, right? And I think health just gets enmeshed right into that.

Yes, of course, we should take care of our bodies. But I think that we have so many messages coming at us nowadays that tell us that if you are taking care of your body, it will look a specific way. That it’s really hard to separate those two things. For example, aging. I don’t know what your Instagram feed looks like, Shannon, but most of mine, they figured out how old I am

and most of them are like how to not look middle-aged, like how to not look like I’m a woman going through perimenopause, how to not look like I’m approaching 50. I suck it in, right? Like, oh, there’s a way to avoid this. Oh my goodness, I should try this. Oh, I should try this. And then the reality is though, I am a woman approaching 50. I am a woman going through perimenopause, like maybe it’s more normal that I look like I am almost

50 years old and looking like a 30-year-old person. Right. And so these messages of culture have, I think, kind of been adopted by us too, that we can

look a certain way and prove our health to others, prove our health to ourselves. Yeah.

It’s really messy. Like Jesus said to the Pharisees, so you also outwardly appear righteous to others. And I wonder about that word righteous, like you’ve done it right. You know, you’ve taken care of yourself. Like that’s that’s a way that people will talk about it. Like, oh, she’s really taking care of herself, you know, as if you don’t look a certain way. Well, then you certainly haven’t taken care of yourself. And yeah, I do think that those get enmeshed together and be full of hypocrisy.

That’s not being honest. The word hypocrite meant like to wear a mask, like to be an actor in a play, right? So you would wear a mask and project to the audience that you were someone other than you appeared to be on the stage. But I think there’s hypocrisy when we look in the mirror too. Like we’re trying to dress ourselves up so that we don’t look like we do when we climb into bed, you know, after the after the makeup is washed off or whatever. Right.

I think we’re trying to, oh, good, I look better. So I can be I can rest. I can be OK. Like, so what’s the opposite of hypocrisy?

Hypocrity, humility.

Yeah. The opposite of outward appearingly, you know, better than I am is to just be vulnerable. I mean, just being honest with God about this is how I look. And I think too, Heather, Jesus is about to die, right? He’s headed to the cross in a few days. There’s nothing about his appearance that would have drawn us to him. Isaiah said, you know, you mentioned that verse, and he’s about to die and he’s going to enter eternity.

So he’s got a little perspective here, you know, first of all, he is God. And so he has that amazing perspective, but we’re getting it from him, you know, and here he is talking about appearances. He’s like, you’re missing it. Whoa, to you. This is a warning. Stop it. You are headed for disaster here.

And that’s a good word for me, right? Stop it. Right? Well, and think about Shannon, the stories of people you know, people I’ve known on their deathbeds who get that terminal diagnosis. When you find out you have six months to live, guess what goes out the window? Trying to look better. Yeah. Right? Right. Like no one’s in their deathbed like, oh, if I could have only gotten

one more diet in, if I only got one more hour on the treadmill, that would have made my life worthwhile. Like, no.

I mean, so, so it is a helpful perspective. Tim Keller talks about the word righteous actually meaning right with.

Right.

That that’s a good way to substitute it. And so thinking about what makes us right with Jesus is something very different than what makes us right with others, I think now you have to wear a certain kind of sneakers. You know, what makes us right with a group of women at Bible study? I’d like to think it’s Jesus, but is it sometimes the fact that we’re dressed cute and look like we have it all together? Like, oh, I don’t know.

And then it’s the upside down kingdom, like you talk about, Shannon. It’s a different perspective of who are we trying to be right with? Am I trying to be right with those around me? Am I trying to be right with myself and my own opinion of my reflection in the mirror? Or am I trying to be right with God through Jesus alone? So how do we balance these thoughts though with, you know, we’re image bearers and we should to some degree care for our bodies, for our appearance.

How do we balance that? Yeah, so I kind of like how you blended those two things. Oh, okay. I’m not sure they should be blended. Okay, all right. Yeah, right, because I think when you blend those two things, you’re adding something extra to being an image bearer of God. You’re right. Yeah. Being in God’s image just has nothing to do with being right with, righteous, in the sight of the world, right? So anyone that has been born on this world is an image bearer, no matter what you look like. That’s not something I have to grow into.

Or, you know, I write this in my new book that I used to believe the jars of clay concept, you know, that we’re jars of clay. Like I used to have a paint your own pottery view of that, right? Like, okay, God made me the jar of clay and now it’s my responsibility to get out the paint and do a little reshaping, you know, like fix it up for Jesus. You know, but the truth is, Shannon, I wasn’t fixing it up for Jesus. I was fixing it up for me and for my own glory. And and again, that’s where this whole health concept gets really really messy, right?

Because of course we should care for our bodies But what I encounter every day is women who have three commandments that they live by Love God love others Make sure you take care of your body and keep it healthy and they’re actually not in that order the third ones normally first Normally first and and what happens and this is there’s no shame or condemnation coming for me on this because this was my story I was so fixated on taking care of my body Reshaping my body making my body look a certain way. I didn’t really have the capacity to love others Well, I walked into a room and I wanted to know what you thought of me

I mean, I would never say that but in my head I was like do they like me? What do they think of me? I wasn’t walking in there trying to love others well. Right? And loving God was somewhat related to maybe how I felt he was helping me get the body

of my dreams. Right? Like, okay, I love you, Lord. Now zap me skinny before tomorrow morning when I have to go to this thing.

Zap me skinny.

Oh, gracious. I mean, we pray those prayers, right? And then kind of tying back to the verse, what does this reveal about my heart? Right? Because the Pharisees, their biggest issue was their heart. Right? They could follow all their rules, but their hearts weren’t turned towards Jesus. And so I feel like whenever I have a conversation with someone who’s like, yeah, but what about

this thing? And this is unhealthy and this is unhealthy. It’s like, yeah, okay, but where’s your heart? What would it be like to pursue health out of abiding in Jesus? Not out of being on I’m gonna call it a roller coaster ride, right? Because Shannon we know from the 1980s what was healthy in the 1980s was eating special case cereal Healthy in the 1990s was avoiding fat So we invented spray butter and we couldn’t use olive oil and we didn’t eat avocados. What was healthy in the 2000s was eating meat and kind of backing off those carbs a little

and kind of elevating the fats a little bit. What was healthy in the 2010s was making fat bombs, right? And not eating carbs at all, right? So if we are trying to follow what culture is teaching us as healthy, we are on a wild goose chase for something very elusive. It’s not an ultimate thing. It’s just not. And all these messages from culture are telling us that it is, are distracting us into what

I see is women who are maybe trying to be pretty on the outside or look good on the outside or have a form of righteousness on the outside and missing what God really wants to transform is not my body. He really wants to transform my heart. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because our bodies are wasting away, right? Right. And what’s eternal is the body that we will receive. We will receive eternal life, a body that will live forever. And I don’t think we’re going to be too worried about what we look like in heaven, right? Right.

As image bearers, it’s about receiving. I like to picture, so I don’t know, I grew up in church and you know hearing you know old pastor Bob say things like oh I can’t wait to get my heavenly body. You know, hopefully it’ll be trim and fit Yeah, all those things right? But I think the reason why we will be so free From worrying about what our bodies look like in heaven is we will finally understand Who gets all the glory and where all the glory goes and we will not be tempted to fight for any of it. We will see God’s glory.

We will be so overwhelmed. We will finally see, wow, now all the glory to him. That’s good. So we’ve kind of talked about some things, but let’s pull these thoughts together. What does it look like when we live like whitewashed tombs? You know, we’ve said this layered throughout, but just how would you encapsulate?

Yeah.

Yeah, Whitewash team’s concept is part of these seven woes, right? And all of these woes are really about the ways that they have distorted, you know, God’s mosaic law, the Ten Commandments and then Jesus’ two commandments, right, into this whole system. And when I was researching the Pharisees, I found that the Pharisees were known as ascribing

to the traditions of their fathers.

And Shannon, that stuck out to me because I was like, oh man, how many of us are ascribing to the traditions of our mothers? Right? Yeah. We’ve, we’ve adopted the traditions of our mothers and our grandmothers around body care, around food, around dieting, around quote unquote health. And we’ve made that a side religion. And for some of us, for me, it was a more important religion than my faith in Jesus

and following Jesus was. I mean, Shannon, I remember laying in bed at night many times recounting my food sins. Not lying in bed at night thinking about the ways that I might have hurt the heart of God.

But that was a regular experience for me.

Oh, I didn’t eat that. Oh, I didn’t get to work out. You know, that was my true religion. There’s a quote by Sir Thomas Chalmers who said, what you think about in your solitude is your religion. And that really convicted me too, because what was I thinking about when I was alone? I was thinking about my body and how many calories I ate, what I shouldn’t eat, what I should eat, and all those things. To not be whitewashed tombs. We have to follow the heart of Jesus. We have to put aside the traditions of our mothers.

We have to put aside all those rules that are ever changing, right? It’s crazy making all the rules of culture.

Oh, wait, I can’t. Eggs are good. Eggs are bad. Like, well, you know, yeah, the rules that we live by with dieting, my goodness, there’s so many.

Well, and what’s funny is, is those do get passed on. I do body image coaching and I was coaching women who was like 24, 25 years old. And she’s like, well, I don’t eat white foods.

And I was like, why not?

And she’s like, I don’t really know. She’s like, my mom never ate white foods. And I was like, would you like to know why your mom didn’t eat white foods? And she’s like, yeah, why? And I was like, because she watched an Oprah Winfrey show in the 1980s where Oprah told us not to eat white foods. So I was like, let’s think about this. Is this a rule from God that must be followed, a command of the Lord that must be obeyed?

Or is this a rule from Oprah in 1987, passed down through your mother that must be obeyed? God did not declare white foods unholy, right? Oh, that’s so true. But it’s a false form of righteousness. And these image idols that are everywhere, we see these image idols. I think most of the women I work with, we have an image idol in our head, right? We have this ideal image. I am supposed to, and it’s not really just about how we look. It’s I’m supposed to look like this. I’m supposed to be like this. Heather is always on time. You know, Heather’s children are, act like

this in public. Heather’s house looks like this. Heather’s body looks like this, right? It’s this whole book of me that I’ve written and I just have to picture Jesus standing there like, oh Heather, like, you know, I already wrote a book. Yeah, that’s not my book. Do you want to meet yours? Like, you know, I’m not holding you to the standards. Like how about some more focus on my standards and a little less focus on your standards? And it’s the same, woe to me, Heather, you whitewashed tomb.

Following our own rules never makes us alive. It always puts us in bondage. We are in prison. I meet so many women that are in prison to their food rules. They’re in prison to their rules around how they quote unquote care for their body. Right? Care is not the right word in most cases. It’s tough stuff, but it is bondage that Jesus never intended for us to be in.

He wants us just to follow his heart, and I think that’s what he wanted for the Pharisees too. That’s so good, because I think, like you started to say, the Pharisees did have good intentions in the beginning. If we had known them, we would have thought of them as the good guys, wanting to live by God’s laws. They added on all of these rules, and so it’s not wrong for us to want to glorify God with our bodies, you know, this is good. And yet when we are piling on the rules, that’s us living the whitewashed tomb story, you

know, living out death. So what if we live like it’s true, though? Live like it’s true that Jesus calls down woes on the rule following appearance driven Pharisees. How do we live like that’s true? You know, I think we have to spend more time examining our hearts than staring at our scales.

Oh, that’s good.

Yeah. Just staring in the mirror. Have you found freedom with that? Like this is your story, Heather, you know, what difference have you seen and what changes have you made?

Yeah.

You know, it’s fascinating for me to look back at old pictures, right? So I had some degree of body dysmorphic disorder with my eating disorder. Those two things a lot of times go together. But I look back at these old pictures where I was a much smaller woman, but I remember thinking how fat I was or how ugly I looked in that picture, those sorts of things. And so I say that as context for I don’t have the same body that I used to have. And so a lot of the women I work with are looking for a solution that means body image

freedom and a great body. And the body of my dreams, right? And I really wish I could give you both, but I think sometimes God doesn’t allow that because of what my pride would do if he did, right? And how I wouldn’t actually be to be dependent on him if I had all that I wanted in that

arena.

So yes, he’s done a transformative work in my heart. I don’t know what I weigh, which is abnormal for anyone who’s had an eating disorder. I am free with food in a way that I never thought I could be. I no longer am thinking about what I should eat or shouldn’t eat. I’m no longer obsessing and feeling some sort of like religious false guilt if I eat something like chocolate. But I’m also in that because I’m free of the guilt. I’m also free of that. I want to overeat it. You know that it’s not allowed. It’s not allowed. Oh, I’m gonna have a little bit. Oh, I didn’t just eat a little bit. I ate a lot. I might as well eat all of it. And then I’ll start again tomorrow. Right? Like that’s so tied into restriction and guilt and shame and all those things. And

I had a wonderful non-dietitian, eating disorder expert on my show just recently, and we talked about how God created food for us to eat. It’s a gift. It’s a good gift. So what would it look like to treat it that way and have a with God approach to eating food, right? Take the shame out of it, right? Like God is going to throw us a feast in heaven, Shannon.

Yeah.

And we won’t need to eat then. And so to everyone that I encounter in church world, and I love the church, but I’ve encountered so many women in church world, they’re just like, no, you can’t eat a calorie more than you need for the day. And I’m like, but wait a second, how do you know exactly how many calories you need each day? Because that number fluctuates depending on a lot of different things. Unless you have scientific equipment at home, it’s really hard for you to know that.

Okay, so let’s put that aside. Well, you have to only eat for fuel. Well, but wait, God’s gonna throw us a feast in heaven. We won’t need the fuel then. So what if food is just a good gift for us to enjoy and we spend all this time obsessing over it so that we can look better for culture to meet their standard of righteousness so people think well of me and then we muddy that up with so people like Jesus more because I look like better image of God than someone else. Like it’s so muddy and so messy but we go there. We go there all the time.

That’s so true.

I’m excited for your book. I think, yeah, to sort some of those out. But let’s just talk about the false narratives of the world and how this teaching from Jesus, this metaphor of whitewashed tombs, how is he correcting the false narratives or which ones is he correcting? Yeah, oh so Shanna there’s so many of these. Here’s the ones that stuck out to you the most, okay. So I think one of the false narratives that we have to address around taking care of our body is that I have to rely on myself to take control. That it’s all on me. If I get cancer it’s because I ate too much sugar. If this bad thing happens to my health, it’s because of something I did.

Okay, yes, there’s someone out there arguing, but, well, okay, maybe. There’s cause and effect, yeah.

Right, right.

I think I hurt my thyroid by dieting for all those years because whenever you restrict calories, you slow down your thyroid. So yes, I caused that. But at the end of the day, I don’t have complete control over what my body does. That’s what culture tells me. But I don’t. I mean, I coach orthorexic women who have never touched an Oreo, who are facing cancer, who have had hip replacement surgeries and do not weigh an ounce over what the doctor says they should weigh. So that’s one of them. A second one is that I can attract

and make good things happen for myself. And I think tied up in our body and its struggles is this desire to just have a life without struggle, right? And I don’t think we would actually cash it out that way, but really, who of us wants to suffer, right? So if I can look a certain way that guarantees that my husband will always love me or that I’ll get a husband if I’m single, right? And that I’ll approve of myself, I’ll like my Instagram selfies, right? Like, then I can make good things happen from that. And that’s, that’s culture’s narrative. That’s not God’s narrative. And then the final ones, I’ll just tie in here, that health,

well-being and safety are ultimate, or that my safety is in my own hands, not God’s, or that we only exist as physical beings, right? I think all the lies tied up in those narratives relate to this overemphasis that our culture has really taught us well, an overemphasis on, I must take care of me. It’s all up to me to take care of me. And the most important thing, you know, we say like we want to be healthy to serve.

But if you spend all your time trying to be healthy, you’re not actually doing the serve part.

That’s so true.

That’s not mission accomplished, right? And sadly, I meet women every week, Shannon, who are like, I know God’s called me to lead a Bible study or God’s called me to be part of the worship team. And as soon as I lose 20 pounds, I’m going to do that. Like, no, God’s not waiting for you to lose 20 pounds to do that. Like, go do it now. Go serve him now. You only have one life. You don’t have to wait till your body looks the way you want it to look

to serve him. Yeah. So that doesn’t get to be an excuse when I get to heaven. Like, oh yeah, I totally meant to get to that. And then I also talk to women about this reality that if you know the calories and macros you ate today, but you don’t know what your spiritual gifts are, you’re not healthy. That’s not healthy. That’s a really good point. Right? Like we can’t elevate physical health above spiritual health, right? Timothy tells us that, 1 Timothy 3, 8. Sure, exercise is great, but if you are not spiritually healthy, if you’re not spiritually

fit, it doesn’t do you any good.

Yeah, it’s so good. On the cover of Comparison Girl, we have a measuring cup, and on the side are these red lines, you know, and that’s what everybody wants to take their measuring cup and put it next to somebody else’s. And they just you just want to feel like, oh, I have more. I have more beauty in my cup than someone else. But when you tip that cup, the lines don’t matter anymore. So when you take your life and you go ahead and do the things that you were called to

do and serve the people you were called to serve and you just tip the cup, go ahead and what did you say, join the worship team or lead the Bible study or with you and me, it’s like get on a platform where people can see you a little more, you know, your whole body right there up in front. It’s uncomfortable. And yet when we’re there to serve others, really, if my heart is on like, I want to look good on this platform, oh my goodness, I could just send myself into a tailspin about trying to find exactly the right outfit or but if I’m there to serve, right, if I’m there to pour out what God has given me, then the lines don’t matter anymore.

You know, there’s freedom in that. You said I can attract and make good things happen. Basically that’s a control thing too. Like I can, I can take control of this body and I can cause the outcomes to be X, Y, and Z. And that’s just that’s the world’s way of living. And it’s attracting something to me versus serving, right? Jesus’s way is all about serving. He’s about to pour his life out on the cross, empty himself completely. So in conclusion, living like it’s true is living like Jesus would say, woe to you. If your life is obsessing over the outward, the beautiful, and lacking attention on what’s inside. Jesus’s focus is on your heart. That’s what will live forever. And so let’s live like that too. You know, let’s not let’s not be

whitewashed tombs, right? Let’s, let’s throw open those doors and let Jesus clear out all the dead things, right? And bring life. Let’s get rid of the perimeter around our beautiful, shiny, you know, perfection. And let’s just like let people in so that we can serve them, right? Not this distancing and perimeter. Yeah, let’s live like it’s true that we are created in God’s image and it has nothing to do with how much we weigh or what we look like on the outside. I was going to say, and even if we don’t feel seen, right?

Because I think that’s a concern for us as we age sometimes.

Right. Not that we want people to look at us, but that we feel overlooked.

Sure.

Right. If we don’t feel seen, he sees. He always sees us. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Well, thank you, Heather. This has been a beautiful, rich with truth conversation. And I so appreciate you and all of the ways that you’re serving.

Well, thank you, Shannon. It’s been a joy to be with you.

And don’t forget about Heather’s new books. We want you to go take a look at those. A 40-Day Body Image Workbook, Hope for Christian Women Who’ve Tried Everything, and Aging Gratefully. Both of these are available soon, if not already. So thanks, Heather, for sharing. So thanks, Heather, for sharing.

Thank you, Shannon.