The Question of Ugliness

Before the Fall, everything was soft and kind to Eve and Adam. Everything produced food, scent, utility, or beauty. I'm not sure how that's possible, but I suppose it's something I'll have to try to remember when I'm dead. (I'm not at all certain the effect of the veil of forgetfulness is intended to be reversed.)

The Fall produced a lot of discomfort: animals became predatory; plants became reluctant, bitter, and sharp; people encountered disease, age, and injury. I have often wondered how many of these effects are intended to be reversed when Earth again becomes a paradise, either temporarily or permanently. And what about ugliness? If all of the senses (what are we up to: like twenty-eight?) are at risk from some fallen sensation, why shouldn't ugliness be a consequence of the fall, and subsequently vanish during the millenium and afterlife, like other consequences? I mean both human ugliness and otherwise (if either exists).

Another possibility is that ugliness (and therefore other sensory oppressions?) is not a consequence of the Fall as much as the Fall was a change in human life that allowed us the sensitivity to perceive negativity. If you were Superman, you wouldn't notice stepping on thistles (also, if you had no sensory nerve endings). But with the blue kryptonite of The Fall, suddenly being punctured through your velvety soles is a lot more unpleasant (you'd need shoes. And clothes). So what if after the Fall, instead of things becoming ugly, human perception changed so that we give preference to certain perceptions? That would also allow for the development of taste - why some people think spiders, for instance, are incredible, while others scream and throw shoes (or why I find snakes elegant, while most people are naturally repulsed - Seriously, though, I always have issues with the part of the Eden story that uses snakes as a metaphor for Lucifer. I'm really happy that Moses was able to offer some redemption to the poor thing with the Nehushtan). Long digression. Sorry.

So when we look at human beauty, and the way it changes with culture, I think in some way we are dealing with a consequence of The Fall. In the same way that I agonize about gender essentialism, I wonder how much of our personal being belongs to us, and how much simply given as part of our earthly existence.

One thing that seems to make sense is the acknowledgement that anything that gives us social privilege is not innate in the human soul. By that logic, any disadvantages will be erased in the hereafter, one way or another. We can neither take credit for our advantages, nor place individual blame for inequalities. If I am given five talents and another twenty, that person might take credit for turning twenty into fifty, but cannot consider himself proportionally better than I, who turns five into ten. The math doesn't translate. Five talents and twenty talents might as well be oak leaves and gold leaf.

And so with beauty: beautiful people (those who conform to cultural standards of attractiveness) may have many social advantages over ugly people (same qualifications - those who do not possess culturally admired features), but they cannot, at the judgment seat, rightfully claim to have earned those advantages. Ugly people may, however, have some claim in the face of adversity. I am, fortunately, not a judge. I just know that our petty, social differences are meaningless to a God whose standards are well-published, and specifically exclude any standard for physical beauty, but not vanity. And wealth, but not selfishness. And skin color, but not cruelty or anger. And temptation, but not obedience.

That seems to suggest to me that such privilege is temporary.

What of the argument that our repulsion for ugliness is natural? It's a biological imperative to find an attractive and genetically successful mate? Does, in this case, evolution directly oppose creationism?