AM I BEAUTIFUL?
Finding freedom in the answer
By Chine Mbubaegbu
Authentic Media. 248 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 780 780 603
As the title indicates, this book is about image and self-worth in women, a big issue among young Christian women and students today. So good material on this is welcome. The author is head of media at the Evangelical Alliance.
The book covers: our search for acceptance; the distorted view of beauty that the world presents and the need to transform our thinking; true beauty is inner, becoming more like Christ, and not from what we wear or our make-up; the extreme and dangerous lengths we go to to control our beauty; the wrong places in which we search for acceptance; and finally, beauty at every stage of life.
Chine’s stated aim is to point people to freedom in Christ by relating her struggles with identity and self-worth. The major part of each chapter is her story and the stories of friends who have also struggled with these issues. While her overall aim is helpful, the autobiographical nature of the book is its weakness. On page 60 she says: ‘Because this book isn’t one long therapy session just for me. It’s a tool through which I hope that you too might be liberated to talk about the things hidden in the dark places that cause you most anxiety, and to come clean when you face feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem’. That’s the problem, the book feels to much like therapy, and it doesn't point us enough to Christ. Despite her intended aim to help us find freedom in Christ, in reality she is asking us to focus on ourselves. She has slipped into the power of positive thinking and not freedom in Christ. The book contains some helpful material but I would have preferred to see a more robust focus on rooting our identity in Christ.
