Even though my outlook was shallow, God blessed me anyhow. I not only got a compatible wife, but one beautiful as well. We have aged together, but in my own eyes she looks the same. I call her little girl because she is younger. Of course, her youth of days gone has equalized with my own age. Time does that! Because she is still beautiful to me, I guess I am less shallow than I once was. Because she is not only the one that I love, but my dear friend, has tempered my shallowness. Time has revealed to me that beauty is temporal, but bliss is everlasting! I would rather have one moment with my wife than ten-thousand moments with someone who is merely beautiful.
Of course beauty is still important to me, but its luster has dulled. Coming home to a mere Stepford Wife would be much like coming home to an empty house. Nobody would intellectually or emotionally be there, but me. Even of I could go out right now and get a necklace of fake emeralds, I still prefer my string of real pearls that I already have. My love and attraction for my own wife is not of my own doing, but God has changed my vision and my heart. A good marriage is part is God's grace because Satan uses martial dissatisfaction for his own purposes. Narcissistic flirtatious women are placed in strategic places to divide what God has joined together. Those who are tempted by the exterior of the opposite sex are shallow.
There was a young man who was looking for a wife. He had primary qualifications and secondary ones, which is okay, but he had them reversed. He wanted a wife foremost which measured up to his expectations. Her height had to be within a certain range, and even her hair color had to be a certain hue, notwithstanding that the color he desired was out of the bottle. Candidates figures were required to be impeccable, although one baby can ruin that!
Of course he did want a moral person and one with like faith, and that is commendable. However, shallowness with the physical precluded finding the right person. There were many ideal wives out there with big-time problems: hair color and length stood in the way of romance. That is shallow and he agreed with my assessment.
With all that said, that is about romance. However, shallowness extends to friendships as well. My motto has always been: a friend is forever, because friendship is unconditional, and is eternal as such. Friendships never die if it was friendship to start with. Faux friendships are those which look at the beauty of being a friend. Sometimes relationships come about because it's all that's there. Two people get together and enjoy each other because they depend on each other for philio love - the bond which friends have. Many of those friendships are based on beauty. By that I mean that when something more attractive comes along, the so-called friendship implodes. It's is sort of philio-adultery - there is a more attractive friendship elsewhere, and the shallow friend, in his or her fickleness moves to where the grass is greener.
Now, both erotic shallowness and friendship shallowness have been discussed. That leaves spiritual shallowness.
Revelations 2:4 "... I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love."This is God speaking. As Christians, He is to be our first love. This type of love is not chronological, but in priority. Just as we are to love our spouse first in a relationship sense, we are to love God before anything else. Just as our fickle man has standards for his wife - beauty, stature, complexion, and hair-color, God has standards for his lover.
Mark 12:30 "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength..."The criteria for loving God is with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Of course his attributes are love, grace, power, fairness, truth, and trust. He determines our ultimate happiness, and as such he is our first love. On top of all that God is beautiful - so beautiful that we cannot look upon him in our human form. Our agape or divine relationship is mutual. His attributes are numerous, and ours are to be with all that we have: heart, soul, mind, an strength!
God's love is unfailing. He is faithful and sincere. Most often Christians are shallow: We fail to love with our all. When something more tempting comes along, we forget God and go for what we see is more beautiful. We are spiritually shallow, and are fickle. We leave our first love and have another lover. At least those with those romantic shallowness choose someone else, but those spiritually shallow return to their real first love. Who is that? Their first love is themselves! They desire to do what's right in their own yes, and doing so, they return to be lovers of the flesh. Like the romantic lover, they fall prey to beauty. Their standards have changed. When they return to their true first love, it is to the love of he flesh to which they return!
Scripture refers to fornication with other gods. Before the Jews learned their lesson, they flirted with other gods. Most notably the golden calf of Aaron. No sooner had Moses left than they gave their jewels and created their own god to satisfy themselves. They never abandoned God completely; they just placed other gods before Him. All through scripture, the patriarchs married foreign wives and took also their gods, and worshiped them on high places. That was spiritual shallowness called syncretism. They left their first love and took on other lovers - other gods before God. That spiritual adultery was because their love for God was shallow.
Today, we have spiritual shallowness. We claim God as our first love, but it's the flesh that we truly love. That is whatever pleases us in place of God: beauty, power, wisdom, recognition, achievement, entertainment, or whatever. They are truly our first love, although we may say that we love God too! That is spiritual shallowness, and our love is where our hearts lie. Spiritual shallowness is outside loving God with all our hearts, mind, body, soul and strength; and loving ourselves that much, because ultimately, we are our own god before God, and our flesh is our idol!
By the way, it seems that people are not shallow in one relationship alone; if shallow in one they are shallow in all of them.
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