Saint Paul Showed Me a Better Way

Or, Why You Can Buy that Tinted Moisturizer Without Guilt

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Photo by Content Pixie on Unsplash

Scroll, scroll, click.

“Damn,” I mutter under my breath.

Scroll, scroll, click, read.

I push my cart down the aisle and place the tinted moisturizer back on the shelf, my conscience searing.

That company donates to abortion causes. Let’s try this one instead.

I pick up a popular bb cream with SPF.

Scroll, click, read.

“Ugh,” I groan, putting it back on the shelf.

Twenty minutes pass as I periodically pause, pick up a product, and scroll through an online list curated by a popular beauty magazine originally intended to help readers purchase from companies that do support abortion. I finally settle on an unfamiliar product because—according to the list, anyway—it’s the only one in stock whose parent company doesn’t say anything about the subject at all.

My skin breaks out after two days, so I go back to my regular moisturizer and keep searching.

This is just one of many concerns I’ve wrestled with in the last seven years as I’ve also sought to care for my body in ways I didn’t in my teens and twenties. At the age of twenty-nine, I decided for a whole host of reasons that I wanted to stop taking hormonal birth control. Before my first pregnancy, I had been taking a combination pill but often wrestled with the reality that my menstrual cycle—and, therefore, fertility—was masked by the presence of unnecessary hormones. (There was also much wrestling with God about what it meant to trust Him with said fertility.) After Lucy was born, and before I learned to properly track my own cycle, I decided to get a copper IUD.

I still don’t know if it was the IUD, the effect of getting off the pill, my diet, turning thirty, or some combination of all of these, but within months my face had exploded with painful, itchy, pimple-like bumps. At first—confused and desperate—I treated the bumps like acne, which only made them worse. A few years and multiple treatments later, my dermatologist informed me that I might be allergic to the amount of copper in the IUD, so I had it removed. Finally, I was diagnosed with a very specific type of rosacea which continued to flare up again and again with varying levels of severity until early 2022, resulting in lots of frustration and tears, plus some scarring. It was a roller coaster of ups and downs that took a myriad of different topical and oral treatments, diet changes, and product combinations before I learned how best to handle my condition. In the process, I was learning for the first time not only what ingredients went into my skincare products and food but also what companies made these products and how they approached ethics, economics, and the environment.

Soon, an average grocery store trip became an internal wrestling match over how to spend with integrity while also getting what I needed to care for my body.

I love this brand, but they test on animals.

That serum looks amazing, but how is the oil sourced?

Does this company pay its workers a liveable wage?

I didn’t just shop more intentionally, with the belief that where my dollars go matters; I had begun to live as though every ill in the world could be cured, or made worse, by whether I purchased a sunscreen made by a questionable company. My inner critic shouted at me to be fully aligned at all times—an impossible feat in a sinful world. (But try telling that to an obsessive mind with a perpetual bent toward moralization.)

Our culture doesn’t make it easy to achieve a balancing act, either, as evidenced by the very list I was using to cull tinted moisturizers. Despite the fact that I am a woman who holds to a consistent-life ethic¹ and was not, therefore, the intended audience of said list, the magazine writers who curated it did so with the express purpose of furthering their views and influencing readers. At every turn, there are different types of people telling us what to believe and how to live out those beliefs, lest we find ourselves at the mercy of those who disagree. We can’t please everyone, and we understand this on a subconscious level, but because of the intensity of the noise around us, we feel compelled to try. It’s overwhelming and exhausting. Never before have we had so much information at our fingertips. Never before has the sound of our daily lives been set at such a high, unrestrained volume. Good intentions or not, people across all sorts of ideological lines are trying to be the absolute most and it feels as if we’ve made mere sport of our ethics, with no real winner in sight.

I long to be someone whose words and deeds add truth, beauty, and goodness to the world. I care about the effect my small purchases make on people I might never meet, but regularly bump up against the reality that as soon as I figure out how to settle with one issue another pops up in its place. It’s like battling a Hydra. There seems to be no end to the potential despair. Indeed, evil is an opportunist, so what choice do I really have but to become paralyzed with anxiety, drive myself mad with frustration, or give up entirely? What choice does any of us have?

Enter: Paul, the first-century apostle, writer of most of the New Testament, and sinner-turned-saint lots of us still don’t know if we love or hate.

(Some sources claim Paul was probably an Enneagram 1, like yours truly, which means I both love and hate him in equal measure.)

Saint Paul is interesting to me because he had an intense affection for other believers that regularly showed up with the tenderness of an atomic bomb. He loved people wildly but doesn’t appear to have liked many of them at all that much. (Which, honestly, same.) You can sense this in how he expressed frustrations with backsliding baby Christians even while he worked hard to celebrate their wins, no matter how small. I feel a kinship with Paul’s desire for goodness within the Church as well as his brutally honest self-examinations. I mean, the guy called himself Chief Among Sinners. He was under no illusions about the absolute shit-storm his life would have been if he hadn’t met Jesus. It wasn’t exactly a field of daisies in the aftermath, either, but Paul understood that his current suffering in Christ wasn’t without an eternal purpose, as it would have been if he had continued down the self-righteous, murdery path he’d been walking before that road to Damascus. In Christ, Paul tells us, death brings life. Jesus takes every dying—emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical—and redeems it all to glory.

So what does this have to do with our desire to cultivate goodness in a broken world?

It’s as simple as making the best choice we can with the information we have—not all the information we can pursue—and asking God to take care of the rest.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he spends the initial half of chapter 10 laying out how the ancient Israelites had been “baptized into Moses,”² cared for under the authority of their Heavenly Father. Then they screwed it all up by refusing to obey the Law and living as if their choices made no impact on their community or relationship with God.

Paul follows up this section with a discussion of food sacrificed to idols—a common practice in the pagan Greek culture of that time—and a reminder to the new Church to “flee from idolatry”³ and to remember that while “[you] have the right to do anything, not everything is beneficial…not everything is constructive.”⁴

Here’s where I stopped in my tracks:

“Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’” (v. 25-26, the latter a direct reference to Psalm 24:1)

Paul has fully laid out his argument against idolatry prior to this statement, so it feels a bit like he’s contradicting himself here. Wait…you’re telling us that food sacrificed to idols and sold in the market is bad, but we can eat it anyway? Without guilt?

Paul continues:

“If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. But if someone says to you, ‘This has been offered in sacrifice,’ then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience. I am referring to the other person’s conscience, not yours. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience? If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?” (v. 27-30, emphasis mine)

At first glance, it appears as if Paul is giving Christians a pass to participate in sin because of their freedom. (A familiar theme even now.) But a careful reading of the text reveals that while the ancient Israelites were dealt severe consequences for their violation of the Law of Moses, believers in the early Church were not bound by those same ceremonial and civil commands; they were free in Christ to consider context and to either partake in sacrificed food or not based on how their choices would impact the conscience of their neighbors.

Finally, Paul finishes up the chapter with a last admonishment:

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.” (v. 31-33, emphasis mine)

The point, then, is not that sin is suddenly no big deal or that, conversely, we must spend our lives in perpetual fear of how others might respond, but that we have a responsibility to consider our actions for the “good of many” and the glory of God. We do this when we are intentional about our purchases or when we stop buying from a company that we’ve learned is harmful to its customers or employees.

Where this becomes an issue of idolatry in our own lives, though, is when we begin to obsess over rightness and even assume our actions can save—or damn—another. When a trip to the store becomes a competition to be the most righteous. When our gratitude to God over what is available transforms into fundamentalist fervor about who is good and who is bad. (And make no mistake: both conservative and liberal Christians can be fundamentalists.) At that point, we stop pursuing “the good of many” and start running after our own power. We become convinced that we can and should play God, and this arrogance masquerading as morality is what steals the glory from the Father and turns our neighbors against us.

As Madeleine L’Engle wrote, “There’s a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world.”

How often have you seen Christians use their influence to promote themselves? To attack a person, product, business, or even idea because it does not align with their interpretation of Scripture? I'm not talking about the honest, considerate critique required of us as faithful believers; I’m talking about a complete disregard for the fruit of the Spirit—patience, gentleness, self-control—in order to make a point. I bet the answer is probably more times than you can count.

That behavior is not, to use Paul’s words, beneficial or constructive. And it’s no more our calling than obsessively Googling the ethics of every company that finds its way into our grocery carts.

In his letter, Paul directs Christians who are invited to a morally grey meal with nonbelievers to “eat anything set before you without raising questions of conscience.” So what does that mean? He’s encouraging the Church not to call attention to unnecessary issues when it might interfere with their witness or unity with others. It’s only after someone raises the concern of food sacrificed to idols that the believer should refrain, as partaking in a meal with knowledge of the food’s origin in front of a nonbeliever (or immature Christian) could cause them confusion. Eating the food is not wrong or right, but a matter of wisdom. It’s the same for us.

The Message version says it like this: “You don’t have to run an idolatry test on every item. The earth, after all, ‘is God’s and everything in it.’”

Paul: 1, Wendi: 0

What Christians are offered here is passive permission for the sake of witness versus active participation in sin, a distinction that can be easily overlooked without the discernment of the Holy Spirit. In front of new believers who might have more black-and-white perspectives as a result of their recent turning towards Christ, we should be sensitive to the challenges they face in learning to live out their faith. In the presence of other mature believers, we have more freedom to engage in nuance because they are capable of seeing where God has made allowances for personal conviction on a number of complicated issues.

We are free, just as the Corinthians were free, to embrace the options laid before us and give thanks to God for their presence in our lives. Should we continue to care when we learn new information about what our money is supporting? Of course. But we don’t need to go digging in every corner of the Internet to discover it. (It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.)

If we look for ugly things, we will inevitably find them, and we were never meant to have unfettered access to all the issues plaguing our world because that kind of knowledge brings burdens we simply cannot bear, no matter how much we want or feel compelled to bear them.

I am reminded of a favorite verse written by someone who was considered the wisest man to ever live: “[H]e who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”⁵ Millennials and Gen Z—the two generations who grew up with the most access to the most knowledge, both good and evil—are widely acknowledged as more anxious, depressed, and unsettled than any generation before them. No wonder we feel this way. We are cast about from issue to issue when what we are actually called to do is take up our own crosses—in our own families, towns, and faith communities—so that our service to the Kingdom of God is made real in the lives of people around us. Compassion fatigue is legit, and while there are certainly times when national or global events require our prayer, generosity, and active attention—as the past few years have proven—the enemy is clever enough to use our desire for goodness against us. And it shows.

So what’s a concerned Christian to do?

As a work-from-home parent, I have to seek what is needed for me to be healthy, patient, and focused on the tasks God has given to me as a mother, writer, and homemaker. If I find a skincare line that keeps my face from flaring up in pain—thereby preventing various (expensive) doctor’s appointments, unnecessary side effects of medication, and irritation at everyone in my vicinity over the constant strain of illness—then, by George, I’m going to buy it and thank God it’s available to me.

If I discover the company that makes the product supports causes I don’t agree with, I’m going to pray for its leadership and let God hold them accountable for their choices. If the conviction I feel over those causes is one that prayerful consideration has led me to believe I must act on, then I will stop buying it and look for similar products with similar ingredients, no digging for dirt required.

We don’t have to believe God is such a hard-nosed contrarian that He has no concern for that which concerns us. Neither is He the man hiding behind the curtain who only pretends to have authority in the lives of His children. He is not masquerading as our omnipotent, loving Abba. He is here with us, fully engaged in our joys and sorrows. An empty tomb on a quiet morning is our reminder of that.

Be encouraged in your convictions, friend, but even more so find rest in the truth that your Father has it all in hand. You don’t have to do His job. It is possible, despite our valid concerns over issues that affect us and our neighbors, to be at peace.

But it’s not peace that comes from within. It’s not peace that comes from aggressive avoidance or outright boycotts. That kind of peace, the sort that only stems from humans getting what they want when they want it, is just an illusion. It does not, and cannot, last. Instead, we have something set before us that will never pass away, for it is “not given to [us] as the world gives.”⁶

It is given as a Father gives to His beloved children, sufficient for their needs in spite of circumstances, frustrations, or fears. We will have trouble in the world. We know this well, and we are reminded every time we open an app, turn on the television, or go to the store.

BUT GOD.

So buy what you need to live out your calling well. Leave the idolatry tests alone. Pray for both those who are hurting and for those who are doing the hurting. And be at peace.

“For the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

1. I’m not shy about my consistent-life views, but I don’t write much about them because I’ve found online discourse on the subject—with a few exceptions—to be largely unproductive and prefer to advocate in other ways, such as financially supporting consistent-life organizations and sharing their work. Still, I’d like to offer clarification on what I mean here for readers who might not be familiar with the term:

I am for the flourishing of all God’s children (i.e. everyone) from womb to tomb, regardless of their ability, circumstance, or stage of life. This means I care deeply about children in utero, women in difficult or abusive situations, people with disabilities, parents who cannot meet the needs of their families, immigrants at the border, prisoners on death row, people affected by gun violence, and so many more. In regards to abortion, in particular, I believe it is a poor solution to other larger and more complex problems that the Church has a responsibility to address. I don’t pretend to know the answer to every family’s circumstance, but I feel strongly that we should always advocate for the lives of both women and children and to provide practical resources for them at every level of pregnancy and childhood development, including medical emergencies where one or more life is at risk. (In the consistent-life ethic, fetal death that occurs indirectly as a result of trying to save a mother’s life is distinct from abortion and morally permissible.) Ultimately, there is only so much I can say in a single post or paragraph, but I wanted to offer a bird’s-eye-view of my views to provide clarity. For more information, New Wave Feminists is a fantastic secular organization that does great work for a variety of whole-life causes.

2. 1 Cor. 10:2, NIV

3. 1 Cor. 10:14, NIV

4. 1 Cor. 10: 23, NIV

5. Ecc. 1:18, ESV

6. John 14:27, NIV