More than once we spoke about how it’s dangerous for human’s soul to live for show. However there’re entirely symptomatic instances when no explanation needed.

Juts a couple of days ago, media sources told a frightening event in our country. One young man wanted to marry. And not just to found a family to raise and bring up children, but to arrange a splendid and rich wedding for the envy of neighbors (it’s quite a pervasive phenomenon in our country, isn’t it?). But to arrange such a feast, as he wished, he needed a lot of money and time to make them. This guy went on the most simple way: he didn't tell anybody but he went abroad, under the pretense of earning money, and he actually sold his kidney. And by spending this money, which he made controversially, he arranged «an expensive and reach» wedding. But one month later this young man died by leaving his young widow alone.

Did this wedding cost these sacrifices? I think it’s a dead ender.

Of course, it’s quite a radical experience, but does it rarely happen when most of people take on big loans, go into horrible debts, and then they pay for years just for throwing dust into neighbors and relatives through ostentationof marriage ceremony?

Definitely, this happens only when the purpose is not the marriage to the glory of God, but exactly the desire to seem better than you are («better» from worldly, sinful prospective).

The same thing appeals to mad plastic surgeries when people, willing to be more beautiful in the eyes of fallen world, agree for wildest and risky procedures. And very often these procedures end particularly tragically: artificial «gorgeous» women not only spoil their appearance, but also often lose their health, or even life.

It is a scary thought, which the after-death fate is for people who died for vanity.

Certainly, in our times in society, where it’s fashionable to look like but not to be, it’s difficult to avoid this temptation, but with God’s help everything is possible. Let’s be attentive to our incentives. Let’s ask ourselves: what motivates our deeds — God's commandments or fruitlessvanity — and the Lord won’t leave us alone.

Recorded by Natalia Goroshkova