I just spent the last 10 days in southern California because if there is one thing I can’t get enough of its pretentiousness. No matter how worldly and self-indulgent I am at times (as in, I can’t count that high) I am reconciled to the fact that I am, after all, a sinner saved by grace. The good news is I can always count on SoCal to help assuage some of my self-debasement at failing God’s desire for my conformity to His will.

How? Because in SoCal, when it comes to pride and narcissism, even I can suddenly find myself bordering on sainthood. The flesh-driven conformity to the SoCal sub-culture is so absolute that it borders on cultish.

First, let's start with the fake boobs, shall we? What in the name of everything holy ever convinced a woman that filling plastic balloons with salt water and having them surgically implanted inside her God-given breasts was a good idea? How creepy does it get? We’re talking body augmentation that borders on butchery.

Just the plain fact that this is purely a vanity call – as opposed to reparative surgery correcting disfigurement due to disease (or a really bad day running the band-saw) – should be enough to give a secure woman pause. Are your breasts truly how you gauge your self worth? This is one of the many areas where the feminist movement that is so ingrained in the psyche of the 21st century American woman constantly drops the ball, in my opinion.

Feminists instigated the concept of a women being independent and in no need of a man. Yet they aren’t outraged by the fact that most of what women buy or “buy into” is based on impressing a man. I guess, try as they might, the relativist still doesn’t realize they cannot escape our natural proclivity to desire and seek being desired by the opposite sex.

But if there is anything most humans would say is tantamount to a healthy relationship, it is honesty. Body augmentation is dishonest, in that it tries to recreate the natural. Or in most cases, it pretends the unnatural is real. It also teaches us that who we really are and what we will become naturally must be manipulated to maintain, not the dignity and respect of maturity, but the worship of bodily youth. There’s a guaranteed losing proposition for you.

Again there is a difference between exercise and a healthy lifestyle to help our aging become potentially less debilitating and refusing to allow ourselves to outwardly reveal what we have inwardly learned: getting older is not only natural, it’s beautiful. Well internally anyway, the body … not so much. But so what? It’s called maturity for crying out loud.

Of course boobs are only the beginning. We have poison serum hypodermically injected as a wrinkle eraser, inflatable lips and of course the classic face lift because nothing looks more natural than the appearance of shoving your face through a doggie door and getting stuck half way out the other side.

I’m not saying men don’t have their own alteration fixation. Hair plugs, calf implants and manicures are very real needs to the SoCal man, but for a man they aren’t nearly as crucial as a Porsche, American Express Platinum and a skybox. Men have learned that cash and power make any man a male model and gets you all the babes you want. Look at Marilyn Manson.

So, next time you start getting down on yourself for feeling less holy or too self centered, do yourself a favor: Pray that God will help you in your quest to be less flesh driven and more conformed to His likeness. If that seems too laborious, you can always head to Southern California where shallowness is an art form, while the rest of America is still painting by numbers.