Why Are There Ugly Things in the World?

I wanted to ask why Hashem created beauty and ugliness in the world. Surely, nothing is created without purpose, so why do we need these contrasts?

Thank you, Yonatan

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Hello Yonatan,

You asked a beautiful question (in both senses of the word), and there are many answers, as both beauty and ugliness have significance.

Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder: If we were used to living in a world where people didn’t have prominent noses and ears, we might think that noses and ears are ugly and strange features on a human face. Beauty has no clear rules because even a snake, which appears repulsive to most people, is actually quite smooth and clean looking. The question behind your question is not why beauty and ugliness exist, but rather why the Creator gave humans an aesthetic sense, allowing them to perceive that certain objective things in the world are actually beautiful or ugly.

There are several answers to this question, but the main one is simply for our benefit. We enjoy beauty, and when we look at the world, it can be very beautiful: beautiful people, beautiful food, beautiful skies, a beautiful sea, beautiful eyes. If you stop and look around, you’ll notice there’s much more beauty and aesthetics than ugliness. Even look at your hand, with its joints and muscles working in coordination, it’s a wonderful and very beautiful machine.

Hashem wanted us to have a beautiful world because by contemplating creation, we can enjoy His wonderful works and thank Him for it. This is the primary purpose of beauty: to enjoy and be awed by the divine creation, and from that, recognize His desire to do good for us and thank Him for it.

Beauty also serves a moral purpose in character development: A man or woman who is created beautiful has the task of overcoming vanity and arrogance. Additionally, a woman who is created beautiful can (and should) use her beauty within the marriage relationship, but outside it, it is meant to test her adherence to Hashem and His commandments, which demand modesty and propriety.

 And why was ugliness created?

The Torah-based answer, as can be learned from the Book of Genesis, is due to human actions and spiritual decline. Since the sin of the first man, the world descended from its original state, and ugliness and death, which were not present before, entered it. It can be said that ugliness arises directly from our bad deeds. When humans act with cruelty and malice, it comes back to them as natural disasters, cruelty among animals, diseases, and the like. Hashem created the world as a mirror reflecting human actions. When redemption arrives, *b'ezrat Hashem* soon, ugliness will vanish from humanity, along with the eradication of our negative inclination and bad deeds.

Additionally, according to Kabbalah, a person born ugly or with a defect is often someone who was handsome in a previous life and was prideful about their appearance. One must be very careful not to mock or blame them, *chas v'shalom*, because for the same reason, the wheel may turn back on the one who insults, as our Sages taught in Pirkei Avot (Chapter 2, Mishnah 5): "Do not judge your fellow until you reach his place."

However, ugliness in humans can also be created for the benefit of the person and not just as a punishment. An interesting fact is that ugly people (or those who felt ugly in their childhood) often become successful in adulthood, seemingly because they cannot rely on their looks to succeed in life.

In any case, we must remember that our body is just a shell in this world. The body is destined to age and disappear, while the soul is our true self - and its beauty is reflected only in our deeds. The soul of a good person will be beautiful and glowing even if their face was ugly in this world. For this reason, we say that this world is a "world of lies", because the external beauty within it is merely a shell and illusion, and the inner beauty within it comes from the soul and a person's good deeds.

Blessings, Daniel Beless

For questions, you can email: HaEmet@haemet.net

For more answers, read the booklet "s" - a website presenting a fascinating dialogue between an atheist and Hashem about the purpose of creation and the meaning of life: