The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the June 22, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
ON FAITH BLENDED WITH COSMETIC SURGERY
Good morning to you once again. It is Monday, the 22nd of June 2026.
One of the developments on social media in Nigeria that got many people talking yesterday was the video released by one Dr. who specialises in what is popularly called BBL — Brazilian Butt Lifts. The reason it caught the attention of so many Christians is that it was a blend — and I use the very word the X algorithm itself employed — a blend of cosmetic surgery and faith. That is exactly how X headlined it: “Lagos clinic launch video blends cosmetic surgery and faith.” The June 21 video, shared by a Nollywood fan account, highlights the doctor’s techniques like fat transfer for the Brazilian butt lift, with before-and-after reviews and a model posting about her own procedure. The doctor, founder of GCE Healthcare [name per transcript — confirm], stresses safety, patient confidence, and a decade of enhancement experience, amid a pastor calling the event grounded in the Word of God. Reactions split between critics questioning faith in ungodly pursuits and supporters defending personal choice — which reflects Nigeria’s booming cosmetic surgery scene and its risks, like infections. And I think the algorithm got it right.
One must now admit that there is a booming cosmetic surgery industry in Nigeria as well. It used to be that when you heard of Brazilian butt lifts and cosmetic surgeries — people trying to make themselves look better through surgery, for the face or any part of the body — these were things we only read of, said to be popular among Hollywood stars. But now, from various news reports, we find that there are many, many people in Nigeria undergoing these procedures. One reason is that, in the past, it was a more specialised skill; only a few clinics in the world could perform these surgeries, so people had to travel out of Nigeria. People still travel — it depends on how much money you have to splash on that pursuit. It used to be that you had to travel to some exclusive clinics, particularly in California, and later there were cheaper options in Turkey and other countries. You will recall that we once had a First Lady in this country who — though it was never officially confirmed, and the report has never been debunked — is said to have died from complications of a cosmetic surgery procedure abroad. She was said to be preparing for her 60th birthday, wanting to look better, and decided to undergo cosmetic surgery; she developed complications afterwards and, unfortunately, died. Even then, it was regarded as something uncommon, the exclusive preserve of the high and mighty and the super-rich.
It appears now, with the opening of clinics like this in Lagos — and I suspect there will be some in Abuja and perhaps Port Harcourt [transcript “Paraguay” — almost certainly a Nigerian city; confirm] as well — that many more people are saying, “If it is accessible, and I can afford it, let me go ahead.” Which, before we go into the main issues, reminds us of a truth: when you find something going on in a part of the world that you have moral, spiritual or biblical objections to, and it is not going on in your own part of the world, oftentimes it is not because the people there are worse. It is simply that they have access and the others do not. We will know, when you also have access to a thing, whether you will truly object to it, morally or biblically speaking. This has been said to many Christians as well. Those who have never had access to something morally objectionable should indeed see it as wrong — but should be careful, because your own reaction will be tested by what you actually do when you eventually have access. So procedures that were regarded as the indulgent pastimes of the affluent in Europe and North America are now becoming the pastime of many people in Nigeria too. We do not yet know where the trajectory of the culture is going.
Now, I am not going to enter an extensive debate on the godliness or otherwise of cosmetic surgery, because such an argument would have to take cognisance of many nuances. It is a medical procedure, to the extent that it is conducted by doctors. Before these procedures were used merely for enhancing beauty and looks, they had always existed — especially to help accident victims, and people who had suffered some damage to their bodies or faces. Many have benefited from that and been thankful. If you have met motor accident victims, or those who suffered burns, who were helped to get some semblance of normality back to their bodies or faces through surgeries like this, you will be thankful indeed. But it appears that although these surgical procedures began and gained prominence by helping the physically challenged and accident victims, the doctors soon found that they could do much more.
One of the most popular persons globally to have undergone such look-altering surgery — and I am deliberately moving from “beauty-enhancing” to “look-altering,” because sometimes after the procedure you wonder whether the beauty has been enhanced at all — would be Michael Jackson. When we were all growing up, we were told he underwent cosmetic surgery to adjust his nose, and some say to change his complexion. There is debate about what actually caused that complexion change; I have not looked closely at the argument, though my daughter mentioned something about it recently. But it is on record that he underwent surgical procedures to adjust his nose and perhaps other parts of his body.
We need to reflect on what it means to call something “cosmetic,” because the meaning carries connotations for us as we think from a Christian perspective. As an adjective, cosmetic means something concerned with improving appearance rather than functionality — it is superficial; it does not go beyond that. You find that adjective used not only of the procedures we are discussing this morning, but of other things. If you were in a meeting discussing issues, and someone proposed a solution, somebody might say, “Oh, that’s just a cosmetic approach” — meaning it is superficial, it dresses things up, it does not go beyond the skin. And in the context of beauty procedures like this, we are indeed talking about things that do not go beyond the skin. It is just appearances — which, from a Christian perspective, should not matter beyond the minimal. Over and over in the Gospel, Jesus warned us about the dangers of being overly concerned with appearances. Not that you should not wash your hands — the Pharisees took exception to Jesus’ disciples not washing their hands in the stipulated manner, and Jesus said, in effect, “What is wrong with you? You are concerned with the ceremonial washing of the hands, but should you not wash your heart?” He gave that illustration of the tombs: “You take such pains to dress up the tombs of your fathers and ancestors, you change the tombstones from time to time — but do you know that inside these tombs are the decaying bones of the dead?” He was not saying do not wash your hands, nor do not make tombs presentable; He was saying that Christians ought to be more concerned with the weightier matters, to use His own expression, than with the merely superficial.
Indeed, I would say that if these look-altering procedures were pursued by people who had first taken care of their own hearts, of the things that really matter, the weightier matters — well, all well and good. Some could say, “Yes, I am pursuing this beauty-enhancing procedure because, first of all, I have taken care of the most important thing, my heart.” In that case I would have no real objection. Although it becomes a circular argument at the end of the day, because you find that the person who has truly taken care of his heart will, more often than not, not pursue these procedures at all — unless there were a real need.
But the main reason we are talking about this is not merely that a cosmetic surgery clinic launched in Lagos. It is that at this particular launch, on June 21, there was present a pastor who called the event “grounded in the Word of God.” That is exactly what many Christians are talking about on social media. In the video, the doctor and her clients give their testimonies. Several well-known celebrities are named _____.. One client describes the work like the story of a butterfly that has gone through the caterpillar phase and can now spread its beautiful wings; the doctor speaks of clients who have “regained their confidence,” who “transitioned from a sweet shape to a sweeter shape.” When asked how it felt, the doctor says, “We work with God. We can’t do anything without Him. We only make it better with His direction. The knowledge we have in plastic, cosmetic and aesthetic surgery is still from God, to make things better.” And a client adds that she trusted her life in the doctor’s hands because the doctor “is also very grounded in the Word of God,” saying she did not look different, just “better” and “more confident,” only six weeks on.
So there you have it — that blend of faith and cosmetic surgery that got many people talking. There are aspects of what she said that you cannot dispute: that her skills were, in the ultimate sense, given by God. If you believe you were created by God, you must also believe that whatever knowledge and ability you have come from Him. But it is another question entirely to what use you put those skills. And as I said, I am not sure you will find anywhere in the Bible an express statement that cosmetic surgeries are bad. Let us remind ourselves of the origin of these procedures — to help those involved in accidents or born with deformities. Now, to make it more commercially successful, those who specialise in the procedure market it as beauty-enhancing, and that is how it is now being sold.
Also present at that event was one of the popular pastors in Lagos. The video did not capture him saying anything, but he was there. And it is fascinating that even people pursuing these things find it important to bring God into the matter. When you are doing something purely commercial, merely advertising your services, and you find a need to bring God into it, it is often only because you suspect there is something not quite up-and-up about it, and you want to address that. If you were selling clothes, or advertising your bakery, or a general practitioner opening a new hospital and advertising, you would not feel compelled to say, “What we do is grounded in the Word of God.” Can we agree on that? There are certain enterprises and vocations that, no matter how Christian, how biblically faithful, how God-centred you are, you simply would not feel the need to defend by saying, “What we do is grounded in the Word of God.” Of course, at the launch of any enterprise, prayers will be said — for how can I do anything without praying? That is a different thing entirely from trying to market what I am about to sell by saying, “What we are launching today is grounded in the Word of God,” when you are talking about a purely commercial effort, not a ministry, not a church project.
At the end of the day, the clinic this doctor opened was opened for commercial purposes. She is there to commercialise her skills, to practise her vocation, to offer her skills to the public in exchange for monetary gain — and she is licensed to do that. There is nothing legally wrong in it; she is allowed by the law of the land to practise her skills and run that enterprise for profit. There is nothing wrong in that, in itself. But, I repeat, there are certain ventures where, once you feel compelled to offer a defence even before you are accused — to say, “Look, what we are doing is grounded in the Word of God” — it is, in my own opinion, some silent voice in your head telling you there is a grey area. And what you will see in this video is many ladies flaunting their backsides, because this clinic specialises in Brazilian butt lifts, comparing the before and the after, saying, “Look how beautiful my backside now looks.” We live in a society that has come to demonise people who do not have a particular look or shape. This is where those of us who try to think deeply, to think consequentially about things, must ask, before we embrace a certain kind of thinking: where will this lead? The moment we embrace the thought that there is a particular shape, a particular look, a particular physique that is the desired one for women — and for men too — then those who do not have that shape will begin to ask, “How can I get there?” And all sorts of suggestions will be made.
Some will try a bit of dieting, but because of their genes and other factors cannot achieve the result immediately. Some take to exercise, find it a hard road that takes months or years and real discipline, and there is a limit to what diet and exercise can achieve anyway. But something is now marketed as immediate: just come here, and over 24 or 48 hours you are transformed. And many, having seen the transformation, say, “I want to be like that.”
I have always said, first and foremost, that anybody who feels compelled to undergo a surgery like this is most likely a person who has become too enamoured with his or her body. I say that with caveats. There are people so obese as to be almost pathologically so, who genuinely need help — who undergo gastric bypass surgery because the fat has become life-threatening. Which takes me back to one of my earliest points: this is a procedure that started as a truly medical one, to help people with life-threatening conditions, accident victims, people with congenital deformities. It is now a skill marketed for cosmetic purposes — and that is what we are focusing on. So I do not want anybody to say, “Oh, Femi, but what about those?” We acknowledge them: people with life-threatening conditions, those born with deformities, those who have been in accidents — yes, as a medical intervention. We are talking about the marketing of these skills for purely cosmetic reasons.
I am not going to demonise those who market these things or run these clinics. The only problem I have is with the person who says, “The only problem I have in life is my body; I need to get it into this particular condition.” Many people will pay so much money. Nothing is said in the video about the fees, but I can assure you this is not a clinic charging peanuts. People are prepared to spend substantial sums to get their bodies transformed instantly — and not only to spend the money, but to accept the risk. If you have ever seen the terms and conditions for surgical procedures, even medical ones, you will find some startling clauses. When it is for medical reasons, nobody bothers to read them; you just sign, because your loved one is in distress, or you are. And I am very sure that the lawyers who work for these cosmetic clinics have, by now, developed even more far-reaching terms and conditions for patients to sign, given what has happened recently — people losing their lives, or suffering complications.
So anybody undergoing this elective, cosmetic procedure — it is not life-saving — must be told of the associated risks: the risk of infection, of something going wrong, of permanent deformity. I do not have the stories to hand, but there is a plethora of accounts of people who have suffered permanent deformities because something simply went wrong during a cosmetic procedure. And the other point is this: look at how enamoured people are with their looks, how important they consider them, that they would pay so much and assume such risk just to look better. There is nothing wrong in looking better. Health is important — checking whether you are bloated, eating less, exercising more, keeping fit. The Bible teaches that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we should have stewardship of it. But there are things you will do that reveal what you are thinking, what is of utmost importance to you. If a person with no life-threatening condition wakes up and decides his next priority is to splash millions of naira and assume considerable risk just to look better, then that is a person too enamoured with himself, who has been thinking about his body over and over again — and that is a clear and present danger to us as human beings. That is why Jesus said, over and over, “You are always concerned with how you look, with how people see you.” In today’s world, people are so concerned with the mirror and with their selfies that some cannot but take hundreds of pictures a day, because how they look matters so much to them.
Now, that would not be a problem if how they truly are mattered equally. That is the whole point for those of us on the Lord’s side to remind ourselves. I am not going to say you are not a Christian because you take five hundred selfies a day; you like seeing yourself, you like posting how you look, you put effort into it. I dare not condemn you for that, and Christ will not either. The most important thing to God is: who are you truly? And from what we see in society, the people most concerned with how they look are not, generally, the people who have sought help from God to change who they truly are. Thank God we have a God who looks beyond how people look — He looks beyond it, or if He sees it, He is not influenced by it. There is what popular culture calls the “beauty advantage” — psychologists have examined it and accept it. When someone stunningly beautiful walks into a place, people tend to pay special attention and extend courtesies that would not otherwise be given. People defer to stunningly beautiful women and handsome men, to people who simply have an outstanding appearance. And many have been hoodwinked by that, to their eternal regret — because they embraced someone on account of how beautiful or commanding they looked, only to find that person turned out to be among the worst of human beings.
That is why those of us on the Lord’s side cannot say we have not been warned. What does the Bible say? “Beauty is vain, and charm is deceitful.” That is why the Holy Spirit thought it right to warn us in Proverbs 31:30: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting.” Charm is deceptive — what you see is not necessarily what is. And yesterday, on the Pilgrim’s Progress reading club [transcript “Pilgrim’s Progress Truthers Club” — confirm name], we talked about this extensively, about those three characters from Pilgrim’s Progress: Simple, Sloth and Presumption. Simple was the one who said, “Stop disturbing me, I don’t see any danger.” There are people who cannot see beyond their noses, to use the overused idiom; from a Christian perspective, they walk by sight, not by faith. They cannot see beyond what the eyes can see. But the Bible admonishes us to see beyond what the eyes see — we must walk by faith. There is a Yoruba saying that, translated, means: “What comes after six is not necessarily seven.” Somebody will protest, “What do you mean? After six is seven.” But wisdom says, no — after six is not necessarily seven; mathematically, between six and seven there is six-point-zero-one, six-point-zero-zero-one, depending on how many zeros you put. There is something between six and seven, and only the naïve, the superficial, will insist there is nothing between them. We are speaking figuratively, of course: the point is that there is more to the things we see than meets the eye.
Jesus laboured to teach exactly that — you cannot just look at a thing and say, “This person is beautiful, comely in appearance, therefore this person is good.” It does not follow. But the general tendency is to see stunningly beautiful women, great-looking men, even buildings or objects, and conclude, “This must be a good thing.” That is why many wise sayings remind us that the taste is in the eating of the pudding, not in how it looks. If asked to choose between a good apple and a spoiled one, wisdom says choose the good one. But if asked to choose between a stunningly beautiful-looking apple and an ordinary-looking one, you would probably choose the one that is smooth and big and beautiful — and it does not necessarily mean it is better. At the risk of digressing: we have been warned that organically farmed fruits often look just basic, because nothing was added to cultivate them, while genetically modified fruits look big, colourful and perfect in shape, so that the uninformed person supposes the more beautiful, bigger, more perfect fruit is the better one. Now new knowledge is warning us about the dangers of genetically modified fruits — that, although they look perfect, they are not necessarily better, and some suggest they may even be harmful, and that you are better off with the organically cultivated fruit. And I think that analogy is fitting for this matter of look-altering surgical procedures: at the end of the day, the organically cultivated body — pardon the expression — is better off, as long as that body houses a heart that is godly, that has been transformed by the Holy Spirit. There are, of course, organically cultivated bodies housing hearts that have not been transformed either; but the overarching point is not how the body looks, but what is inside.
So cosmetic, beauty-enhancing surgical procedures are now gaining prominence in Nigeria, becoming popular and more accessible, with many more clinics opening, so that people no longer have to travel abroad. Many celebrities were mentioned in that video. But I want to ask: if that is what we observe in society, do we also observe this same society becoming more concerned about the heart, about the inward man? I am going to go out on a limb here — I do not have the statistics — but it seems most likely that the more a person is concerned with how he looks, and with altering his looks, the less that person is concerned with who he or she actually is. There is probably such a relationship. The Bible invites us to think more about who we truly are than about how we look or how we are seen.
This is very important, because what did the Lord say to Samuel? When Samuel went to the house of Jesse, David’s father, and looked at one strikingly tall and handsome son and thought, “Surely this must be the Lord’s chosen,” the Lord said: “Samuel, do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at.” We must start from there. The culture says how you look is an indication of your true condition — but oftentimes that is not the case. There are people who look exactly the way the culture says a healthy person should look, who are not healthy at all; there are people who look skinny on the outside whom tests would reveal to have high cholesterol and deposits of fat here and there. And we are back to 1 Samuel 16: “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” That is the Word of God.
So, for someone on the Lord’s side, the question, “Should I go to this clinic and undergo a cosmetic surgical procedure to look better?” turns into another question: what is most important to you right now? We have already set aside life-threatening and health-related conditions — those are not what we are talking about. What is your Lord concerned about? He is concerned about the condition of your heart. And ask yourself: those resources you would deploy to look better — could they be better deployed? Someone thinking from a Christian perspective would also take the long view and say: this body will be destroyed; it is only those who are in the Lord who will be raised with perfect bodies. The Lord looks not at the outward appearance.
And let me go back to Proverbs 31, because there are two sides to it. The first, “charm is deceptive,” is a warning to those who look at beauty — to the Samuels of this world who looked at the comeliness of one of the sons of Jesse; to you and me who look ahead and say, “That beautiful girl, that great-looking man — that is the one I want.” The warning is: charm is deceptive; what you see is not necessarily what is. The second, “beauty is fleeting,” is a warning to the person investing so much in looking good: this thing will go away; it will come to mean nothing. That is why, for those who have stood at gravesides — and forgive me for saying something that sounds morbid — you see people who looked fantastic, and yet they are dead. The Lord would have us hope that such a person paid attention to who she truly was before death caught up with her. Even the enhancement brought about by cosmetic surgery is not permanent at all; people have to go back again and again for more. It becomes a slippery slope indeed.
So let us return to the story of the lady who blended faith with the launch of her cosmetic surgery clinic. Nobody is saying that, as a Christian, you cannot offer cosmetic surgery; that is your vocation, and it is not illegal — though you must take care not to be negligent and let people die. But calling it “grounded in the Word of God” is dubious, and that truth must be said. It is dubious because, from a godly perspective, the whole point is why you are bringing it in, what your objective is in saying it. What are you actually trying to say? You are trying to tell people who think from a Christian perspective, “This is grounded in the Word of God.” Then cite the part of the Word of God that says, “If you feel uncomfortable in your body, never mind the money, get it fixed.” The Bible says: get your heart fixed, get your standing with God fixed, be reconciled to God, be transformed in the heart. And when the heart is transformed, it has other priorities — that is the whole point. On the scale of a transformed heart, altering your nose, your bust or your backside ranks low. Once you feel compelled to say, “What I am doing is grounded in the Word of God,” when you are not talking about a spiritual endeavour at all, you are probably being kneaded — k-n-e-a-d-e-d — by your conscience, or by the Holy Spirit, saying, “Are you sure?”
To the many ladies who swear by the skills of this doctor, I pray that you are satisfied in your own skin. The Americans have that expression — “comfortable in your own skin.” And it is not that your skin is perfect; this flesh is never going to be perfect. We who are on the Lord’s side are groaning; we want to be out of this body and transformed. This is a body that will eventually die, and then God will give us new bodies. We are going to be changed, and we look eagerly, expectantly, to that change, at the time of God’s own choosing. “We shall be changed” — that is from the Apostle Paul, speaking of heavenly things — and it is also one of the anthems in Handel’s Messiah. That solo: “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, and we shall be changed.” Whenever I come across that part, I say to myself that this is one of the greatest expectations for the saints. Talking of heaven, one of the most beautiful things is that we shall see God, we shall be with Him, walk with Him, fellowship with Him forever. The second most wonderful is that we shall be changed. And the change we will experience in heaven will not be cosmetic — not skin-deep, not merely a change of skin — but fundamental. It will not be the flesh that wants to sin again, and that is what I look forward to most in heaven. That body we will have in heaven will not love sin. The flesh we have now loves to sin — the Bible says the flesh lusts against the Spirit, always pulling us back, always pulling us down. But in heaven we shall be changed, and that body will not want to sin again. My spirit loves holiness; my flesh does not, and my flesh always wars against my spirit — and I suspect that is your case as well. But we shall be changed. The people who are truly looking forward to jettisoning this body are not the people who will spend their resources pampering it to such an extent.
So I say again, with all caution, what I strongly suspect: the more a person is concerned with how he or she looks, the less, most likely, that person is paying attention to who he or she truly is — and that is where the attention should go. That is why, every morning, every night, every waking moment, we have to live in the presence of God. How does God see me? He sees through your heart, and He knows that no matter what alteration or enhancement you have made to your face, your bust, your backside, or any part of your body, the Lord sees right through it. To all those saying that, in pursuing cosmetic surgical procedures, they are doing something grounded in the Word of God — and to all those taken in by people who have gone through these procedures — may we remind them: no matter what you have altered or enhanced, the Lord sees right through it. Charm is deceptive; the Bible teaches in Proverbs 31 that what you see is not necessarily what is. And to those overly concerned with this, the Bible says: God does not look at how you look; He looks at what is in your heart. If we all were to accept this true statement as true, I tell you, clinics like this would most likely soon be out of business. Do you agree?
Thank you very much for being with me this morning on GospelBells Radio, On the Lord’s Side — Christian perspectives on news and current events. I hope to be with you again tomorrow by the grace of God. Whatever you do today, please remain faithful on the Lord’s side. God bless you. You are listening to GospelBellsRadio.com, the Christian internet radio with a mission to engage the culture with the mind of Christ. Keep listening, and invite others too. God bless you. Engaging the culture with the mind of Christ.
