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Impossible Beauty

Impossible Beauty

By: Melissa Louise Johnson
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The brand of beauty we are so often sold is way too small. It divides and dis-integrates us. Melissa Louise Johnson is on a mission to re-discover authentic beauty. Not the counterfeit kind reserved for the toned and airbrushed, but a lasting kind of beauty. Eternal and sacred. Living and moving all around us. Join Melissa as she interviews men and women who exude internal and eternal beauty in order to reshape cultural scripts. It's time we re-discover what beauty truly is.Copyright Melissa Louise Johnson Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Episode 188: Winfield Bevins-How Beauty Will Save the World

    Episode 188: Winfield Bevins-How Beauty Will Save the World
    Mar 17 2026
    It was an encounter with beauty that changed Winfield Bevins’ life. As a result, Winfield quit his job and founded Creo Arts, a non-profit that exists to bring beauty, goodness, and truth to the world through the arts.

    Dr. Winfield Bevins is an internationally recognized author and artist. He is also an affiliate professor at several academic institutions and artist-in-residence at Asbury Theological Seminary, where he champions the integration of art, theology, and mission.

    In today’s episode, Winfield discusses his latest book, entitled How Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Power of the Arts for the Christian Life. Specifically, he highlights a renewed longing for beauty and transcendence he’s noticed recently, both inside and outside the church, as well as a Renaissance of the arts in communities of faith. Winfield also shares what art teaches all of us, how beauty brings hope into the world, and why we are all invited to be missionaries of beauty.


    Buy Melissa L. Johnson's book, Soul-Deep Beauty: Fighting for Our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless, here. Learn more about Impossible Beauty and join the community here.
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    53 mins
  • Episode 187: Tara Beth Leach- Connecting with the Origin of Beauty

    Episode 187: Tara Beth Leach- Connecting with the Origin of Beauty
    Mar 3 2026
    How might our days and conception of beauty change, if we started our morning with God, the author and origin of beauty itself? This is the exact topic we tackle in today’s conversation with Tara Beth Leach.

    Tara Beth is an author, speaker, and the senior pastor at Good Shepherd Church in Naperville, Illinois. In today’s conversation, she shares about her latest book, The Great Morning Revolution: Daily Spiritual Practices for Meaningful Moments with God. Specifically, Tara Beth discusses how an invitation from God to connect with Him in the morning changed her life, rhythms, and perspectives amidst a desolate season of loss.

    She also shares how connecting with God in this daily rhythm not only can make us more attentive to God, but can help us live into a truer understanding and experience of beauty. As Tara Beth says, “We were made to be in relationship with the most beautiful one of all.” May our mornings be an opportunity to connect with the One our hearts are made for.

    Buy Melissa L. Johnson's book, Soul-Deep Beauty: Fighting for Our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless, here. Learn more about Impossible Beauty and join the community here.
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    37 mins
  • Episode 186: Anna Rollins- Lent, Self-Control, & Diet Culture

    Episode 186: Anna Rollins- Lent, Self-Control, & Diet Culture
    Feb 17 2026
    Anna Rollins is the author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Anna’s debut memoir examines the rhyming scripts of diet culture and evangelical purity culture, both of which direct women to fear their own bodies and appetites.

    Anna is an award-winning instructor who taught English in higher education for nearly 15 years, and her writing has appeared in outlets like The New York Times, Slate, Electric Literature, Salon, Joyland, and more. In today’s episode, Anna shares how societal messages around beauty and body image contributed to her struggles with disordered eating. We also discuss Anna’s research on purity and diet culture’s impacts on women’s relationships with their bodies and food, as well as how the concept of self-control might be helpfully framed as we enter the season of Lent.

    My hope is that as we name and shed unhelpful theologies related to food and our bodies, we might find more freedom, healing, and wholeness.

    Buy Melissa L. Johnson's book, Soul-Deep Beauty: Fighting for Our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless, here. Learn more about Impossible Beauty and join the community here.
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    42 mins
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