“Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” John 6:37
“Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you.” John 8:10-11
Yesterday I was talking to a friend on the bus. He complimented me on my outfit and we started talking about the differences in dressing styles between English and Romanians. On how Romanians love to look their best all the time and almost always will wear their best clothes in public whilst English are a lot more relaxed in their dressing style. He proceeded to tell me about this one time he went to Oradea (a city on the Romanian border with Hungary), and whilst on the tram he noticed a girl all done up, looking extremely serious and wearing a T-shirt which said “I am beautiful”.
My friend commented on how this girl was only trying to attract attention with her outward appearance. When I heard him, I got a bit flared up. I told him quite passionately that he has no way of knowing what was behind that made up face and the T-shirt with the bold logo.
I once read somewhere that Hurt wears Prada and Depression drives a Ferrari. Just because someone looks all put together and appear to have money does not mean that they have it all together.
A few years ago I worked as a volunteer in a Pro-Life clinic. We had a whole spectrum of ladies coming to the clinic, most of them just because they wanted to have a chat with someone. I learnt a good lesson whilst working there. Many of these ladies looked very elegant and put together when they walked through the door and sometimes I felt intimidated by them. That was until we would start to talk. In many instances it would be the elegant ladies, those who seemed to have it all figured out, that I would end up giving a hug to after they had a good cry. I learnt then not to judge by good looks the same way I know I should not judge beggars just because they look rough.
Looks mean nothing when your heart is broken and many times it is the best looks that hide the worst pain. People use looks like a mask. Some of them use elegance and expensive clothes to hide insecurity, pain and abuse.
And something else, just because a girl’s dressing style is “bold” does not mean that she is. Look behind the mask and I assure you more often than not you will find lack of self-esteem, pain and just a basic desire to be loved for who she is. Why do they dress like that? Because confidence is attractive, fear and pain are not. So, please don’t judge a girl by her T-shirt.
Emanuela
I agree 100%! It's so easy to just casually comment on someone's facade but we don't realize that we ourselves judge from behind past hurts and insecurities, so our judgement is faulty at best. When we sense the same kind of facade that we use in someone else we tend to point it out for the world to know we disapprove because we despise it in ourselves.
ReplyDeleteLike you said "confidence is attractive, fear and pain are not", and we want to be liked and we want to be loved and accepted and attractive, both in looks and character. If someone doesn't try to be attractive with their outside appearance doesn't mean they don't try to do so with the way they act, often times using overconfidence or trying to seem more spiritual or righteous than they are and thinking that their facade is better than someone else's facade. I know of no human that thrives on appearing weak and vulnerable in front of others. Only one Person in History did not care if He appeared weak and vulnerable and that Person was Yeshua. The passage in Isaiah 53:2b-3 says about Him, that "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. "
When He appeared weak we held Him in low esteem because that's what we do with weakness and so we try to overcompensate for our shortcomings with things that draw the attention away from them. One cover-up is not superior to another. But enough with my ramblings! You get the point. Great article! Love ya
You are so right. I never thought of it that way. But yeah, perhaps what we are actually point out are things we don't like in ourselves and are to afraid to accept as being ours.
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