judged covers (books)
This one's less on the "sunshine and butterflies" side of blogs. It deals with convictions I've had, and if you think I'm aiming this blog at you, I'm not I promise. But heck, maybe that should be an indicator for examination. I've just been noticing some patterns and some feelings within myself that I really needed to think about deeply to draw to the surface. To set the scene: think about a car covered in bumper stickers. Or someone's Facebook feed plastered in political agendas. Or just a bitter, complaining person. Have you noticed how you probably have drawn some small conclusions about their beliefs, or at least some of them? I'll tread lightly on this topic, I promise. But I'll also do my best to make it worth the read.
The more people I meet and know, the more clear this harsh realization is becoming: the image a person portrays is usually the lens they're viewed through. The "good" thing to do in society is to look deeper than the actions. "Don't judge a book by its cover." But who reads anymore, anyways? It's reported that 72% of American adults read at least A book every year. One or more. Probably more on the one side. Think about, when choosing that book, how many other books each of the readers went through, and how many covers they skimmed over to find the content they want. Just the world we live in.
Metaphor time: we're books. Big, small, all with a huge and intricate story in between the shell that both advertises our lives and protects us from the elements. Some people see that we have all have an intricate story (God bless those people), some only see our covers. But the thing is, everyone sees the cover. I may be taking the pessimistic worldview here but I don't believe we as humanity will ever get over that. But should we? I for one am probably not going to want to read a book entitled "8 Reasons my Life is Better Than Yours," or "Here's Where You're Wrong: an Idiot's Guide to Broadly Identifying Your Issues With No Suggestions on How to be Better." I'm way more interested in spending time with a book entitled "Grace: Why Life is Worth Living" or "Diary of a Recovering Ego Addict."
I don't think there is a person living who couldn't benefit from thinking about this a little bit deeper. Being honest, I didn't think I could until I began running myself through my own criteria for judgement on others. Oops. I'll share my criteria with you, though. I found plenty to personally work on when running through this list (actually I was incredibly convicted by each of these points), and maybe you can too. Your choice though. I'm just here to present information. Here are three comparisons we can make to analyze and control what goes on our book covers.
1. Truth vs. Generalization.
This one goes back to my childhood. Did you ever get in a fight with a sibling or cousin (or friend, childhood is a dog-eat-dog world) and go to tattle on them, only to realize that they weren't technically doing anything wrong? It was just their air, who they were, what they represented that was wrong. You just knew they didn't have the right motives or intentions. That draws a direct line to...um...politics? And seemingly every. Single. Other issue in this world. What makes it worse is that when someone fits a stereotype in one aspect of their life, it fuels the fire of generalization against them even more. Something that I'm directly involved with is traditionalism versus progressivism in the Church. I find myself putting blanket statements over what people spend years studying, and yet I get upset when people put blanket statements over me. But then I look deeper into someone's true intentions, and usually it's neither black nor white. Some say I'm too traditional, some say I'm too progressive. And whatever category they put me in, I'm blanketed with all of the statements of that side. And maybe I'm being too honest here (is that a thing), but I'm guilty of doing the same to others.
One other thing to point out about this topic: people notice when you generalize. That's how it ties in to the "we're all books"theme. So when looking within, especially at highly emotional topics, it's important to ask ourselves this question:
Am I speaking specific truth or just generalizing?
2. Complaining vs. Encouraging
This one's easy to talk about, hard to do. We all complain. I complain. So much. My criteria for initial conclusions includes examining the way someone (or I) deals with a situation they don't want to be in. Put someone in an unfair situation that they can't change to see who they truly are, shown by the way they deal with said situation. They can approach it by, like the title of this subsection says, complaint or encouragement. Since I have a platform I'm going to use this opportunity to preach that every situation (not most situations) have good, or the possibility of good in them. If someone is cut off in traffic (this one is definitely what I need to hear), we can use it as a positive opportunity to give grace or even work on our own forgiveness and patience. If someone is hurt by terrible circumstances they can't control, they can make it a goal to encourage others through companionship and knowing what truths they need to hear at specific times and, depending on the situation, work on their own patience, grace, and joy.
These things aren't easy to do and no person that I know has always chosen the encouragement route. But when I realize I'm in one of these scenarios and am choosing to complain, I also realize that no good can come from approaching a predicament from a negative, sob-story point of view with no opportunity for optimism in sight.
So then, the next time you can't control your circumstances and it's not going the way you want, ask yourself this question, and just examine the way you handle it:
Am I complaining when I'm worried or encouraging when I'm tested?
3. Learning vs. Reinforcement
Man, I am just attacking everything that I'm the worst at. Let me explain what I mean by "learning vs. reinforcement." My main thought when I decided on this heading was that all too often we establish the main headings on the covers of our books early on and don't want to change from those headings. Are we learning new topics and perspectives or just reinforcing our own predetermined ideals? That is the definition of prejudice. Pre-judging. That's where racism, sexism, and the contempt for the poor comes from. Are we fighting for what we believe in or being closed off to new possibilities? Only you can make that decision in your heart but I can tell you my heart has been troubled many times by my own prejudice. And having prejudice is so obvious to others. Being a well-rounded person means chiseling away at your own discomforts, the corners that make you a blocky person. This goes deeper than just knowledge. It's a mentality, at least to me. Unfortunately it seems that some who know the most are the most closed off. I believe it's possible to get so caught up in knowledge that it becomes a reinforcement to gain more knowledge rather than to learn. I believe learning is more than just the accumulation of facts and more of an acknowledgement that we'll never know it all, so we should never act like we do. And we should never forget to examine and question what we're comfortable with.
My real-life example of this is the Pharisees in the time Jesus walked the earth. We all know they were respected for their knowledge and status thanks to that knowledge. They were so caught in their theology that they missed the point of it all, and thought that the best thing to do was to kill who they disagreed with. How does that translate to today, 2,000 years later? Does that mean an "unfollow" of those we think we know more than? Maybe.
Am I uncomfortably learning or comfortably reinforcing?
I'll just end with 1 Corinthians 13:1-3:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Jesus said they'll know who belongs to him by our love. Can we make "Love" the main heading of our book covers?
~mason
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