7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 (NKJV)
By Bro. John L. Cash
One of the most important lessons we can teach our kids is that people don’t always look the way they want to look. To most adults, that seems obvious.
But I’ve been working with young people a long time, and what I’ve discovered is that this is a principle that has to be taught to them. They ridicule others without ever realizing that appearance is not usually a choice.
I had a situation that made me realize this in my own family when my sons were little. When my son Spencer was in grade school, he looked at the stray hairs growing on the third knuckle of my ring finger. “Why do you do that?” he asked. “It looks dumb.”
I told Spencer that hair patterns are not chosen by us in any way, shape, or form. They are determined by our genetics. I told him that, if I had a choice, I’d grow hair on top of my head instead of all the places I don’t want it. Unfortunately, the angels never granted me that option. I’ve been relegated to a lifetime of baldness and relentless use of an electric-grooming-trimmer.
My son considered what I’d said. The notion of it had never entered his mind before that moment.
About 25 years ago, I overheard a classroom teacher driving this lesson home. She had pulled two misbehaving students out into the hall to give them a stern rebuke. The 5th grade boys had been teasing a middle school girl about her appearance. (She had been taking a round of Prednisone for an illness and had the characteristic “moon-shaped” face caused by fluid retention.) The teacher’s monologue went something like this:
“Why in the WORLD are you making fun of Belinda!? Don’t you know people can’t always help the way they look? And by the way, who do you think YOU are? Billy Dee Williams?”
(In case it’s before your time, Billy Dee Williams played “Lando Calrissian” in the original Star Wars movies and was a matinee heartthrob. Needless to say, the little boys did not reach the Billy Dee Williams standard of masculine handsomeness. Neither did I. 🙂 )
In today’s world, kids desperately need to learn this lesson. Because all celebrity photos are airbrushed, young people no longer have an understanding of the variety of ways that “regular” people can look. And consider the television programs that consist of a group of “experts” ridiculing the bodies and fashion choices of other celebrities. It isn’t right, it isn’t Christian, and we must teach our children to think differently.
It sounds so hackneyed and trite, but it really is the time to teach our children to look at people’s hearts instead of making fun of their outward appearance. After all, that’s the way the Lord Jesus looks at us every day.
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 31 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. (On week days has a desk-job at a public school, where he used to teach Latin on closed-circuit-television.) He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church (where the preacher’s gallbladder incisions are starting to itch—which is a good sign.) Their kids include Spencer (age 25), his wife Madeline (age 25), and Seth (age 22), and his wife Leanne (age 21). You can send him a note at brotherjohn@ilovechurchcamp.com.
