By Pastor Pete Ruble:
My wife and I were walking through the mall several years ago, and I said to her, “Look at that weird kid with the orange hair.” She, in her usual sweet, soft manner, asked me, “How do you know he is weird?” Then she added, “You have never even met him.”
Ouch! That cut deep! That gentle rebuke was like a mirror in my soul. She was right. I saw something in me I hadn’t seen before, so I rephrased my statement: “Look at that kid with the weird orange hair”. I suppose it’s not so bad to have an opinion of the hair, but I had no right to have an opinion of the kid because I could not know what he was really like.
I am afraid we are all doing that to some extent. We are judging people who have different skin colors than ours, we are judging people who have different political views than ours, we are judging people who have different morals than ours, we are judging people who even have different religious views than ours. But do we have that right? We have a right to judge their views or actions from a Biblical point, but not from our own views or preferences. But regardless of that, we have no right to judge them personally.
Someone has said, “Everybody is somebody’s weirdo”. I think that is a true statement. No matter who you are or what your views, there is someone in the world who thinks you are strange. The Republicans think the Democrats are weird. The Democrats think the Republicans are weird. City folks think the country folks are weird . . and you know the rest.
When I was living in sin and rejecting God, Christian people looked at me and thought I was weird. Then when the Lord saved me, and turned me around so that I wanted to live for Him, the people who are not Christians thought I was weird. So, you see, no matter what we are like, we are somebody’s weirdo.
It is just my prayer that I will some day become so much like Christ that I will stop seeing “weird kids with orange hair”, and even get to the point where I don’t see the hair at all. But just see everyone as someone for whom Christ died, and Christ loves. It is hard to change an old 73 year old man I know, but if there is at least one more change in me while I am still alive I pray to the Lord that it would be that I will never see another “weirdo” in my life, but instead just see people who may be different than me, but that is their business and not mine.
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