Tears streamed from her sweet blue eyes and poured down her face. In broken English she tried to describe to me what happened.
“They are saying terrible things about me. Just terrible.”
“What things?” I asked. “What did they say to you?”
Lina had quickly become my favorite camper. She was kind, gentle, intuitive, joyful, ambitious, helpful and encouraging. She was also one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. With golden hair down to her waist and a perfect figure, at sixteen she looked like a model. Although she didn’t seem to notice her physical beauty, others certainly had.
“The boys – they called me a word… I don’t know how to say in English, but it’s just terrible.”
I knew instantly what that word was in English.
“And then they walked around, walking like I walk, only terrible. And Tatiana, she said even worse things. They are all talking about me.”
My heart broke for her – I knew why Tatiana had made fun of her. She had told me that morning that she hated the way she looked. She wanted to be thin and pretty like the other girls and she wished more than anything that the boys would like her.
I also knew why the boys were teasing her. They didn't see past her short shorts.
Some things don’t change from culture to culture.
But what made me so angry about it all was that the group that was abusing Lina was the “Christian” group, while Lina herself didn’t go to church.
It was true that on the first day of camp Lina’s shorts were noticeably shorter than the other girls and her top barely covered her chest. But she didn’t realize the messages her clothes were sending out. When I quietly explained it to her, she was appalled. From then on, her clothes were significantly more modest – but judgmental eyes had already seen.
All week I had been pouring into Lina – telling her how Christ sees her, how loved she is, how beautiful her heart is, trying to show her how different God’s love is for her. But here she was encountering the exact same disrespect and judgment from “Christians” that she had experienced her entire life.
“Boys on my street used to say terrible things like that to me. I don’t know why… I never wanted it.”
As she shared with me stories of brokenness and abuse, I realized this was an old and tender wound. Her entire life her beauty had been assaulted, manipulated and misused. Men had abused her out of lust and women out of jealousy. It broke my heart because she had one of the sweetest souls I had ever encountered.
Worse was the fact she was experiencing it at Christian summer camp, from Christians. Or so they called themselves. It made me sick.
The words came spilling out of me. I told her those things being said about her were not true, that they were all lies. I explained to her why kids were so brutal, about their own insecurities, and how by making fun of others they feel better about themselves. It was out of immaturity that they failed to see her true worth. That is not how Christ sees her, and it’s not who she is.
Luckily, I don’t think she had made the connection that those kids were supposed to be Christians. I prayed that she wouldn’t.
The sad thing is that so many other times, people do. Christians are often seen as judgmental and hypocritical, and it destroys the message of the Gospel.
Because the message of the Gospel is grace.
The problem is that unless you have experienced this grace for yourself, you cannot give it. Unless you have soaked in the extravagant grace of Christ, understood your desperate need for it, believed in the truth of it, and been healed by it, then you are still operating under the Law and will judge others accordingly.
Broken people break other people. It’s a vicious cycle that has no cure.
Until Grace steps in.
Grace doesn’t point a finger or condemn. Grace heals us. It reaches out a hand and pulls us out of the muck. It touches us and we walk away changed.
At the end of the week, before hugging me goodbye, Lina told me that she thinks she wants to follow Jesus. She wasn’t ready quite yet, but she said she’s going to go church and learn more. My prayer is that the people she finds in church are ones who have truly encountered Jesus. And that they will see past her exterior and receive her with the same grace with which Christ receives each of us.
*picture credit: pinterest.com
