I have always heard the phrase don’t judge a book by its cover, but I never totally grasped the significance of that phrase until this month. I spent most of my days this month tucked away in a small library at the Haven Foundation. When I first walked into that library, it was quite dusty with books upon books on shelves in boxes or just lying around. My contacts told us it was our job to get this library in working order again. The job seemed fairly easy, just put the books in order, and that would be it. Little did I know it would take me the entire three and half weeks to accomplish this task. New shelves had to be built and painted. Unpackage all the boxes and sort through the books and put them in their proper category. Next put those books in alphabetical order. (Never have I ever sang the ABC’s to myself so many times. You think I would remember whether J or K came first.) Finally scan the new books into the system and put them back into their categories.
It was not a glamorous job by far. The library was dusty, hot, quiet and at times boring. But I asked God to let these books teach me something, and once again, he did. As I sat there and sorted books, I would occasionally pick one out and read the back cover or skim through because the book looked interesting. What drew me toward looking at a book with more interest? It was by the cover or by the title. If the book had a nice colorful cover or a witty title it would peak my interest into diving into this a book a little more. But then that little phrase popped into my head, Don’t judge a book by its cover. You see some of those books that were a little more torn or rough around the edges can have some of the best insight in them. Just because a book may not have a catchy title, does not mean it does not have a world of treasures in between those two covers that bind it together.
How many times do we judge books or people for that matter because of how we see the outside? Most of the time we judge people based on their appearance whether we want to get to know them or not. How many times are we too quick to judge people? We look at people who are from a lower social class than us, or a different race from us and unintentionally a radar goes off in our head BEEP…BEEP…BEEP that person is different from you. You are better than them or you can never amount to the success of that person. That person is a little too rough around the edges for me or that person is a little too proper for me. That person has too many tattoos and piercings, that person is a bore because she doesn’t drink or party. That man is gay or that woman is a prostitute and after we have outwardly evaluated them our opinion of them is formed. We either want to get to know them or we do not want anything to do with them. Unfortunately, most of the time it’s the latter.
How do we stop this critical judgmentalism our world and even Christians have crept into it? We have to take a step back and see these people just as these books. That every person although may have a certain look on the outside, we truly do not know this person until we have seen the inside. Everyone has a their own story. Each story is beautiful and unique to its own self. Each chapter has its own beauty. Some chapters include adventure and excitement while some chapters of the same book contain loss and disappointment. Some are harder to read than others. Some may be more enjoyable. Some are a mystery while some may be a horror, but they all have a purpose on this earth. You may miss out on some of greatest stories because you judged a person too quickly. You see David grasped this concept and was grateful that God chose to look at his heart instead of his outward appearance, and his story is one of the most intriguing in the Bible.
Next time you find yourself critiquing someone you haven’t even had a conversation with yet, STOP! And remember that person was created the same way you are by the same God. He loves that person you are judging just as much as he loves you. When he was on the cross you were not the only person on his mind. He died for all because he loves all. How do we stop judging people by their cover, we LOVE as Jesus LOVES. No two people ever write the same story, nor do two people ever read the same book. So get out there and read between the covers, that’s where you find people and their true stories.
