“Image”
Its been an interesting ride in coming here. Only a week ago I picked up a book called Skin by Ted Dekker, and oddly enough, it is exactly what I needed to read in going into this conference. At the end of the book he is asked what he is trying to illustrate by this thriller of a book and his answer is formed with the words of Jesus.
And they asked him, what teacher, is the meaning of this story? And Jesus answered and said, The
Just like most of the things Jesus said this, in and of itself, is radical. It was radical when Jesus lived but I wonder if it isn’t more radical now. But I think we all need to know why if you don’t already have some idea.
Today’s culture is based on a materialistic image. If we were to go through and list the most popular sites we would probably have my space and facebook as two of the more popular sites. This is no surprise considering you can post a picture and hardly any actual information about yourself and still have friends. Although some of those sites help me keep in touch with others, it is amazing to me how many people have gotten popular through utube and or my space.
Not to mention that the most popular celebs are those who base there identity on image. Most of us will recognize names like Brittany Spears, Hillary Duff, Paris Hilton, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and his wife, and finally George Clooney. Each of which has come to popularity not through what they do but what the general public thinks of them. These names form the idea of how a person should look and how much money they should bring in. With both celebrities and the idea of image fueling how we feel about one another our social structures are formed.
One of the things that sickened me most about my high school and the teenage phenomenon is the focus on popularity. Looking back at my high school experience, even if it is somewhat removed from all of your experiences, I can still see and reflect on how much a person’s popularity seemed to help them coast through. You will often find that the class president is also one of the best athletes and either hansom male or beautiful female. Being fueled from the images on People and Teen magazine from a very young age each of us begins to put together an idea of how people should look.
Now you might say that I dress a certain way because it feels good or is the style that the store that is available to buy. But what about the different styles that are not the most popular or plainly not that style or what about those people who can not afford the next best thing Abercrombie or American Eagle has to offer. Those kids begin to have a hard time fitting into the social spectrum and will begin to be made fun of.
I know how easy it is to see something silly or different about another person. I myself sat and watched the American Idol try outs and made my own comments about how the people you auditioned looked. We are so prone to see what society and pop culture wants us to see that we are numb to the affects of our judgments.
To prove my point, how many people have ever made fun of someone else? Go ahead, raise your hand? Ok, now, I want anyone who has ever been made fun of raise there hand. The fact of the matter is whether you have been or not, or even if you raised your hand or not, there are real numbers that the National Government has come up with. The fact of the matter is 10% of children are bullied on a yearly basis. That may not sound like much, but if there are a hundred kids in here ten of you should of raised your hands to my question of if you have been made fun of. Then, according to the same National Government three of you who have been bullied will bully in return.
Because this process becomes circular, the number of kids being bullied every year only raises exponentially. Think about it this way: If we took a hundred kids through four years of High School the first year there would be ten kids bullied. From those kids three will bully different kids the next year, making the number the next year 13 kids who have been made fun of. By the end of your senior year almost 21 people will have been made fun of. The thing about this is most of the schools you attend have more then 100 people. If you school is a thousand strong, that is a hundred kids that are made fun of in a year. The fact of the matter is the percentage may seem small, but the amount of kids being made fun of is huge.
For those kids who end up being rejected from peer groups because they are deemed as different that can lead them into depression. Depression is then one of the main causes of suicide in our country. There is a lot to do with suicide as well as what causes depression. Yet, our cultures significant importance on image has a direct effect on how much pressure we feel on a daily basis. Whether for the women in this room it is to have the best figure with the nicest curves or for the men it is being strong and fit enough to be deemed hansom and able. Either way, this reality affects all of us.
I myself have been affected by this circle of events. I was born with an in caved sternum. As the Doctors told me in one of my first physicals the condition is completely normal when it comes to a human’s makeup. To the health world there is nothing wrong with having a in caved sternum. Yet, weighing right around a hundred pounds at 5 nothing tall playing sports in middle school and into high school was quite the challenge. For the longest time I dare not shower no matter how sweaty I might have been simply because of my in caved sternum. But why should I be if it is completely normal. Well, as I have already pointed out our idea of how we should look is based on what this world decides people should look like. So, in Middle School in playing basketball the classic shirts vs. skins came into affect. From that day forward and all through seventh and eighth grade I was deemed titty boy by my peers. One of the effects of having an in caved sternum is your ribs look like they are sticking out. Only two summers ago when I went swimming with my wife’s’ family this affected me again when the youngest of the family took a double take at my in caved sternum.
Although this story is personal to me I can also understand women’s points of view. My wife and her younger sister are healthy but are also skinny. Because other women may want to be like them, or for whatever reason, my wife was made fun of and now we see her younger sister going through a similar taunting. The worst part of it is was that my wife had a friend who took image so seriously and had to be skinny in such a way that she herself became anorexic; all because there was an image that the peer group decided on and all because teenagers want to be accepted.
When I first started speaking to you I quoted an explanation to the disciples that Jesus gave. And now that I have painted the image this world forces us to deal with us every day, I would like to show you the picture that God wants us to have. A vision that is quite different then the worlds, one that is composed of love and respect, and one that will lead to encouraging others self esteem instead of deflating it.
If I may, I will remind each of you of what Jesus said to the disciples:
The
The theme of this conference is based on a passage from 1st Samuel telling us that God does not look at the things the world does but he looks at the heart. Jesus re-iterates this fact by telling the disciples that we need to see past what the world sees and begin to know the beauty that comes from God. And this beauty, I will argue, is a beauty that we have to actually look for.
If I have never known anything else about God I have found that a life in following Him is not the most easy of lives. Even the Bible calls the path of following God the straight and the narrow. This is to illustrate that we must keep our eyes on the prize, which is ultimately saving grace through Jesus, in order to walk the life that God has called us to. But this life is not a life that the world wants us to adhere to. As the youth of this nation, you have a great responsibility. As the youth of our towns we have a responsibility to stand up against those who chose to make fun of. We must stand up against the type that live there lives enslaved to image. And we must give them a new image to live for.
For many years I have let the reality of my in caved sternum hold me back from even at the most extremes laying down on my back in public. When I do this I really notice the fact that my ribs are sticking out. This of course, is not normal according to the world’s standards. I myself tried again and again to be the kind of man that I thought girls I liked wanted me to be. I would try so hard to impress women because I thought I wasn’t good enough. In my very core, I though that I was not loveable.
I think, though, at everyone’s core because we are sinful and because we all have secrets we do not tell, we all think we are not loveable.
But this is not the case. And when I came to this realization my world changed.
God has a way of looking past what the world sees. He has a way of selecting individuals who to the outsider may seem completely unable for the task at hand. Through out the Bible hero after hero is exactly that kind of individual. One of the very first that the Bible portrays is Moses. Moses was such a doubting Tom. He really didn’t think that God could do what God constantly told Moses He could. It was in fact Aaron, Moses brother, who had to step up and help Moses carry out what God wanted him to. Eventually though, God used Moses to free the Israelites from slavery.
We continue on to David. Everyone who has every gone to church knows the story. David, this little boy with but a sling shot, goes up against Goliath. Goliath, I mean seriously guys, what do you think about when you think about Goliath? I think of some mammoth individual. And if that isn’t enough of a warrior, it was the strongest and most skilled of the opposing army that David’s side went up against. Yet, somehow, God used David to bring Goliath down with only a measly pebble.
This continues through out all of the Prophets where the people the prophets speak too constantly reject them. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet because he constantly complains about how he is treated. Yet, God kept sending visions to these individuals to warn the Israelites of their behavior.
My last example of people God uses in the Bible is Jesus. In focusing on Image and expectations Jesus may be the very best of individuals to focus on. Now, I know that a lot of our paintings and depictions of Jesus are this blue eyed long faced Jesus. And each of us has our own understanding of who Jesus is. But our image of Jesus may be the only image that is portrayed inside out. That is, I wonder if our depictions of Jesus are not the depiction of what his insides looked like. The guy hung out with people who the world hated. He hung out with essentially the IRS who you might have heard your parents cuss at. He spent time with prostitutes. And finally, where leprosy was spread through contact, Jesus hung out with them too. Yet, the only real image given to us about Jesus is found in Isaiah, one of the Prophets. Here is how Isaiah describes what later the New Testament says is Jesus: He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
In other words, Jesus was no Matt Damon, Brad Pitt or even Tom Cruise. According to this passage the guy was just plain ugly. Still, it wasn’t his appearance that people recognized in the New Testament. They recognized his actions. They recognized his miracles and his love for human kind. These were the things that defined Jesus, not his outward appearance. It was not his outward appearance that lead the 12 disciples to follow him. His outward appearance did not bring crowds of people to come listen to him. It was his words, his actions, and the way he cared for everyone he spent time with.
Which makes each and every one of us wonder. What If I was walking along and saw a person coming towards me. The person is not pretty by any means. The person has a dirty cloak like jacket on that one can tell has not been washed. The person has a crooked nose like some kind of witch from the movies and is pushing a cart filled with cans. The cans have flyes flying all around still having pop left on the rims. As I walk towards them I make a split decision to cross the street so I don’t even have to pass them.
Now, the first question each of us should ask ourselves is what would Jesus do? But that is not the question I am going to ask. What if that was Jesus himself and we just completely ignored him, in fact, we rejected him.
To close, I have put together a bunch of pictures to show each of you. I tried to get pictures of people from all backgrounds, in all shapes and sizes. All in all, I put together a ton of images for us to look at. I want you, though, to not look at those images the way the world will. I want you to look past there skin and think about what God would see in their hearts.
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