Have you ever heard someone say: ‘I wish they would just see me for who I am really am’? We often hear this from those who are well known; for example, celebrities, politicians, big business owners, multimillionaires etc. The media has a way of painting an elaborate, mostly inaccurate image of a person, giving us enough information to make our own judgement without even meeting them. We often read stories that aren’t true and see photos that have been edited or airbrushed until they are unrecognisable. A person’s outward appearance gives us very limited information about who they really are. When you meet someone for the first time, your brain is working from the initial information on offer (appearance, voice, personality) in order to form a judgement of character. In other words, your brain is trying to fill in the blanks of what you don’t yet know about the person. This unconscious judgement is happening all the time – and its necessary as well. You may have to judge whether someone is trustworthy enough to look after your children or you may have to decide whether someone has the right work ethic for a job at your company. Police and detectives will use their judgement while questioning a potential suspect. However, what I want to explore this week is how much we allow the pre-judgement in our mind to dictate how we treat others. In these past few weeks, I have been focusing on identity and now, in this piece, I want to turn attention from ourselves to other people. What affects our judgement of people? How do we decide whether someone is good or bad?

I said previously that it is important to know who we are before society puts a label on us. I believe almost all of us want to be seen for who we really are as opposed to who society says we are. In romantic relationships, an individual feels as though they have found someone who really understands them and, therefore, they enjoy spending a lot of time with that person. Both people in the relationship have invested time and shared their secrets, their human faults and their past experiences in a safe, non-judgemental space. In Mark 12:30–31, Jesus is talking about the most important commandment – how we should first love God with ‘all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength’ – but equally as important, not more or less so, is to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. This is a very well-known part of scripture, used by many Christians and non-Christians alike. However, what does it truly mean to love one another as you love yourself? How can I love another person in the same way I love myself? How can I see through a person’s outward image and love the person behind what society has labelled them as? Part of the reason people experience a loss of identity is based on what others have said to them. Therefore, it is important to say encouraging and positive things to your family, especially children, who, through adolescence, start to question who they are and the reason for their existence. I work with many students who are struggling with this very problem. They struggle with identity and often question what they are good at or what they should do in life. They often act according to the person their friends say they are and are often very disappointed when a friendship breaks up because they gave importance to what that friend thought of them. The way we treat people can have a huge effect on who they turn out to be. Part of my job is to create an environment in which young people feel comfortable enough to drop any act and for me to see them for who they really are, so they know I will not judge them for their words or actions. I give them the patience, the empathy and the understanding I would give myself.

I believe that the phrase ‘love your neighbour’ is used a lot today, but we don’t focus so much on the ‘as yourself’ part. I believe that God knew it would be impossible for us to love each other based on the little information we attain from outward appearance, so He pointed to the love we have for ourselves as an example of how we should love other people. This also includes other aspects of life. The same way we forgive ourselves when we have done something wrong, we should forgive others; the same patience we give to ourselves, we should give to others; the same understanding and sympathy we grant ourselves, we should grant others. In God’s eyes, sin is sin. There isn’t a better or worse sin; it is all measured the same. Romans 3:23 says: ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ The Bible even says that hating your brother is as bad as murder (1 John 3:15). You see there is no scale to God’s love for us and so there should be no scale to our love for others. How do we see sex offenders, murderers, thieves, drug addicts or those who commit infidelity? Do we see them by those labels only or do we see them as people and treat them with the same love with which God treats us? Whether you are a gossip or a murderer, there are no levels of sin in God’s eyes. Sin is sin. However, God can’t guarantee the consequences for wrong actions taken. For every action, there is a consequence. I am certainly not saying that we should abolish a justice system, but the question is whether we can see past the labels of other people and into their hearts. God knew how we would behave, so the Bible tells us in 1 Samuel 16:7: ‘The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’ I used to have a manager who would always look at the heart of the person whenever he was interviewing or considering someone to take on a responsibility or project. He would say to me, ‘Their heart is in the right place,’ and that would be his only judgement on whether they could do the job. He didn’t care for their outward appearance, their past mistakes, whether their tone of voice was annoying, whether their speaking skills were good; he always looked for someone whose heart was in the right place.

Often we have difficulty relating to someone who is different to us because we may not understand them. As you may have heard from my previous podcast, I am reading a book called Understanding the Purpose and Power of Women by Dr Myles Munroe. I want to share with you a short extract from the book:

‘I believe that half of the things we hate about others are qualities that can actually benefit us. However, we usually hate what we don’t understand. Over the last twenty-three years that I have been walking with the Lord, I have concluded that when a person doesn’t like someone else, the person needs grace because he lacks understanding. He or she is merely in a present state of ignorance. People have hatred, bitterness, and envy toward one another because they are ignorant of God’s purposes.’

We tend to dislike what we don’t understand. This happened with Jesus. Those who did not understand why He came disliked Him and wanted Him killed; however, those who recognised who He was left everything behind to follow Him because they knew the privilege and benefits of serving Him. Perhaps we need to look at our current relationships with friends, work colleagues and fellow Christians and ask ourselves whether we are judging them based on what we can see or what we can’t see about them. When Adam first saw Eve, he exclaimed: ‘This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh!’ (Genesis 2:23). If we all came from Adam and Eve, then we are all bone from each other’s bone and flesh from each other’s flesh. We say that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, but do we really see and treat each other in that way? I mentioned in another article how the Bible says that we are all one body with many different parts, which makes us equal but different. Sometimes people struggle to see both at the same time. Therefore, God said to love one another as yourself, because He knew that, if you judge someone else from their outward appearance, you can never love that person in the right way. In Ephesians 5:28, we read a similar message taught to us by Paul, speaking on the topic of marriage: ‘In the same way husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies.’ I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t hate my body and I give it all the care and attention it needs.

Let’s pay close attention to how we are treating those around us; let’s treat each other with the care and delicacy we would show to our own bodies. For we are all the same in spirit, but formed differently physically, according to the execution of our purpose. The more we see each other as one flesh, the less our differences will get in the way of how we treat one another.

God bless.