A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

C. S. Lewis

Pretty hard to argue with the guy - even if you want to.

1 Samuel 16:7

But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

So you got tattoos, plugs, piercings, dyed hair, an artistic personality, a flamboyant nature, a disability, cancer. Maybe you dress 'weird'. Maybe you are 'funny' looking.

So what. If God doesn't care then why should anyone else?

I'll share a story from my past. When I was younger, I went to a church near where I grew up for a visit just to see what was going on. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts - which is what I normally wear. I also have some tattoos. A couple of them are visible - like the one that covers the entire lower half of my left leg. It has been there for so long that I don't really pay it any mind. It had been there since the Army days.

Well I head into church and I notice people looking at me kind of strangely. Nobody really said hello or came up to talk to me at all. For me - this is weird. I'm really outgoing and I think the people of the church should always be as real as possible with the people around them. I guess maybe I didn't want to ruffle any feathers so I just sat down and started flipping through my Bible looking for something to read until the service started.

It was about that time that a really nervous young guy - really clean cut in some khakis and a Polo or something came up to me. He was visibly distraught and seemed like he might be ready to run away at any moment. I stood up thinking HEY! Here's a nice soul!

If he seemed nervous before he was even more so now that he was looking at all six and a half feet and 250 pounds of me. Maybe my smile looks like a wicked grin to some - idk.

Anyway, the poor guy started kind of looking at his feet and stuttering. His feet kept shuffling and he kept mumbling without ever really looking me in the eyes. After a few minutes of listening to him I finally understood that he was the youth pastor for the church and didn't want the kids to be exposed to any riff-raff sort of characters. I was a bad example to the youth and I would need to leave.

I had never been asked to leave a church in my life - much less as a visitor. I was crushed and my feelings were hurt pretty bad. How dare this clown judge me? I guess it never occurred to him that I was a believer and was simply there to do what I was created for - the worship of my heavenly Father. I went from hurt to pissed to hurt again in the span of a couple of minutes.

I left. What else was I going to do? Sure I could force my presence, but why? What would it accomplish? Would I change their minds?

No.

Would they realize what a nice guy I was and invite me back to preach one day?

No.

Would they invite me to hang around after church for fried chicken and deviled eggs?

Not likely.

So I left. I went away from there as fast as I could and didn't look back.

This was everything that I had learned to hate about the church over the years. The disgust in their eyes, the hypocrisy, the double standard, the...the....humanity of it all.

Then it dawned on me. I didn't realy have a problem with that church at all. How could I? The church wasn't the building, or the pastor, or the sheepish young youth pastor sent to shoo me away from his sacred charge. What I had a problem with were the people that never saw past themselves long enough to fulfill the great commission. To try and understand me and teach me the words of Christ. To let me know of His love for others and his great sacrifice.

I didn't know the passage at the top of this blog until much later, but the truth of it was already written deep into my heart. God loved me. Period. Nothing else matters. He didn't love me any differently when I covered up my tattoos. He didn't love me any more when I took the rings out of my ears. He simply loved me. Right then and there - in the midst of my pissed offedness and hurt feelings - He loved me and let me know it in my heart.

In the words of Robert Frost, "and that has made all the difference'.

So all of you weirdos that can't bear the thought of going back to church after being treated crappy by someone for just being yourself - reconsider. Bring your plugs, tats, green hair, girl pants, and all that back to the house of the Father. Know that he loves you that way - just like he made you. Let God see your heart again. For each of you - like myself - was born into this world with sacred worth in the eyes of the Father. You are his child and you were made to be Holy.

xmuahx

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So this guy sees you, right, and he has never met you before in his life. But already he has given you that look - you know, the once over kind of thing. He has decided within a split second meeting that he doesn't like you. Your hair isn't like his hair, or someone he hates has a tattoo like yours. You get the picture. He has his mind made up about you without giving it true thought, or without giving you a chance. He hates you.

Don't you love it? You have never even talked with this person, this hater, and yet, they have all the answers about you. You must be a certain kind of hated person, belonging to a standard stock, hated group of people, and you are that guy. Before you know it, someone is picking a fight with you randomly, and it is for something you never said, or something you never did, and it is all because this one person decided that they knew you without even knowing you. They just made up their mind about you before an introduction was ever given.

You hate it when this happens to you, but...

Some of you are pissed off at God, and you have never even met the guy. It isn't your fault, really. You see how those who are supposed to be His reflection are acting (aka The Christians), and if that is who God might be...then you want nothing to do with Him. Or you visit His place (aka The Church), and if that is how He runs things...then you want nothing to do with Him.

You think you see who He is in these temporal things. You think you know Him from rumors told by those who have never met Him in their lives, either. You see the elderly woman who won't give up her pew of 50 years so that you, a visitor, could sit down. You see the alcoholic on Friday and Saturday who is suddenly holy on Sunday. You see the man who is supposed to be a pastor or minister, but who is really a child molester. You see misrepresentations of love, outdated rituals, hypocrisy, judgment, criticism...and you run away with the decision that never, never could you hang out with a God like that. The problem is...if that's all you know of God, then you've never met Him. You've been lied to.

We are made in God's image, His likeness. The truth is, He isn't much unlike you or me in many ways. If you'd really like to give Him a chance, try to just get a proper introduction. Hang out with Him, and don't just listen to what other people say about him. Because God is less like Christianity more and more every day.

Let me introduce Him a little better, perhaps. He is more like your favorite dessert. He is more like the feeling of crawling into your very own bed after a long time away, when you are at your most exhausted. He is more like the sunlight as it picks out the most beautiful tones in your girlfriend's hair. He is like hanging out with your best friends. He is in your two-step on Friday night, or the scream that echoes from the mic, or the raw power in a machine gun drum that searches out your heartbeat and drives it faster, to a new pulse, until you feel it all the way through who you are.

To be properly introduced to God is to finally meet yourself.