― Clint Eastwood
The other day a friend said to me, "Some people have a weird need to talk down other groups to validate their own." This is so true. My eyes have been opened more than usual lately to discrimination and insecurity. Hmmm. Do I see a connection here?
I have a friend who I adore. I would love to be more like her. Her life makes mine look like a game of "Tiddly Winks". She was abandoned by both parents and lived with a grandmother who was not fond of her to put it mildly. One day her grandma put an ad in the paper offering her and her sister and brothers to a good home. She broke it to the kids by showing them the ad. Every time I think of this, my heart bleeds for them. To not give up her identity that is really all I can share, but the point is, her heart has been broken deeply and too many times. But what does she do? She loves. She has a heart so big and full of love and compassion, I feel like a cold stone next to her. When anyone needs anything, she is always there. I could call her at 3 in the morning and she would come running. (In her pajamas I might add.) When I look at her, with my brain I understand her insecurity, but when I look at her with my heart, all I see is beauty radiating from the inside out and I'm jealous. This is the better way to handle insecurity.
There is another way. Discrimination. People have not only been discriminated against for their skin color, gender, and financial class, but I have seen people discriminated against because they are physically beautiful. It's pretty obvious here that the discriminator has a little body shame. I have seen people discriminated against because they are intelligent, they love easily or they give more than another thinks they should give. I even heard the other night that prostitutes trying to break free of abusive pimps and change their lives are discriminated against by other battered women in shelters. That one broke my heart.
I can definitely tell a difference in how I am treated by the way I dress. If I throw on sweats and a T-shirt, no make-up and tie my hair in a knot I am not treated as well as I am when I dress up. I used to work for a man who was obviously another nationality and when he would take us all out for lunch, we were not treated as well as when we went without him. This breaks my heart. Mostly because he felt what we saw.
In school I was called "Hawk Nose". I always planned that some day I would get a nose job. It makes me laugh now, because me with any other nose would not be me. And really, why would I spend all that money and put myself through all that pain for insecure people who look at me once in a while? I can't even see my nose 99% of the day. That's an old insecurity I put away.
We have all watched the news after a catastrophe. The one that comes to my mind for some reason is the Oklahoma City Bombing. I remember seeing people helping each other, holding and comforting. They were all equal. I am not discriminating here, when I say I can only imagine that CEO's were helping janitors get the medical attention they needed. A catastrophe like that makes us all equal. Really. If you were drowning or caught in a burning building, would you care what color skin the person had who came to help you. Would you care that they were divorced, had an affair, live with their boyfriend while claiming to be a Christian? What would it look like if the people sitting on the curbs with bloody rags held to their wounds started moving through the crowd of injured people and poking them in their wounds? That's what we are doing in an insecure world when we discriminate or judge others. We all have wounds, we have all made mistakes, we all need to be loved.
So what this all comes down to is really simple. The devil lies to us. He hurls emotional and physical sticks and stones to convince us that we are less than. The last thing he wants us to be is a confident child of God. He doesn't want us to know we are loved. The insecurities we face, the hole in our heart can only be healed by the love of Christ. There is no human that can truly completely fill that void. I see lots of believers who know how great God is and they worship Him with all their hearts, but still don't realize they are loved by Him. We are all given the grace and love and forgiveness wrapped up in His blood. All we have to do is accept it. The greatest commandment is to love God with all of you and love your neighbor as yourself. That doesn't mean to discriminate against them because of the lack of security you have in yourself.
You can see the insecurity in people. We all try to hide it in our material possessions, our laughter, our bragging, name dropping and in our eyes. And sadly in our judgement of others. As my friend does all the time, lift them up, don't beat them down further. Maybe Jesus is too big and intimidating for an insecure person to approach, so be a little Jesus they can identify with. Then make the introduction. It only takes love and a few letters to turn misery into ministry.
― Beth Moore
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