God Don't Like Ugly

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. John 5:1-5

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 24-25; John 5:1-24

So I just read this article in the Washington Post this morning entitled “Why Looks are the Last Bastion of Discrimination”.

The article briefly discusses the legal history of discrimination against unsightly individuals and then goes on to suggest that perhaps civil rights protections should be extended to people generally considered to be less attractive.

When I got to the section where the author sited the “National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance” my first thought was…

Word?? Come on man are you serious?

But then I kept reading.

My mood changed for good when I came to the section about a study done by some researchers at Cornell University

“Stephen Ceci and Justin Gunnell, two researchers at Cornell University, gave students case studies involving real criminal defendants and asked them to come to a verdict and a punishment for each. The students gave unattractive defendants prison sentences that were, on average, 22 months longer than those they gave to attractive defendants.”

Wow… that’s almost two years man… That is NOT ok.

It made me think about the times when I was a kid (and as an adult… let’s keep it extra real) when I ridiculed others for being unattractive. And then I thought about the passage above, how back in Jesus’ time folks were marginalized for many of the same reasons.

Jesus was a champion of the poor, maimed and downtrodden. What right did I have to ridicule anyone?

None at all.

So I realized that I had to ask forgiveness on that one and change my ways.

I will do my best.

There’s an old African American proverb that says “God don’t like ugly”. The ugly that God doesn’t like isn’t anything that can be seen on the outside. It’s that ugly on the inside that we all have and keep hidden from the outside world.

So I wanted to take a moment to thank the writer of that article for helping me to clean up some of the ugly that I have on the inside.

Better late than never right?

Here's an interesting piece by the homie Adam Tillman-Young. It relates. I promise.

Question of the Day: Do you have anything within that needs to be cleaned out? Do you harbor any hidden prejudices that you never thought were that big a deal? Take an honest look and work through it. You’ll be a better person for it.