Judging

This is a very special friend: Nate. You may not be able to see it in the picture, but he has purple hair, slight gauges in his ears, tongue ring, a few tattoos, and a certain attitude towards the world and people around. It is basically he doesn't care if you don't like him because he is who he is. That is part of why I get along with him so well and I enjoy his company. I mention my dear friend for a reason. He gets judged all the time. People take one look at him and have a certain image with him and thought about him and who they THINK he is. The thing is people do the same with everyone. People look at me and have a certain image. People see us together walking in the mall, and I can only imagine what they think.

The River of Life's motto is "judge no one minister to all" what we believe is that you do not judge anyone for any reason. Too often we are quick to judge someone based on their appearances like people do with my dear Nate here, but they don't really know who he is or what kind of person he is. They don't take the time to get to know him which is something we need to do. God loves us no matter who we are, what we do, or more importantly what we look like. Who are we to judge other people? Aren't we all basically the same inside with the same emotions and feelings? So why should we treat each other differently?

Recently there was someone judging him as well as myself based on things he thought he knew. Sure he may have been right on a few things, but he was wrong on so many other things. He didn't give Nate the time to see who he was and obviously in my mind this person didn't take the time to really get to know me. We are quick to judge someone when they don't fit into our little world and image of what people should be like or how they should act. We put expectations on people before we even met them. For some reason that just sounds so wrong to me. God doesn't put unrealistic expectations on us, so why should we place them on others or even ourselves?

You look up at the picture I have posted and tell me what do you think before you even know the man in the picture. You look at me and what do you think. When you look and begin to judge think about how would others look at you and what would they judge you based on? After spending a large amount of time with Nate I see the wonderful person that he is inside and out. I see his heart, personality and other things you don't see when you simply just look at him.