Don't Judge a Book by It's Cover


                                                          Don't Judge a Book by It's Cover

One of the new neighbors that moved onto our street is a young man named Will, who is probably in his early 20's. His house has an attached garage, and in mild weather he often leaves the garage door up, so that any passerby can see what's going on in there. Usually what's going on is Will working out with weights or some other training equipment. He often steps out onto the driveway and flexes his muscles so that the results of these physical workouts are clearly displayed from shoulder to ankle, because he only wears short shorts and shoes for his exercises.

He would be a nice looking young man without big muscles, but with them he must certainly be attractive to young women. I began to suspect that he was a womanizer when I observed his willingness to display his physique on his driveway. One evening, when Sam and I were sitting on his porch, Will came jogging down the street. Sam waved and motioned for him to come join us. When he sat down on one of the porch chairs I noticed that he had a prominent tattoo on the inside of his left arm. It appeared to be two lines of script, which I thought must be some kind of club motto or oath. I told him that I was curious about his tattoo, and asked permission to read it. He held his armout, and read it out to me: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” - a quote from the book of Proverbs.

It was not the first time I had made that kind of mistake in judging someone. One day, when I was having lunch with a friend at a local cafeteria, I saw an interesting character walking toward us, bearing a modest meal on his tray. I had never seen a real life person like him; but I had seen many in the movies. He was the archetype of the thug in a black-and-white gangster movie in the glory days of film noir. Those films had a standard way of distinguishing between good guys and bad guys. The good guys wore white shirts with dark ties, and the bad guys wore dark shirts with light-colored ties. This man in the cafeteria wore prominently the “bad guy” uniform; but even more telling were the three scars on his face which appeared to be derived from knife slashes. I decided that I definitely wouldn't want to meet this man in a dark alley.

He sat dawn at a table near us, unloaded his tray, bowed his head, closed his eyes, and mumbled a blessing on his meal.

I was even more surprised by the driver of a basic 4 x 2 truck. One day when I was taking a morning walk for exercise, I cut through a 7-ll store parking lot. Suddenly a truck drove up and stopped in front of the store. The driver slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and ran into the store, leaving the keys in the ignition, the engine running, and the door unlocked. Anyone could easily jump into the truck and drive off in the two minutes it would take him to pour a cup of coffee and stand in line to pay for it. I decided I would do a good deed by guarding the truck for the dummy, so I walked over to stand beside. I looked in to see if he had left anything valuable lying on the passenger seat. Sure enough, there was a big snake lying coiled up on the seat.

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