Superficiality

Today, I got to deliver the message of the kids' skit summed up in one phrase- "God doesn't judge people by their outer appearance."

Sure, I was wearing robes, and telling small children about the importance of young David being picked as king, even though he was just a shepherd. But it's still highly significant, when you think about how much physical appearance matters in how we think of people.

Example 1) Celebrities (aka Daniel wants an excuse to put up a youtube video)

Celebrities are so often looked up to as being ideals for what we want to look like, or what social standards of beauty are. Say what you want to the contrary, if you've grown up watching television, you've been to some degree subconsciously programmed to have actors and models be the people by which you set standards for physical appearance.

I find this highly ironic in the digital age. Setting our standards based on people who we see pictures or videos of is skewed so much, because you can alter so much digitally. No really. Don't believe me on quite how much? Check this out- is this what you want your standard of real beauty based on? :)

Example 2) A Test Case

Now, wouldn't it be interesting if we could remove all physical traits that cause people to make judgements about us, and have everyone start on equal grounds? Well, that's never going to happen, and it's probably for the best. However, it is possible to temporarily remove a lot of those factors, with the help of some costuming.

Without admitting to anything, it's possible to take everything that factors in to how people assess you, and replace it with just the color orange. Place that single characteristic in a group of people that are all, say, dressed in white, and what happens? Lots of strong reactions. High fives, random greetings, taking pictures- limelight. Has this person done anything to merit attention, praise, or excitement from other people? Have they proven any inherent value that deserves this special treatment? Nope? All they've done is given someone an initial visual stimulus that triggers a reaction to judge based only on what they see.

Although, when what they see is a dancing orange man, you can't really blame them.

It's pretty cool.