Human Opinion is Plastic 2

Continued from here…

My model in not paying much attention to human opinion is Jesus Christ.

In modern terms, you’d say He didn’t give a damn about what others thought of Him.

I think that’s cool.

"Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man." ~ John 2:23-25

I understand that to mean that praise and criticisms weighed exactly the same to Him!

There was so much fuss around him because of the miracles he was performing, but He was not carried away by all the adulation! In fact, He seemed to have deliberately avoided the praise-singers.

He made it very clear that He placed little weight on human opinion when He said, "I do not accept praise from men." ~ John 5:41. The wisdom of His approach was later borne out by the fact that people who hailed Him as the ‘Messiah’ one day, choose a murderer over Him less than a week later!

Human opinion is a very plastic commodity and I (quite frankly) rarely give too much weight to what others think about me.

They changed their minds…

A very long time ago, I came across this story regarding the Apostle Paul:

Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, "This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live." But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god. ~ Acts 28: 3-6

I find it particularly interesting that ‘they changed their minds…’ . Those guys initially gossiped about Paul being a murderer because of his unpleasant external circumstances. Such is life. Folks are always going to judge you by your external circumstances, you know, what you have and what you don’t have. They’ll class you, brand you, categorize you on the basis of what they can see. What a shame.

Yet notice how quickly they changed their minds when Paul’s external circumstances changed. From saying to each other, "This man must be a murderer…" they changed to "He is a god."

Truly, human opinion is plastic and fickle. Don’t place too much weight on it.

Whether they think you are a ‘murderer’ or a ‘god’ doesn’t really matter. What is important is your personal opinion about yourself.

Most importantly though, don’t make the same mistake that other people make about you – that of judging yourself by externals, what you have and what you don’t have. You are more that what happens or doesn’t happen to you.

Be inspired!
Discover yourself!

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