Don't judge a book by its cover

Here's my article for Scawby's July magazine:

Image by sergeitokmakov from Pixabay

The Year 6 end of year performance at Scawby Academy this year is “Legally Blonde: The Musical.”   I have to confess that I have not seen the musical nor even the 2001 film on which it is based, so the following thoughts are based entirely on what the internet has told me it's about!!

The plot is (apparently!) about a Elle, a stereotypical ditsy blonde who is dumped by her boyfriend Warner, because she is not serious enough and would damage his chances of becoming a lawyer and then running for political office.  Elle decides to enrol at Harvard Law School to win him back, but despite struggling for recognition and acceptance by her professors and peers, she discovers that has a talent for law.

In some ways Legally Blonde is the opposite of Grease: in Grease the girl lowers her standards to be acceptable to the guy; in Legally Blonde the girl 'raises' herself to the guy's standards, and then finds a better guy who isn't so shallow!  However, the overall moral of the story is: don't judge a book by the cover.

This principle is illustrated in the Bible with the choosing of the first kings of Israel.   Despite God warning the Israelites that rejecting him as king and wanting a human king like the surrounding nations, would lead to the kings becoming self-serving tyrants, they insisted that they wanted a king.  The first king that was chosen was Saul, who was described as “as handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and he was a head taller than anyone else” (1 Samuel 9:2).

Saul started his reign well but eventually rejected God's guidance via Samuel, and so God rejected Saul as king.   God sent Samuel to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem, saying that one of his sons would be the next king.  When Samuel arrives, he assumes that Jesse's eldest son is the one, but God says “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him.   The Lord does not look at the things people look at.   People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).  And so Jesse's youngest son, David, is chosen because he was a man after God's own heart (1 Samuel 13:14).

On the outside Saul looked impressive, and as the youngest son, socially-speaking, David was not considered important, but God knew their hearts.  So, it was David who became Israel's greatest king, and it was into David's family that the King of Kings, Jesus, was born.

So often we judge people, both positively and negatively, on things such as their outward appearance, their achievements, their background, their opinions, their 'success' in different areas of life.  The example of Saul and David remind us that more important is our heart, and whether it is in tune with God's.