ACE #108: Relationship Status: Mean and Ugly

I was watching “Waiting to Exhale” the other day and I waited for one of my favorite lines delivered by the late Whitney Houston, “If you’re ugly inside, then you’re ugly outside!”  While it seems harsh, it also rings true in so many ways. 

I met this boy when I was in middle school.  I developed a crush on him instantly because he was cute and athletic.  When he, my cousin, and some of my cousin’s friends all sat down at the picnic table, he told me my nose was big.  My response was, “You don’t even know me and that’s what you say to me.  Well, I’ll grow into my nose, but you’re just mean.  I’m not sure how you’re going to get over that.”  I never looked at him again.  As he got older, he got more attractive to some women - I never saw him as attractive.

I’ve thought about the guys I encountered when I was in college and how some were very popular with the ladies.  They were the ones who had charisma, maybe they were athletes, perhaps they were in fraternities, and sometimes they fit the “tall, dark and handsome” category.  But here’s the thing – no matter how attractive a man was on the outside, if he was a “mean” person, he would never, ever catch my attention for very long.  Meanness is such an unattractive quality – yet many mean people are proud to be mean.

It takes me to the story of Jezebel.  She has been depicted as the worst bad girl in the Bible.  Her role was, literally, to kill the prophet. She was just plain mean…to everybody.  Ahab had no business marrying Jezebel in the first place – and God told him so.  People who are mean don’t know how to function in peace and are rarely, and unfortunately, comfortable with happiness.

While I recognize that past hurts and “baggage” can make people mean, they don’t have to stay that way.  It becomes a choice.  If you desire a spouse who is loving, kind, and gentle, then don’t get into a relationship with a “mean” person who never has a kind word to say to anyone…including YOU!  Mean people will make you miserable.  You can’t change them.  They will have to make up their minds to change – not to please others, but to please God.  And if you are a mean person, then desire for God to change your heart, so that you can change your behavior toward others.

Romans 8:7

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.

 

Elizabeth Taylor as Queen Jezebel