Be Yourself (And Love It)

    This is the 21st century. People back in the 1900's were always guessing that we were going to be extremely advanced in both technology and society, as you can see in the movies and cartoons taking place in the future. But looking at it myself, we may be ahead in technology, but people, especially teenagers in general, have gotten dumber rather than smarter! Teenagers these days really aren't allowed to be themselves if they want anybody to like them!

    First you take a look at the popular crowd, where you REALLY aren't allowed to be yourself. You have to be friends with certain people even if you hate them, and you have to be enemies to certain people even if you love them. You have to wear certain clothes, listen to certain music artists, watch certain movies, drive a certain kind of car—and the list just goes on and on and on! In other words, you have to drown and suffocate the real you and turn yourself into a clone of the A-crowd. As any kind of drowning, this isn't a healthy practice—you'll always have the feeling deep down inside that you'll never really be good enough for anyone.

    The so-called popular crowd isn't the only place where you're pushed to be like other people. Some teenagers have created the facade of individuality by being “different” from the jocks and preps. You've got emos, goths, punk rockers, skaters, nerds, and even the ones who call themselves 'normal'. But it's all the same, kinda like choosing different colors and styles of labels for the exact same pickle jar. Nobody's really allowed to be themselves.

    Every once in awhile, there's that one person that comes along who's different, who doesn't conform to the pre-approved pickle label standards. Let's say he or she shops at Hollister, listens to punk rock, wears some black and loves pink. This person's going to be tormented and ridiculed to no end, at least until he or she drops the craziness and becomes one of them (and it'll be a good long while before they're forgiven for their sins). They're trying to make this person believe that they're weird, when they're not really.   

    Their real problem is that you're a peanut butter jar disrupting the perfect shelf of carefully labeled pickle jars. In reality, they are the weird ones—all acting like a school of fish or something like that when people are NOTHING like fish, regardless of what evolutionists try to say. Because you choose to be different, the fish people don't know what to make of you!

    If you just keep in mind that those are the weird ones because of their silly cloning rules, sometimes it can be fun to be different, to disrupt their repeated way of life. At least, it's a lot more interesting than being like everybody else. You also have to consider that God tells us in the Bible that we are meant to be set apart, that we are like aliens in a strange land. Besides that, He also says that we are precious in His sight—no matter what kind of clothes you wear or what kind of music you listen to. So gear up, be different, stand out, be yourself—and most of all, love it, because God made you special and He loves you very much.

God bless,