First Impressions

At school, at the Feast—wherever we go, we all leave first impressions. We hope people won’t judge us too quickly. Are we too quick to judge others?

First impressions are like scars—you get them quickly, but it takes you quite a while to get rid of them (if you ever do). Many people base their whole opinion of someone on something as flimsy as a first impression.

A quick glance at others—the way they dress, the way they talk, how they act and countless other small details—can form our decision about whether we want to get to know them or avoid them.

That’s a whole lot of power for a mere first impression—probably a little bit too much power.

Can’t judge a book by its cover

Judging by first impressions isn’t a new problem by any means. It was clearly seen in ancient Israel thousands of years ago. When the people of Israel wanted a king, they were impressed by Saul. “There was not a more handsome person than he among the children of Israel. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people” (1 Samuel 9:2).

Many in Israel took one look at Saul and decided that he was it. Tall, good-looking, young—he was the ideal man to be a king. That was their first impression. That first impression proved to be wrong, however, as Saul later showed himself to be a man who couldn’t stand alone to do what was right, as a leader should be willing to do (1 Samuel 15:24).

God’s servant Samuel also was influenced by first impressions. When he was sent to find a suitable replacement for Saul as the king of Israel, God led him to the house of Jesse, a man of Judah. There, Samuel looked among Jesse’s sons for a man to be king. Seeing Jesse’s oldest son, he thought that he had found a fitting king.

But God told Samuel that he was looking at the wrong thing. Instead of looking at the physical appearance, God was looking at the heart. Finally, Samuel realized that God had chosen David, a young man his father hadn’t even considered important enough to introduce to Samuel (1 Samuel 16:6-13).

His family thought David was a boy who could only lead a herd of sheep. Perhaps that was Samuel’s first impression as well. However, that was proven wrong as David successfully led the soldiers of Israel into battle after battle.

Your first impressions?

In order to demonstrate how awful it can be to go with your first impressions and misjudge someone, let’s consider a hypothetical scenario for a moment. If you were in Jerusalem around A.D. 30, you might have seen a certain teacher.

Let’s say the first time that you meet this teacher is when you walk into the temple. You’re instantly startled by what you see. Right there in the temple of God is a man overthrowing tables. The teacher has a whip in his hand, and he’s chasing off animals being sold by men who appear to be well-off members of the community.

What would your first impression be? I’ll be honest with you about mine. I would have probably thought, that’s not a teacher that I want!

Maybe your first impression of this teacher is in another situation. Maybe you see him talking to the religious leaders. The religious leaders are all fine, upstanding pillars of the community. You see no way that they can be faulted. They seem as close to perfect as humanly possible.

As you get closer to the group, you’re startled by what you are hearing. This teacher, who appears to be from a backwater place from which no one of any importance has come, is insulting the leaders. He’s not only insulting them, he’s calling them hypocrites!

The leaders clench their fists, and maybe a few go purple with rage, but you can’t blame them. You would have already hurt someone if it had been you. You suppress a shudder as you pass them, shocked that anyone could say anything like that of such fine men.

In both cases, the first impressions may have been that the teacher was cruel, wrong and definitely not an individual that you want to be seen around.

Oh, yeah, in case you were wondering, the teacher was Jesus Christ!

Brief impressions, long stories

Yes! As unlikely as it might seem, Christ did the things that were mentioned above. If you don’t believe me, read it in your Bible. It’s right there in Matthew 21:12 and John 2:14. He also challenged the religious leaders of His day—men who were seen as righteous. Few men received as much respect as these religious leaders, yet Christ had many clashes with them (see Matthew 23, for example).

These examples show two primary reasons why first impressions fall short.

The first reason is that you don’t know the circumstances behind what you’re seeing. If you just saw Christ turning over tables and chasing animals out of the temple, you would probably think that He was a violent person who should be restrained for the safety of others.

However, if you knew the details, then you would know that the men He was chasing out were cheating people and turning God’s temple into a “den of thieves” (Matthew 21:13). That simple fact puts a twist on the story that can change your view entirely.

The other reason is that you don’t know the hearts of the individuals—only God does. The religious leaders were seen as the top of the community, but Christ saw into their hearts and testified of all of the wickedness and hypocrisy He saw in them.

These two reasons reveal the problem with first impressions. First impressions are only brief impressions that cover up long stories. They are often not accurate and can, in fact, be quite deadly—to yourself and those you judge. As we’ve seen, we could even end up judging Christ!

We must go beyond first impressions.

Joshua Travers is a freshman college student at Ohio University. He attends the Athens, Ohio, congregation of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, with his family.

When should we judge and what standards should we use for judging others’ actions? See “What Did Jesus Mean by ‘Judge Not’?”