CHAPTER THREE

Part 2

A Warped Perspective

African babies are starving. Palestinian refugees get their food supplies cut off.  Poor children in India often end up as slaves in sweatshops, poorly fed, exhausted, and abused.  Not too long ago Russians were also desperate for decent food, for the shelves of their stores were frequently empty.  One elderly woman appeared on TV, crying because she was hungry.  She wasn’t elated because no rich foods were available to ruin her figure.

After an absence of five years, I flew back to America to see my dying father. It pained my heart to go to the nursing home and see him lying in that sick bed.  He had once been a very robust man, and now he was wasting slowly away because it was no longer possible for him to eat. I recalled how rapidly my brother died of cancer because his body was wasted by anorexia. Later, I went grocery shopping with my mother, and was amazed by all the new luxury foods which had been introduced since I left.  I counted twelve flavors of baking chips.  There were strange new breakfast cereals in futuristic designs and colors.

I thought, How weird!  All this fussy, fancy food for jaded palates, and half the American population looking for ways to avoid eating it, because of the media-driven thinness craze!   It’s a bit  strange, isn’t it?  One moment you’ll see a sexy siren sensuously licking a chocolate bar in a TV commercial; in the next, another scantily-clad woman will be  pushing diet products. It’s mind manipulation. Sex sells.

Recently I pondered these things, and the Lord spoke to my heart:  Pat, the day will come when food will become scarce in nations where it is now taken for granted because of its great variety and abundance.  Women, as well as men, will forget beauty standards.  Survival will be their foremost concern.  They will strive to keep what flesh they have, rather than lament that they have it.

We are on this earth only a short time. God is far more concerned about the shape of your soul than your thighs.  In the end we must answer to God, not the fashion police. Big Money is the enemy of every godly person left on this planet.  Babylon’s opinion carries little weight with someone who rebels against the devil’s idealogy.  My goals are immeasurably higher than Babylon’s.  I didn’t choose to be in this cruel vain world, but  I’m here solely to serve God in a self-serving society.

Demonic Origin of Thinness Craze

Satan is the master puppeteer, pulling the strings of this fallen world.  Consumers are, effectively, being remodeled to fit the products promoted by Babylon, for these products need to be matched up with paying consumers.  As  Old Bill Shakespeare might say:  All the world’s a corporation. Weight-loss programs, drugs, and prepackaged meals need to be sold to as many people, for as long a time, as possible.  An unrealistic, hard to maintain weight goal will ensure that the customer keeps on coming back to spend hard-earned dollars.

From a scientific perspective, human beings are nothing but bioplasmic gel bags which metabolize nutrients, assimilate oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide, and reproduce more of their own species before cellular degeneration takes its final toll in physical death.

It’s plum crazy for society to pressure your average five-foot-three woman to starve herself to get that long, lean and leggy, boyish Scandinavian figure.  If you ain’t Scandinavian, you ain’t Scandinavian. No matter how thin you get, only surgery will make your legs longer.  If some man “falls in love with” a five-foot-two chick with a little meat on her bones, he should accept nature made her that way and stop shoving diet salad down her throat when she really needs a cheeseburger.  If he wants a bony, boyish figure, he should find somebody already built that way, for Pete’s sake. That’s just as mean as falling in love with a barrel-chested, medium height man and demanding he turn into an Arnold Schwarzennegger, or else you’ll TERMINATE your “relationship”.

Nothing raises my hackles more than people who pretend to be your friend, but come with a long wish list to remake you into something you ain’t.  You can’t fool mother nature.  Starve yourself down to size zero and it probably won’t last more than a year.  Your basic survival instinct will kick in and you’ll finally decide your health is more important than your ego.  But many would rather die than fall short of the Establishment’s cruel beauty manifesto.

Women go to great lengths to fool others into thinking they’re still in the bloom of youth. They’ll even go under the plastic surgeon’s knife to deny that they’re sixty instead of sixteen. Teenage girls gorge themselves and barf into a bucket to retain a shape that suggests they NEVER assimilate nutrients into their depleted gel bag (now a bone bag). The closer to death fashion-conscious women drive their bony bodies, the more right society grants them to live life to the fullest! As their outward form shrivels, their unseen soul swells up in pride of meeting the expectations of their peer group.

That which originates from satan always brings oppression.  It is a sensation of anxiety or heaviness in your soul, the crushing fear of a slave under the overseer’s whip.  I knew such fear when I was a downtrodden teenager determined to starve myself thin over the summer months, just so I’d look glamorous enough to earn a new school year free of bullying.  I’d starve all day long (with a resulting crash in blood sugar), than eat a “sensible” dinner.  I had absolutely no life in my body  till meal time, as I punished my own  body for the bullying I’d suffered the year before.  A few hours after my only meal, the hunger came crashing back.   I was so fearful of gaining weight that I wouldn’t accept even a Life Saver or Popsicle from anyone.  I was still  haunted by the leering face of Butch, and the cruel taunts of Mike Crane.  I would have developed full-blown anorexia if my war with the bathroom scale had escalated. At least I relented enough to add a  bowl of cereal to my daily diet.

As it turned out, I didn’t take my new figure (and straightened hair) back to Wormwood High.  Chances are, my “self-improvement” program would have been in vain.  Even if I had turned myself into a Popsicle Stick with shimmering showers of golden hair like I’ve seen on so many sham shampoo  commercials,  the bullies would have found some other garbagey excuse to pick on me.  Why?  Because my name was already ruined by bullies, and I was ALREADY the devil’s designated victim.  Take it from a gal who’s fought that old cockroach for ages, you can’t starve satan off your back. All the hair gel on earth can’t make your life smoother.  Instead, I went to Vocational Rehab because my nerves were in shreds.  When I turned 18, I finished high school in an adult class.  I earned my diploma in record time.

Why do I believe satan is the ultimate mastermind behind the dieting obsession which oppresses women of the Western world?

The devil appeared to Eve in the Garden of Eden and promised her a new status of godlikeness if only she’d disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit. And the snake said to the woman, It isn’t really true that you’ll die.  God knows that in the same day you eat from this tree, you’ll gain in understanding, and you’ll become like gods, able to discern between good and evil (Genesis 3:5).

When God meted out punishment to Adam and Eve, the snake was also judged, for it had served as a vehicle for satan to approach and tempt Eve.  It would , henceforth, crawl on its belly and eat dust.  Moreover, a descendant of the woman (Christ) would one day come into the world and bruise satan’s head (his authority), and the tempter would bruise Christ’s heel.  This prophecy was fulfilled when a nail was driven through Christ’s feet at His crucifixion.

Satan knows the days of his kingdom are numbered because of his devastating defeat at Calvary.  Christ has redeemed multitudes of souls from hell because of His death, burial and resurrection. Believers in Christ are no longer under his dominion.  Colossians I:13 speaks of God the Father: Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son.

The fulfillment of God’s ancient edict against satan greatly embittered him against all mankind, especially the female sex.  Millions of abused women and girls all over the world bear testimony to this.    The devil  used Slobodan Milosevich to authorize the rape and torture of thousands of Bosnian women. Milosevich’s trial dragged on forever.  But any retribution he could suffer here  will  be nothing compared to the real punishment meted out by Almighty God in the afterlife. Satan used the Taliban to subject half of Afghanistan’s population, its women, to a never-ending hell of repression and fear. One poor woman, unaccompanied by a male relative, was beaten because she ventured outside her home to take her sick child to a doctor!

I pray that the Lord will judge the cowardly bullies who perpetrated those atrocities because they expected to get away with it.  The perverts of Sodom suffered divine vengeance even in this world, and they  were surely no worse than those thugs.  Ecclesiastes 8:11 says:  Because punishment upon evildoers is not meted out speedily, people are fully intent on committing wickedness.  But judgment delayed is not justice denied.  The laughter of those oppressors will turn to terror when they face an angry God.

Part of the devil’s revenge on womankind is to warp its image.  Satan hates true femininity.  The sight of a truly  feminine woman baking cookies or reading Bible stories to her kids sickens satan.  He’d much rather transform her into  a  swaggering drag queen with a Mohawk haircut. Satan adores the latest look, a pierced-all-over waif  with sharp shoulder blades, topped by a shrunken face and spiked hair. If  a size 00 hangs loosely on her frame, she’s really got something to shout about.

When I see such spectres depicted in the tabloids, I’m not surprised, for the world is going to get even more bizarre before the Coming of the Lord. The latest look in Hollywood is the “pin-thin”, or “lollipop” look.  It seems that the more successful female sitcom stars become, the more they resort to severe dieting or liposuction to make themselves resemble a Popsicle stick on heels topped with a too-large head. And the woman always denies having an eating disorder.  I read that one rail-thin  actress got ticked off when her co-star lost four dress sizes and supplanted her as the thinnest actress on the show.  Not to be upstaged, she got extra help from a “personal trainer” to help her lose the remaining meat on her bones.  She regained her status as the tiniest doll on the show.  Thinness is now the main standard by which catty high school girls gauge each other’s value!

Oppressed by images of hungry Hollywood babes in G-strings, today’s status-seeking female faces constant pressure in her peer group to declare her own body a flesh-free zone.  Her caloric intake would hardly sustain an infant.  Yet she wonders:  Why am I so flat in front?  I’ll  lose my lover if I don’t do something about it.  Another customer for the silicone surgeons. The poor thing.  The media has scrapped God’s original balanced design of a woman’s body.  Now a young girl must  look like a  STOP sign, or the bullies won’t stop.  Bullies (especially other girls) might torment her mercilessly if her body doesn’t obey this cruel edict of Babylon. But then again, female bullies might target a gaunt girl if she is considered TOO beautiful, and is snagging all the best hunks.  Despite your compliance with cultural standards, you can never be absolutely sure you’ve bully-proofed yourself.  God’s help is urgently needed to protect you from people whose favorite fun is hurting others.

The devil resorts to a variation of the same lie he used on Eve in the Garden.  In both cases, satan  appeals to a human longing to augment one’s status in the world.  His original lie:  Eat, and you’ll gain in glory and prestige.  Now for the flip side:  DON’T eat, and you’ll be a princess on a pedestal, held in high esteem because of your self-control.  There’s nothing to fear but flesh itself.  You must vanquish that enemy on your bones.  If you don’t go along with me, you’ll pay the price!     The devil’s threat:  If you do eat, you’ll lose the esteem of the Cool Crowd and you’ll be a social outcast.  Satan is the author of eating disorders and resulting ill health and death. He’s so clever, he can even peddle deadly habits as heavenly virtues.  He rewards anorectics with feelings of supremacy   and euphoria, which is a counterfeit of the Joy of the Lord.  Believe me, seeing those scale numbers drop can give you a bigger buzz than sweet cherry wine. It can even drown out your body’s cries of hunger. But it’s really a demonic  thrill that compels  anorectics to “stick to their diet”.

But when the euphoria of weight loss no longer silences hunger, the devil pulls another trick out of his bag. Like laboratory rats, his victims are caged up in a prison of fear. Cruel experiments have been done on lab rats to see if fear of pain can override natural hunger and prevent the rat from eating.  Every time the rat  approaches the food it gets an electric   shock.  If it cannot overcome its fear of pain and eat, it dies.

A woman who buys a candy bar is afraid someone will give her a stare which says:  “you don’t need that.”  Popular girls are afraid to use their lunch break to actually eat a meal.  It is far more cool to sip diet sodas and ridicule the slop the “dweebs” are scarfing down. Comradely laughter can calm collective  hunger pangs. Misery loves company. Starving females are being cattle-prodded by a callous culture, to the extent they’ll  risk brain damage and even death to avoid the censure of others.

I read an article in a magazine which shocked me. It told how anorexics have their own web sites, where they promote anorexia as a healthy lifestyle, and seek converts to their suicidal religion.  Skeletal, deathlike spectres haunt  the pages of such sites.  Yes, I truly believe female emaciation is now a religion, instituted by the Prince of Darkness himself. I call it the Gospel of Thin, and  it is not politically incorrect to cram this religion down everybody’s throat (thindoctrinate them!) Satan enforces this obsession  in a sick society through bullying, mostly psychological intimidation.  Most of his cult’s devotees are women, and perpetual fasting is his chief sacrament.  Most religions have a salvation motif.  Fasting (or bingeing and purging), along with punishing exercise are the  means of achieving the  “salvation” of an ego damaged by the devil.

Once when I got (temporarily) skinny on a crash diet, the devil started playing games with my mind, making me think I’d been born again to a new life and I was invincible. I felt high. I  sang my own praises, and secretly looked down on others who “had no self-control”.  I’d fought the Battle of the Bulge, but I was a spiritual casualty of it. I was obsessed with bandaging my bruised ego.

It’s  sheer psychological  abuse to cram this oppressive beauty ideal down the throat of somebody who is not naturally thin. It’s Big Brother intrusion to force cosmetic conformity onto free individuals.  Mean-spirited thindoctrination of people who have achieved a measure of self-acceptance  is the last acceptable bastion of  bigotry. There might be  winners in the Battle of the Bulge, but it has its casualties too.  My brother Adam might be alive today if he hadn’t tried to feel better about himself by denying himself basic nutrition.

The Vanishing Princess is forever paying an imaginary debt to an all-pervasive, exploitative  Establishment, a chauvinistic  system which  robs her of the dignity of self- determination as a rational individual.  It’s paid in the currency of her own flesh, diminishing herself in the  shadow of that overbearing world she so idolizes and fears. Never is she allowed to rest assured that she has fully satisfied the demands of a sick society.  Satan is a cruel taskmaster to all his captives.

One woman said it best:  “Slim is a nice place to be, but the rent’s too high.”

Weight loss is sometimes desirable, especially when life or health is  at risk. But the Gospel of Thin  is one of the cardinal edicts of Babylon, with glossy “self-improvement” magazines serving as its Bible.  True salvation comes from Christ alone, and brings Him exaltation.  But the devil’s salvation is spiritual bondage, and only furthers his ministry of steal, kill, and destroy.

Jesus came to deliver all who are oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38).  The Truth is the only antidote for the destructive rhetoric of Babylon, or any other territory presided over by satan. When problems would come into my life and I felt overwhelmed, I would call my friend Brother Bob for advice and prayer.  He often ministered this scripture to me:  You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free (John 8:32).  Knowing the unveiled facts behind the ideology of this perverse world fortifies us with truth.  Jesus is the Truth Incarnate, the One Who sets satan’s prisoners free.  He says in John 14:6:  I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No man can approach God the Father except through Me.  Our only concern should be how Jesus evaluates us. The perverted fashion (ways) of this world shall pass away( I Corinthians 7:31 ).  If we know Christ and walk in His Law of Love, our lives will be filled with His goodness, and others will be blessed.   

Maybe it’s not entirely bad that I wasn’t created a slender reed bending every which way the wind blows. Having suffered myself, I can genuinely feel compassion for everyone who has  been kicked around by slaves of the devil’s Establishment.

Remember the Women’s Movement of the 60’s?  I don’t buy everything the feminists taught, but I do identify with their rebellion against society’s oppression of women through the sexist glamour culture. Bras were burned during protests, but most women can’t dispense with them and ought to burn the REAL symbol of female oppression: their diet books! I won’t suggest literal burning, as there might be safety risks. But I do  suggest that women who have been pressured by society to be skinnier gather together to hold a GOD MADE ME BEAUTIFUL party where yummy pastries and coffee are served instead of carrot sticks and mineral water. At the height of the party, there would be a “diet disposal” ceremony where everyone’s diet books are dumped into a big black garbage bag before being shipped off to the local recycling center.

Dieting makes women miserable.  But if you feel the need to eat more sensibly, the best way to do that is to just eat whenever you’re genuinely hungry, and  (most of the time) eat NATURAL (fresh, when possible) foods the way God created them, keeping cooking fats and rich sauces to a minimum. If staying full is a problem, unbuttered popcorn, salad vegetables and sauerkraut can safely  be munched in large quantities to compensate for smaller portions of calorie-rich food. But remember this: God ALREADY sees you as beautiful and special, whatever your size!

Freedom works both ways.  You might like certain advances in beauty technology. I enjoy my ceramic hair straightener, as it helps restore soft texture and shine to my hair after washing makes it go crazy.  But if you want to defy fashion and wear your hair in its natural state, condition it well after shampooing, then either air dry your hair or GENTLY blow dry. Hot rollers can give you a smoother, more structured curl if that’s what you want. A light dab of olive oil or petroleum jelly helps remedy brittle hair texture and lubricates dry ends. Whatever you choose to do with your God-given hair, be true to yourself, even if you’re the only curly-head in the crowd!

Sisters, let’s all REBEL against Babylon! Ignore celebrity trend setters who starve to size 0 and pay a fortune to get lookalike limp hair. Our self-worth isn’t some two-digit number on a scale, sunken cheekbones, or droopy hair! We’ve all got a right to be the intelligent, dignified, beautiful women and girls God created us to be.  And His idea of beauty may not necessarily be the same as Hollywood’s!

Labels:  The Insignia of Babylon

In the American public school system, there are no school uniforms, as such.  But the Cool Crowd does enforce its own dress code.  Usually it’s the higher-priced brands which are in vogue.  Why are so many  of the most sought-after labels in such high demand, and so expensive?

Self-worth is expensive in Babylon.  If you pay a high price, you must be a high earner (or the child of one).  The high earner has a higher status job, and by implication, is smarter or better-looking, and more worthy of esteem.  That’s the way the world thinks.

Certain jeans commercials are sexually suggestive.  One features a willowy girl bending over, stretching her backside taut.  It’s similar to conditioning rats to salivate in a laboratory.  The goal of the commercial is to train young men to associate that brand of jeans with sex, their reason for breathing.  Sales skyrocket, ‘cause if you don’t wear their label  you won’t get laid.

Many kids nag their already overstretched parents to find the money to buy the hottest brands of jeans, sportswear, and accessories.  All too often it’s just the label the kid is after.  Equally well-made clothes (minus the big labels) can often be obtained from bargain outlets, but teenagers must wear visible proof that they aren’t poor.  Often the teenager’s insistence on big brands or styles doesn’t reflect his own true taste.  He’s just scared to death of not conforming, afraid he’ll be pigeon-holed as a poor “dweeb”.  He wouldn’t be caught dead shopping at a discount store.  His ” rep”  would be ruined, and he might even get singled out for bullying.

My kid sister said that when she was in high school,  it was clothes that determined a girl’s social status.  She and I are almost a generation apart.  I don’t remember clothing brands being so religiously enforced when I was in school, but labels are now the passport to popularity.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the superficiality of relationships founded on clothing preference.  I can’t believe people are that shallow.  They buy Babylon’s pre-packaged personality rather than dare to develop as an individual.   How reassuring to know that so long as my tastes are the same as yours, so long as I never dare deviate from the collective opinion, and so long as I can afford the “finer things” of life, you’ll be my friend forever, and be there when I need you.  Hogwash!  I’d rather lean on a loose floorboard!

 Next to thinness, affluence seems to be the biggest prerequisite for females seeking acceptance.  Newsstands are filled with magazines featuring wispy women on the covers wearing expensive jewelry and designer clothes.  Usually the agenda of the periodical is “self-improvement” ( i.e. conforming to the tastes of the Establishment in order to attain higher status [and higher earnings]  in this world).

This is God’s way of self-improvement:  Do not depend on outward things such as hair styles, jewelry or fine clothing to constitute your true comeliness.  It should, rather, spring from inner  qualities which never deteriorate, such as a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God (I Peter 3:3-4).

How contrary God’s ways are to those of the world!  Bullies of both sexes are typically brash, boastful, shallow tyrants who detest gentle, thoughtful souls.  I suspect that the prevalence of aggressive self-centeredness in society largely springs from fear that being conciliatory and considerate  of others  leads to vulnerability and victimization.

It can enrage a bully to spot another kid wearing status clothing he himself cannot afford.  He reasons:  Who does that retard think HE is?  He doesn’t deserve that stuff.  He thinks he’s better than our gang. I’ll show HIM who’s boss around here!  Conditioned by Hollywood to believe that human life is cheap, the bully might actually murder the other boy to  relieve him of his designer jacket and Adidas running shoes.  I watched an account of one such tragic incident on the news, though I don’t remember which brand got stolen.

Today a kid can endanger himself just by wearing “gangsta” apparel.  Gangs of bullies have an animal-like instinct for defending their own turf.  Like Cain, they are extremely  volatile and need little stimulus to resort to violence.

     Babylon profits from coercive peer pressure among the young, who slavishly sport the same slick  clothes. Pricey clothing is typically produced in third-world sweatshops whose slaves are paid subsistence wages.  And the high price tag may not even reflect the quality or the durability of the garment.  The consumer  sacrifices much to show off that label (often sewn on the outside for that very purpose), and it’s  really a mark of allegiance to Babylon, and his  passport to prestige.

The Garment of Salvation

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord.  My soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the Garments of Salvation.  He has covered me with the Robe of Righteousness, as a bridegroom bedecks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels (Isaiah 61:10).

The teenager or yuppie (young, upwardly mobile professional) with the biggest and trendiest collection of designer wear garners great emulation from peers and associates.  After all, “clothes make the man” (or woman).  Prestige carries a high price tag.

 In God’s economy, Jesus paid for our acceptance into His Body of believers.  We enter into His Kingdom strictly  through the grace of God, not through our status in this world (Ephesians 1:6).

You can wear the finest $1000 suits to church, or do all your shopping at the Snob Emporium.  You can sparkle with Tiffany diamonds from head to toe.  But if you appear before God without the white garment of Christ’s righteousness, you will be excluded from the greatest social function of all time and eternity_the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

This present evil world pales into insignificance in the light of His eternal Kingdom, which is soon to be ushered into the temporal realm, even as it now exists in the celestial world.  Jesus is about to return to take His loved ones to be united with Him in spiritual marriage.  This event is called the Rapture of the Church, or the Translation of the Saints. This will be an event wonderful beyond comprehension, for we who know Christ shall be with Him forever (see I Thessalonians 4: 13-17).  I expound further on this topic of the Rapture in my teaching novel:  Tough Love in Christ’s Millennium, available online from Publish America.

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb will be held in heaven.  Revelation 19:7-9 says:  Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to God: for the marriage of the Lamb is now taking place, and His Bride  (the Church) has made herself ready.  It was granted to her that she should be attired in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints.  Blessed are those who are called to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.  These are the true sayings of God.

Matthew 22: 1-14 is a parable which likens God the Father to a king Who is preparing for the marriage of his son. The feast has already been prepared.  Jesus promised His sorrowful disciples in John 14:2-3:  In my Father’s House are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, you might be also.  That’s what He has been doing ever since His ascension back to heaven.  Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.

Today, people from all walks of life are being invited to attend the Wedding Feast. God has, throughout the centuries, dispatched His servants to every corner of the globe to issue invitations.  But many have given the security of their souls last priority. Worldly  lusts and carnal loves  are far too dear to these deluded souls.  God’s messengers have suffered scorn and sometimes martyrdom in their quest to serve their Lord.  In Matthew 22:7, God declares that the murderers of His servants will be destroyed by His angelic armies, and their cities burnt up.  II Thessalonians 1:7-8 proclaims that coming day of vengeance upon wicked, violent sinners: You who are troubled shall find rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall appear from heaven, attended by His mighty angels.  In flaming fire He shall take vengeance on those who  are alienated from God, and who do not obey the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction, cut off from the Presence of the Lord and from the Glory of His Power.

The “cream of society” has, for the most part, paid scant heed to the Gospel of the Kingdom.  Most of the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day rejected Him outright as a blasphemer and deceiver.  They had been hoping for a military genius who would fight to deliver them Roman occupation.  Jesus plainly declared: My Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).   Someday  He shall rule this earth from sea to sea, but today’s world order is  hopelessly corrupt, earmarked for destruction.  When He sits on the Throne in Jerusalem,  He will not play by the rules of this present-day world Establishment.

The King’s banqueting hall is finally going to be filled with all sorts of people.  Only those who were saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus will be present.  A few will try to sneak in without wearing the Garment of Salvation.  God doesn’t care whether you are short or tall, homely or comely.  But He does insist on proper spiritual attire.  The parable relates that one fellow refused to accept the white wedding garment offered to him.  This is not the capricious conformity of the world.  The white Garment of Christ’s Salvation is the life preserver of a soul drowning in its own sins.

When rebuked by the King for this breach of etiquette, the culprit could not muster up a word in his own defense.  Unclad in the righteousness of Christ, his sins were laid bare before his Sovereign.  The man was summarily bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness.  People fear to flout the standards of their respective cliques, but how much more should they fear offending a Holy  God.