Character verses Reputation is the question???

Character verses Reputation is the question???

Just last week someone posted on facebook the following quote by John Wooden, “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” The more I thought about that quote the more I found it to troubled me…Is it right to think of these two things as an either or question?? Is it simply one or the other or is it both or is John Wooden indeed right that reputation is a mere unimportant opinion?

There is no doubt in my mind that God is concerned about my CHARACTER and so should I. God is definitely more interested in developing my character than He is concerned about my comfort and that Godly CHARACTER ought to manifest itself in the growth of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:20). BUT should I NOT also be concerned about my REPUTATION?
There is a verse that has always challenged me. Among the seven Churches spoken to in Revelation Chapter 2 and 3 there is this word concerning the Church at Sardis..Read these words carefully! “To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a REPUTATION of being alive, but you are dead.” Rev.3:1. Sardis had a reputation!! Here a Church and the word on the street was, there is a buzz in that place..Looking for a Church? Sardis is the place to be, everything is happening there! That’s what people were saying! Sardis had a reputation of being alive! Wow! What a great testimony, or was it, it was its reputation but was it the truth? It was a man called Thomas Paine who made this observation, “Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.” And sure enough God’s view of this Church was very different to the reputation it had in the world? God’s view of this church was they were not alive at all, but rather they were DEAD!                                                                                                                                                     Which ONE is more important???                                                                                                        The reputation you have in the world or the character you have that is seen by God?                        Well that is an easy one to answer, the latter is eternally and infinitely of more importance than the former. Unfortunately this generation we live in that hankers after ‘celebrity’ (see last week’s blog) has made inroads into the Church..were many in leadership, it seems to me, whether in the pulpit or not consider gaining  a reputation to be something of great importance, while spending little time considering their character at all. Their appearance, their intonation, their performance and resulting praise and applause or sought after more I fear than humility or servanthood or even godliness.. I agree here with Abraham Lincoln who said,  “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” Dare I say that much of what we see and hear in Christian Leadership is far from being the real thing? No wonder our people are becoming what they are? As Robert Murray McCheyne declared, “If Satan can only make a covetous minister a lover of praise, of pleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry…..It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”
Having said that I am still left with the original question? And while CHARACTER is utterly important I do believe that we must also ensure our reputation is that which equates with my walk with God and therefore Glorifies Him too. As one Elbert Hubbard once said, perhaps a little ‘tongue-n-cheek’, “Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.” This I think is the graver situation of them ALL!
Far too many are unconcerned about what people think of them to such an extent that they feel able to behave in whatever way they like and think it is OK! Ironically Sardis was a city built 1000 feet up on the side of a mountain and thought itself to be impregnable. However, the city did fall to enemies twice during its history both times the enemy sneaked in and opened the gates while the people of Sardis slept. Contented no doubt with the reputation!!!!!! Now there’s a great analogy is it not? 

 

You were in Church yesterday. You sang the loudest, you prayed the longest BUT today back in the office, on the shop floor, in the check-out queue you have the reputation of being quick tempered, impatient, rude, and ungracious and you don’t care what people think. BUT God cares, I think, His judgment is this, “The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Isaiah 29:13
OR….YOU DO care what people think BUT for all the wrong reasons, you want to be one of the crowd, don’t want to upset the applecart as it were, you’re the one always cracking the jokes, you’re the one who buys everyone the drink..You have a reputation…’The Party Animal’. Again Isaiah says, “And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it.” Isaiah 35:8……

 

Are you a fool?

You have a reputation, all of us do, we build that reputation over the time we spend with the people who give it to us…The question that should therefore and more importantly be asked is this??? Does that reputation match the character? That CHRACTER that YOU do need to be really concerned about and asking God by His Holy Spirit to develop in you and as a consequence will ensure that when it is said of you, He/she has a reputation of being alive…God says ‘I agree’  and I say Amen!
It is as one final quote puts it, “If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.” Words aptly spoken by the great Dwight L Moody.