In the movie Wonder, the main character, August, seemed like a normal person—until you saw his face. Because of certain genes he had inherited from his parents, he didn’t grow right, and even after plastic surgery his face was grossly deformed. As a result, many people shunned him and kept their distance. August didn’t fit in, didn’t comply with their expectations of how a person should look, didn’t live up to some rule in their mind of how a person should be. There are many unspoken rules in the world, and if a person doesn’t obey them, they usually don’t seem to belong.
Many of these unspoken rules have to do with behavior. For example, think about the stereotype “weird homeschooler.” Why do we think of them as weird? Because they act differently than most people—they don’t sense and follow some of the unspoken rules. They wear pants that are too short; there is an unspoken rule that if a person’s pants aren’t long enough, it’s weird. They don’t look at someone when they are speaking or being spoken to; there in an unspoken rule that says it’s polite to look at a person when they are carrying on a conversation. Sometimes you can’t tell if they are a girl or a boy because of how they dress and wear their hair; there’s an unspoken rule that says a person must dress so you can tell what gender they are—unless they are transgender people. They might talk too loudly, and though there is nothing inherently wrong with talking loudly, there are some places where there are unspoken rules about talking quietly (or quieter). They might not realize when to stop talking, and that can be awkward; think about why it is so hard to talk to people that have autism who struggle to pick up social cues. One big reason why is that they usually can’t tell when they’ve talked too much, and they don’t realize that there is an unspoken rule about that.
There are unspoken rules about how a person looks as well.
So, many, many unspoken rules are about behavior. But, as August found, not all of them are. There are unspoken rules about how a person looks as well. That’s why the most good-looking kids in elementary, middle, and high schools are the most likely to become the popular kids. That’s why we stare at people like August who have facial deformities, or people with missing limbs, or autistic people, or women without hair, or people who are very overweight, or people who are just exceptionally ugly according to our standards.
My great-aunt got very sick when she was a baby. She had a bad fever, and it injured her brain. Because of that, she had the mind of a six-year-old for her entire life. That was God’s plan for her, but that doesn’t mean that it was easy for her—or for anyone else either. I have very few memories of my great-aunt because she died when I was about eight years old, but it was hard for me to be around her, because she acted differently than most people her age did. It was hard for me to interact with her, and I thought that she was weird. Looking back on that, it makes me slightly sad to think that I didn’t want to be around her, and I wish that I could have done differently. But I was a little kid and I didn’t really understand. My great-aunt was different, and she didn’t meet up with the unspoken rule of society. People thought she was weird.
One of the saddest things about that, though, was that most people who are different can tell that they don’t match up with the unspoken rules, even if they don’t know how, and they know when people are staring at them, and it hurts. My gramma took care of my great-aunt quite a lot when they were young, and among many other things, they would go on walks together. People would stare at my great-aunt because she was different, and Gramma would tell her not to pay attention to them. She told her that those people just didn’t know a lot of different people, and that different didn’t necessarily mean bad. She said that they would learn. If she could, she told people how my great-aunt had been sick because that made it feel more normal. But my point here is that she knew that she was being stared at.
Just because someone breaks those unspoken rules doesn’t mean that we can’t love them like we’d love someone who doesn’t.
My parents have taught me and my siblings not to stare at people who are different and look different, because it isn’t loving or kind. But it is so hard not to stare. About a month ago when my mom and I went shopping at a clothing store in town, there was a girl who was very different than a “normal” person. I knew it was wrong to stare, that it wasn’t loving, and that I shouldn’t, and I didn’t want to, but it was very hard not to stare. It is an ongoing battle, and if we don’t fight against our desire to stare, we won’t stop. Every time I see people who are different, I try to act normal, and that isn’t easy. I feel like that is a mindset problem. God let that happen to that person, and even though I can’t understand why, I need to remember that if I understood everything about God, He wouldn’t be God anymore. And no matter what that person looks like, they are still a human being created in God’s image, and we need to love them just like we’d love someone who looked normal. We need to learn that just because someone breaks those unspoken rules doesn’t mean that we can’t love them like we’d love someone who doesn’t.
And what about those people who just behave differently? I think that we need to bear with them too. Maybe they don’t follow the unspoken rules, and that can be strange and awkward, but Jesus’s command to love one another is stronger than those unspoken rules. So maybe they don’t seem to belong. Maybe they don’t. But we can, with God’s help and out of love for them, overlook their shortcomings and maybe help them belong.
Featured image by the author.
Ellen Sheehy 