"Substance Over Style / Arguments for Authenticity"

A person can be incredibly persuasive, have amazing communication skills, appear to be humble, searching, teachable, and look to truly have your best interests in mind. Yet, at the same time, be as dangerous to you as any human could possibly be. Style is not the same as character. Style is not the same as who the person really is. Style is how you come across, how you appear to others. Style is a powerful skill of being self-aware; A skill of recognizing how you look to other people. Substance is completely different. It is simply character. You are who you appear to be. What you say is true, even if you don’t sound like a Harvard professor or a primetime anchor. You are who you say you are. You may not be beautiful, but the content of your character is rock-solid and reliable, and that of course is where true beauty comes from. You are who you appear to be. Style, on the other hand, can take us anywhere. Style has nothing to do with the truth. We’ve been trained, we’ve been conditioned to look for style first. We follow people, we’re attracted to them because of they way they look, how they speak, they way they sound… The apostle Paul, one of the most influential people in the history of the world, didn’t embrace style. We have to look for the deep character, which is going to require us to THINK FOR OURSELVES; To not ask what someone else’s opinion may be. Highly charismatic, style-filled leaders have taken people to all kinds of bad places since the beginning of time. But character, substance and authenticity… well, that’s we we need to look for.