Outside Looks OK…

On last night’s news we heard about The Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex.

Apparently the hospital’s ceiling collapsed in an Intensive Care Unit and fell onto a patient on life support. The patient was intubated and had not been harmed. They declared a major incident, Essex County Fire and Rescue Services were called and crews had made the scene safe…

They showed us pictures of the outside of the hospital. The outside looks OK…

Recently I’ve got to know a gent. I’ll call him Bob. Bob is the sole carer for his wife Pauline who’s confined to a wheel-chair. Bob always presents as confident, healthy, competent and cheerful. On the outside he looks OK.

On Friday, in conversation, he told me of childhood abuse, bullying and victimisation, school and authorities seeing but ignoring, extreme pressure to move away from his abusers, his wife’s mis-diagnosis, mis-treatment, unsuccessful surgery, his resulting anger, frustration, despair. His life-story was a catalogue of pain-filled injustice.

His OK-looking outside hid what was inside.

Dom Hélder Câmera, former Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil famously said: ‘When I give bread to the poor they call me a saint. But when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.’

His outward signs of charity look good and were praised; questions about an unjust, corrupt society were less comfortable to his listeners, so he was criticised.

This morning I was reminded of Jesus’ criticism of the religion and religious leaders that he encountered, describing them as cups and dishes that were clean on the outside, but dirty on the inside.

Musing…

Institutions – schools, hospitals, governments, churches, businesses… may look good, successful, caring, presenting well on the outside, but may be corrupt, angry, hateful, greedy, selfish, destructive on the inside…

That’s true of people too. Looking OK on the outside is not the same as being good on the inside.

Today I’m praying for the honesty, integrity and consistency in my life, so that I’m more than ‘outside looks OK’.