Matthew 25 ChallengeSample

Matthew 24 Challenge: CLOTHING
by Dave Richter

CHALLENGE: Wear the same clothes that you wore yesterday.

I recently spoke to a colleague, who also happens to be homeless. We work together at City Hall on a ‘Task Team on Homelessness’. I asked him about what it's like wearing the same clothes every day. He said:

"It affects your self-esteem.  It is a dignity thing.  It brings you down.  You don't want to buy at a shop.  You feel out of place.  You don't take yourself as a human.  You get angry quickly. It affects one mentally."

Clothes are part of our identity. We express our personality, our social status, our interests and moods in our clothing. Very often, we associate someone’s value or significance by their clothing. Imagine going for a job interview in dirty, unwashed clothes that don’t fit you!

Question: What do we think when we see someone’s clothes?

In 2006, an eminent Princeton psychology professor placed volunteers in a brain scanner and showed them photographs of rich people (smart suits) and poor people (matted hair and formless coats).  The brain scans revealed that when the volunteers saw pictures of rich people the prefrontal cortex activated.  From previous research, scientists have learned that this area is activated when a person sees another human.

However, when the volunteers saw pictures of homeless people, that area did not activate.  The disturbing finding was the homeless were seen as objects, not humans. 

Sometimes I can dehumanize a homeless person - someone who is created in the image of God - simply by looking at the clothes they are wearing.  

Question: How can I stop doing that?  

Identifying with the materially poor person is helpful.  Martin Luther King believed that we are dependent on each other and sought for “brotherhood” and “total interrelatedness.”  He believed that changing laws was not enough and that changing attitudes was important.  

The empathy you cultivate with today’s challenge will remind you that we are all made in the image of God, and we all have the capacity to have fellowship with God.  This gives all humans worth/value and dignity, with no person higher than another.

Well done for engaging in today’s activity! As you wear the same clothes you wore yesterday, you are opening yourself to perceiving things differently.  You are choosing to experience for a day the lowered self-esteem, the indignity and injustice the materially poor feel wearing the same clothes over and over.  

As we turn to the scripture for the day, ask the Lord to help you perceive everyone as He does.