Brandon Gilliland

This is a guest post from Steven Cribbs. He is a passionate follower of Jesus, and he serves on staff as the Children’s minister for his church. You can check out his blog here!

What is it that makes you notice people? The way they act? The way they talk? Do you notice people more when they blend in with the crowd; or, when they do something that is a bit different? Obviously, we notice those that are a bit different. And, we definitely notice those that are a lot different.

Whether or not we like the way that these really different people are different, there are things that we can learn from them about developing our own character.

Brandon has been writing on the concept of Character…well, actually on the concept of developing Godly Character. But, there are two important components to developing our character that we can learn from observing people whether we consider them to be “good characters” or “bad characters”.

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 [This post is part of the "Defining Character" series.]

I am sure that most of you who are reading this value character. As Christ followers, our character should represent Christ. This post is really setting the foundation for the framework of this series. So now we get to the big question:

What’s the Difference Between Reputation and Character?

According to the dictionary, we get the following definitions:

Reputation: overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general

Character:  the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual

In the last post, An Individual With Character Must Have Morals, we discussed how good morals must be present in order to have good character. If you take a look at the definitions above, you will notice that reputation is simply what others think of you. It is important for others to think highly of you, but if it is not the truth, then it is a huge problem! Character, in contrast to reputation, is the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual. Character is what someone is actually about! 

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[This is the first part of the Defining Character series. If you haven't already, please check out the intro posts for this series here.]

So I am really excited to launch this new series. I believe that God has some great content being developed already. In the “Intro to Character Series” post, we discussed what character itself means.

Character: the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual

If you look at the definition above, you will notice that character contains the “mental” and “moral” qualities distinctive to an individual. Character means a lot of things. In order to get down to the details of what character entails, we must understand and have morals (or convictions) that represent Christ.

Morals: principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conduct.

You see, our morals must reflect our convictions…which ultimately these should reflect Christ. In our world today, character is not prevalent. Although most individuals do not care about standing by convictions, they do respect the select few that do stand by their convictions.

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Thanks to the huge response to my post, Defining Character, I am going to launch a series on character. I don’t know how long it will go, but I have a few post that come to mind right now. I think that character is extremely important.

Here is how the dictionary defines character: the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.

As Christ followers, we should exhibit good character. The way we present ourselves privately and publicly shows what kind of character we have. The theme verse for this series talks about character, and it talks about how much a good name is worth:

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches,
      Loving favor rather than silver and gold.

-Proverbs 22:1

 During this series (of which I am pretty excited about because I have never launched a specific series), we will discuss the following topics the touch on character:

• Transparency
• Integrity
• Morals
• Reputation vs Character
• Leadership and Character

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I wanted to do something a little different for this post. Below is a picture that represents the word “character”.

In Proverbs 22:1, it says:

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches,
      Loving favor rather than silver and gold.

-Proverbs 22:1

Is character important to you? What exactly does character mean to you? Let me know in the comments!

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