Ugly on the inside

I recently got into a Facebook argument with some ladies I don't know. You ever do that? You get in a fight with strangers over a mutual friends post? My cousin was bitchin about basically having a dress code at church. She said at her church you were expected to dress a certain way. She was lamenting that the church had lost sight of it's purpose which is to worship and glorify God. It bothered her a lot. It bothered me too. In the 33 or so years I've known my cousin, she's always dressed modestly. So I'm not sure if her church had issues with her dress or someone else's and she was simply defending that other person. Either way, when these self-righteous ladies started going off about how you gotta look good in church, I lost my mind. Their argument was that your outward appearance was a direct reflection of how you look on the inside. Basically if you dress nice (according to their standards) then you are spiritually right with God. Amen! Preach it, sisters! When I asked them to back up their claim with the Bible, they wouldn't and couldn't. One of them even said it wasn't in the bible. You don't say?!
I just got back from the Bahamas a couple weeks ago. Stayed in Nassau. Wonderful people. Loved how laid back they are. Something I noticed while riding the bus: the outside ring of the island where the beaches are, where all the tourists are, is kept clean and pretty. There are litter crews working early every morning to make it look good for all the visitors. But if you head inland where the tourists don't go, it's a whole different world. It's dirty and ugly. The streets are bad and lined with filth. The buildings and houses are poorly kept. You see what I'm getting at? They keep the part of the island that people see all pretty and clean so we think it's a tropical paradise. But the inside is still ugly. I think the ladies at my cousins church are a lot like Nassau. They primp and prep and make themselves all pretty on the outside, hoping we won't take notice of how they look on the inside. Unfortunately for them, God doesn't look at our outward beauty. He looks inside at our hearts.