Character is much more important than reputation

Hello all my dear friends, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters all over the world!

Greetings to you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!

First of all let me wish you a very happy and prosperous new year 2022! May God continue to bless and protect us in this year, as He miraculously protected and blessed us in all the past years!

2021 too was a difficult year for many of us around the world. The Delta variant of the coronavirus wreaked havoc in India and all over the world. Another variant called Omicron has just started. I pray to God that He show mercy on us and protect us from this pandemic. May this pandemic go away soon, and our world be blessed by God again so that people can shake hands and hug each other like before.

I was reading a message recently in the internet which said that character is far more important than reputation. I meditated on it and realized that how true it is. Many times people artificially try to build a reputation for themselves by advertising about themselves to the whole world that how great they are. But in reality when nobody is watching their behaviour will be very wicked. They do all kinds of evil in their private life. Eventually one day they will get caught. When their acts and deeds are exposed, their whole reputation which they artificially built for themselves will collapse like a pack of cards. But for people of good character, there is no need to artificially build a reputation to show separately to the world. Their reputation is built by their character itself. When they do good deeds, naturally they will gain reputation and that will stay with them for their whole life. Even hundreds of years after they are no longer in the world their reputation will remain because of their good character. Remember Gandhiji's words, "If character is lost, then everything is lost!".

So my advice to all people, especially young people is that we must be much more concerned about our character than our reputation. Even if people spread lies about us and try to give us a bad name, if we continue with our good character, eventually our reputation will come back unblemished. Those who tried to spread lies about us will get the bad name themselves because of their evil actions. It does not mean that we have to be perfect every time also. Mistakes will happen. None of us are perfect. But wwe must readily accept our mistakes. That itself is a sign of good character. But if we try to cover up our mistakes or try to blame others, that is not a good thing.

Apart from character, humility is also very important. Humility is also part of good character. Humility does not mean that we should think of ourselves are less than others. It means that we must think of everybody else as equal to us. Sometimes we think that we are always right, others are wrong, etc. Instead, we must think that others can be as much right as us, we must accept that there is a possibility of us also to be wrong. So we must approach everybody with utmost respect. We must never try to exploit anybody else, no matter what their condition in life may be. Situations of life are in God's hands.

Once again, Happy New Year to all, wherever in the world you are. May God bless and protect us in His hands this year, as every year in future!