Monday of the 2nd
Week of Lent
March 17, 2014 8:30am
In everyday life, our natural
tendency is to judge.
We judge today’s weather as good
or bad, we judge food as tasty or tasteless, we may judge someone’s clothes as
stylish or shabby, and on it goes.
Our natural tendency is to form
an opinion and judge just about everything.
This often includes making
judgments about people.
We may judge others because of
something they say, their hairstyle, their political opinions, their ideas
about faith and religion, and on it goes.
One author says, I think
insightfully, that when we do this, there is a triple loss: our loss, their
loss, and the community’s loss.
First, our loss – because we fail
to see and appreciate the real person.
We cannot judge another unless we
have been in their position.
And since we can never be in
exactly the same place and life circumstance as another person, we really
cannot judge them.
When we judge them as good or
bad, as worthy or unworthy, it is our loss because we almost always miss the
real person that is there.
Then it is also their loss –
because we are all injured when we are judged.
We are stereotyped and
pigeon-holed.
We get frozen in place.
When we are judged, it is hard to
grow and hard to feel connected, much less supported by others.
And finally, it is the
community’s loss – because the community is injured.
People are not valued and
respected when this kind of judgment takes place.
The community loses out from
having the potentials of people unfulfilled.
And the community may not grow in
its ways or thinking because of this.
So Jesus gives us quite a
challenge today.
He calls us to be as caring and
as empathetic as God himself and to refrain from judging one another.
Taking people where they are and
moving on from there – that is Jesus’ way and it had some pretty good results.
Jesus calls us to take the same
approach.
