I have been thinking about judgment these last few weeks, and it has pressured me to come to a conclusion that satisfies me in some way.
It all started for me from the Bible verses found in Matthew 7:
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
I started digesting this from the point that judging others is not a good idea. Right? Because it is not. It is never a good idea to waste energy and time you could be using efficiently on judging someone else.
But, and there is always a but, how do I manage the people I interact with correctly? I’m not allowed to let myself fall into the naive premise that all people are good. Because they are not.
This is what I found out after reflecting, quite a bit, on the subject.
First of all, and this is scary, the same measure you use to judge others, you also use to judge yourself. If you call someone stupid, let’s say, fake or evil, you will also call yourself that. And, what is more scary than that, by judging someone you attract into your life the same experience they are going through. We don’t know what people are going through in their lives. What kind of childhood they had, and so on. And by judging them in one moment of their life, we attract into our life the experiences they had. It’s like God says, well, here you go, tough guy, let’s see how you handle the same pain and suffering that the person you are judging is carrying. Show us how it is supposed to get done.
So, no judging!
But this immediately raised the question in my mind: How am I supposed to navigate human interaction? Because not all people are good.
And, out of nowhere, the answer came like it always does.
Separate the human, the person, from the action and interact with the human for as long and as deeply as you want.
Let’s say Michael is a relative of yours and, from time to time, you need to interact with him. But Michail tends to lie quite a bit. If you judge him, you call him a liar in your mind and heart, but you also call him a liar when you talk about him behind his back.
To not judge Michael is to say Michael tends to lie quite a bit, and I have no idea why he does that. And you say this in your own mind, your own heart, and you don’t feel the need to share it with anyone else because you can’t be 100% sure that if he is lying to you, he is lying to anyone else. Right?
Separate the person from the action. Don’t judge the person. Judge the action.
When you do all that, you can now control the time of interaction you have with Michael and also how deep you want your interaction to go with them.
To bring that into perspective, we get Matthew 7 back into the conversation when Jesus said: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”
Judge the action and not the person to make sure you don’t attract someone else’s misfortune into your own life. And after that, control the time and deepness of the interaction.
Remember that you can only help or save those who want to help or save themselves.
I hope you found this helpful.
With love, yours truly, Cristian.