By Chris WittsFriday 8 Jul 2022Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
There’s nothing more upsetting than knowing that other people are judging you. It’s happened to me. I felt quite angry about that – who gives that person the right to judge me. They don’t know anything about me. I’ve got a feeling this happens all the time.
It’s very easy to get caught up in making judgments that are wrong, unkind or demeaning to the other person, to say nothing of making you look small and petty. So why do we do it? Why do we judge other people? How many times have you formed an impression of someone even before you got to know them? How many times did people who barely knew you judge you?
Well, I think that when you judge someone, that says more about you than the other person. When you verbally attack someone, what are you actually doing? You’re showing how small minded you are. We’ve all judged, we’ve been judged, I guess, it might have been over some small things or bigger things.
But regardless we do it, and the question is why it seems to me that we use other people as mirrors on which to base our own view of the world and ourselves. And that’s the reason why it’s easy to judge other people.
And maybe you judge other people to make yourself feel better. It was like the mother who went shopping with a toddler. And the young guy is well behaved at the shopping centre. No tantrums until she sees another mother struggling with her screaming three year old, grabbing the toy that he wants. And you think to yourself as a mother, I must be doing a great job as a mother much better than her. So what’s the mother doing? Making a judgement. But you’ve got no idea what it’s like for that struggling mother.
And when you judge others, it can actually make you feel worse about yourself because you’re hurting other people and you can increase the negativity in your own heart and stifle the good that you can do in the world. Remember how it feels when someone judged you? Try to remember that the next time you’re judging or criticising someone.
It was Mother Teresa who said, if you judge people, you’ve got no time to love them. Now Jesus said something very clear about this Matthew, Chapter 7:1-2.
And he said, “If you judge other people, then you will find that you too are being judged. Indeed, you will be judged by the very standards to which you hold other people. Now I find that an interesting translation of Matthew 7:1-2. Very helpful. Each of us have got faulty perceptions. No one can truly judge another person with 100 percent clarity because of our own bias and, more importantly, our own sin.
We’ve got many flaws, each of us. We should be careful not to be hypocrites. If you have a look at Matthew 7 in the New Testament, you’ll find that Jesus was specifically rebuking a group called the Pharisees of their hypocrisy. They were the religious leaders who were very quick to see the scene and others. But were blind and unwilling to hold themselves accountable to that same standard that they were imposing on other people.
The Pharisees were notorious for condemning others. So when I judge another person, I’m putting them in a cage. I’m saying, I know what you’re like, what you’re capable of, but again is that right? Who is it that can say they really know? Because if I put someone in a cage, as it were, I’ve discounted the fact that God can change that person. Maybe it is that God is doing something really great in their lives, and I have done the wrong thing. I’ve misjudged them because look, I’m not God. Jesus always taught us to believe in others, even if no one else does.
Why else did he say that we were to love our enemies? And that’s because God believes that people can change. We’ve got potential. It’s not my right, or my business actually to stop God doing what he’s doing in somebody else’s life, even if I don’t particularly like that person.
It was Edward Hollis who said, “There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that’s hardly becoming any of us. Then to talk about the rest of us makes a lot of sense to me.”
How we judge another person says far more about us and how we judge other people. That’s why God will judge us in the manner we judge others not in the manner they judge us. I think Jesus is saying – it’s not up to us to have a critical, judgmental spirit.
Let’s Pray
Heavenly Father, I pray today that you will make me a more understanding person, not to be so quick in judging others, Amen.