Not Something to Do

Jesus said, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged,"  (Matthew 7:1)  but, most of us do more of it than we should anyway.  Actually, any at all is too much since Jesus did not say a little is better than a lot.  What we often miss in our quick rush to passing judgment on others is that it is more of a referendum on us than the ones we are judging.  We pass judgments on others because they do not meet our expectations.  They do not do, or live the way we want them to live.  We do it because we figure we know what is best.  The point is made.  As we verbalize our judgments about the failures of others, we point very clearly to our own. 

 

The trick is in knowing who we are.   We are no different from the ones we judge.  We are all struggling at different points in our life.  None of us have it all together.  All of us are sinners in need of mercy and grace and forgiveness.  When we begin to see ourselves as one who is also in need of grace and mercy, we find that we are more concerned about what is keeping us from living as Jesus is calling us to live instead of being concerned about how we think others should live if they are really being faithful to God. 

 

We are all joined together on this journey.  Like it, or not, we are all connected to one another.  It is the divine plan.  There are no exceptions.  When we pray what we know as the Lord's Prayer, we pray that God will forgive us as we have forgiven others and in this other passage from the Sermon on the Mount, we are called to forget about judging others.  Heavy words.  Soul searching words, indeed!  Where the Word always points us and where the Spirit always leads us is not toward passing judgments and nurturing grudges, but toward a spirit of love for those we are tempted to judge.