"JUDGE NOT, JUST LOVE!"
"Judge Not, Just Love!"..........
It was Bob Marley who declared: “Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I’m not perfect and I don’t live to be, but before you start pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean!” Our conflicts and false judgments about others often occur because of our surety that we have the whole story, and a wider perspective simply couldn’t be possible. Yet how many times did you learn a piece of information, only to find out that this was just the tip of the iceberg? It seems that people these days are a little too quick to pass judgment on others. Many people are so ready to judge that they don't take the time to understand the whole story. Sometimes judging others is where problems can originate causing us to blame others for everything, when instead we need to ask God to purify our own hearts to progress in faith, love and life. Jesus said, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:1–2). I feel from my personal prayer that this teaching of Jesus is widely misunderstood. A common reduction we often hear is, “Don’t judge me.” What’s interesting is that this reduction is the inverse application of Jesus’s lesson. Jesus is not telling others not to judge us; he’s telling us not to judge others. What others do is not our primary concern; what we do is our primary concern. Our biggest problem is not how others judge us, but how we judge others.
Judge at your own risk!
How we judge others says far more about us than how we are judged by others. It’s not wrong to lovingly and caringly help a person remove a harmful speck from their eye. It’s wrong to self-righteously point out a speck in their eye when we ignore, as no big deal, the ridiculous huge speck protruding from our own. So, Jesus is placing, as it were, a shining-red-blinking danger sign over others that tells us, “Caution: judge at your own risk.” It is meant to give us a serious pause and to examine ourselves before saying anything. Our fallen nature is profoundly selfish and proud and often hypocritical, judging ourselves indulgently and others severely. We are quick to take tweezers to another’s eye when we need a forklift for our own. It is better to “judge not” than to judge like this, since we will be judged in the same way we judge others. Therefore, when we judge, we must take great care of our judgment that it is good character building, like Christ’s, which is always profoundly charitable, helpful and loving.
Know the Full Story
I was at mass one evening recently, and after it I stayed on for the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and decided to look up a prayer on the internet on my phone. I always enjoy the quietness of the church during the exposition of a holy hour. After a short while looking for my favourite prayer on my phone I found it and started to recite it in my mind so that I could meditate on it, when I got a sudden tap on the shoulder from another parishioner admonishing me for using my phone in the church and that I should be ashamed of myself. I was shocked but told them I was using it as a prayerbook and showed them the prayer I had uploaded onto my phone. After they saw the prayer they apologised for their mistake and said that they would offer up their prayers for me that evening. I was thankful for their prayers because lately I have been feeling so down in the dumps and felt I needed all the prayers I could get that evening! I left the church that night thinking how sometimes we can read situations wrongly at times and accuse or point the finger at people falsely or without finding out the real truth of a situation before we make a judgement about another person. It also reminded me of the brilliant story by Texas Tyler about the Soldier and 'The Deck of Cards' my Dad used to tell me about when I was a young boy. I think it went as follows.
The Soldier and the Deck of Cards
A young soldier was in his bunkhouse all alone one Sunday morning. It was quiet that day, the guns and the mortars, and land mines for some reason hadn't made a noise. The young soldier knew it was Sunday, the holiest day of the week. As he was sitting there, he got out an old deck of cards and laid them out across his bunk. Just then an Army Sergeant came in and asked, "Why aren't you with the rest of the platoon?" The soldier replied, "I thought I would stay behind and spend some time with the Lord." The sergeant angrily said, "Looks like you're going to play cards." The soldier said, "No sir, you see, since we are not allowed to have Bibles or other spiritual books in this country, I've decided to talk to the Lord by studying this deck of cards." The sergeant asked in disbelief, "How will you do that?"
"You see the Ace, Sergeant, it reminds me that there is only one God. The Two represents the two parts of the Bible, Old and New Testaments. The Three represents the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Four stands for the Four Apostles: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Five is for the five virgins, there were ten, but only five of them were thankful and glorified. The Six is for the six days it took God to create the Heavens and Earth. The Seven is for the day God rested after working the six days. The Eight is for the family of Noah and his wife, their three sons and their wives, in which God saved the eight people from the flood that destroyed the earth for the first time. The Nine is for the lepers that Jesus cleansed of leprosy. He cleansed ten but nine never thanked Him. The Ten represents the Ten Commandments that God handed down to Moses on tablets made of stone. The Jack is a reminder of Satan. One of God's first angels, but he got kicked out of heaven for his sly and wicked ways and is now the Joker of eternal hell. The Queen stands for the Virgin Mary. The King stands for Jesus, for he is the King of all kings. When I count the dots on all the cards, I come up with 365 total, one for every day of the year. There are a total of 52 cards in a deck, each is a week, 52 weeks in a year. The four suits represent the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Each suit has thirteen cards, there are exactly thirteen weeks in a quarter. So when I want to talk to God and thank Him, I just pull out this old deck of cards and they remind me of all that I have to be thankful for."
The sergeant just stood there and after a minute, with tears in his eyes and pain in his heart, he said, "Soldier, can I borrow that deck of cards?"
As a final thought, never judge anyone until you know the real truth of the situation and even then always try and keep custody of your tongue, thoughts and judgements. Pope Francis recently encouraged us to look to Mary, "who changed history through the purity of her heart," in order to help us to purify our hearts and so overcome the vices of blaming, judging others and complaining, and to keep faith at the center of our lives. Never judge anyone because you never know how their life is and what they’re going through. Last but not the least, let’s quote Paulo Coelho and say, "We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. So judge less, accept more, and restore your happiness. How we judge others says far more about us than how we are judged by others. This is why God will judge us in the manner we judge others, not in the manner they judge us." Therefore, we must judge with "right judgment" (John 7:24). And "right judgment" is charitably quick to believe innocence, charitably slow to pronounce guilt, charitably redemptive when it must be, and charitably silent if at all possible. And when in doubt, “judge not, just love!”????????????????????"