Stop Judging!

 

"For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same thing.” (Romans 2:1)

So often we judge others. We think to ourselves, “I would never do that!” Or we say to someone else, “Can you believe he just did that?” or “How could she do such a thing?” When we focus on the behavior of others, it is a way of distracting ourselves so that we don’t have to look at our own sinful behaviors. It is painful to look at ourselves and see the dark places in our hearts. We are all capable of doing evil things and if we chose to not believe this than we are condemning ourselves. If we think we are not capable of doing evil, we are putting on blinders to our own sinful behaviors. We chose to ignore the times that we wish harm on someone who has betrayed us; the times we have torn someone down through our gossip; the times we have ignored the needs of those around us while we over-indulge. When we do these things we either rationalize our behavior or are filled with shame. Shame because we are doing the very thing that we so harshly judged someone else for doing. Both of these responses prevent God’s grace from working in our lives. We often hold God’s “priceless kindness, forbearance and patience in low esteem.” We diminish God’s abilities by our closed-minded way of thinking. We need to allow His grandeur to be unbound by our pettiness.

God is creating us moment by moment; we are constantly being called to follow him. Conversion is a life-long process so we should be focusing on how we can become more Christ-like instead of judging what others are doing. We need to pray for God to reveal to us the places within us that need to be refined by the fire of his love. At the end of each day, through prayer, we need to look back on the day and see where we faltered (or fell flat on our face) and where we allowed God to work in our lives by being open to Him. We ask for forgiveness for the wrong we have done and we ask for the strength to follow his precepts the next time we are faced with the temptation to do our will and not his. We give thanks for the grace he has given us to do his will and live our lives as we are called to live as his sons and daughters. By doing this, we learn to detect God’s presence throughout our day and discern his direction for us in our daily lives.