Judging

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." -Mother Theresa

Judging others is something we are born with an instinct to do. As babies and children, we cannot help ourselves. If someone is smelly or ugly, we dislike them, and let them know why. In elementary school, I can remember thinking that certain children were stupid because of the way they looked. In middle school, I recall thinking I was better than other kids if they were the same dirty clothes to school every day. And don't even get me started on high school. But as we get older, we slowly learn. In high school I would still judge people, but I would not say anything bad to the people I was judging, because I respected their feelings, and didn't want to get beat up.


Things became more real for me in college. I was working more, meeting more people, and living at a huge University. My instictual judging habits had not gone away, but I was starting to realize that I was often wrong about people. The ugly kid down the hall had a great sense of humor. The bottle-blonde gorgeous girl in my class was actually a devout Catholic and a virgin. My roommate, who refused to wear anything other than sweats and flip flops, was actually from a very wealthy family. I took a moment to reflect on all of this, and decided to try to stop judging people.

Not judging people makes life much more fun. You can make many more friends, hear very interesting stories, and meet people that care about your stories, too.

If you look around, you will see that judgement is all around us. In our families, in our communities, and on the news.

In our families:

A mother will get upset if her teenage daughter is hanging out with a goth-looking pierced up boy, and secretly wish her daughter would choose better boys, such as the All-American high school quarterback down the street. Little does she know, the goth boy is a straight-edge gentleman, and the jock is a binge drinker who pressures girls into sex.

In our communities:

The local quik-mart owner gets jitters every time a black man walks into his store. He is so busy watching the honest black man collecting items around the store that he needs for his family, that he is completely unaware of the elderly lady stuffing phone cards into her purse..

On the news:

Political activists and Church leaders are at war over gay rights, both judging each other over what is right vs. what is wrong. Would they ever take the time to get to know each other? The gays are fighting for love, and the Church is supposed to love, so why the war when they want the same thing?

By telling people what is right and what is wrong, what they should and shouldn't do, you are judging them. We are all guilty of it, and we are ALL wrong. There is only one person who should be judging anyone, and that is God. For those of us who have no God, the world should be free of judgement.

My resolution is to continue my path of judging people less and less, and hopefully as I get older and wiser, I will stop this nasty habit altogether. By forcing our values on others, we are judging them, and this needs to stop. Lets take Mother Theresa's advice, and simply love them.