11.20.11

James 4:11-12 Don't speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God's law. But your job is to obey the law, not judge whether it applies to you. God alone who gave the law, is the judge.  He alone has the power to save or to destroy.  So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?

My Thoughts

This made me think of how often we judge people when we have learned how to do something... or stopped doing something... We wonder why people don't do, whatever it is we have learned to do.... after all it is easy we are doing it.  Sometimes it is out of our desire for people to experience what we have experienced from doing better. 

We have all met the smoker that doesn't smoke anymore who is the biggest critic of those who won't quit.  He is often the biggest critic because he knows it can be done.  People that manage their money, think everybody could and should manage their money. People that are really good at cleaning their house think it is easy...everybody should be doing it. We all tend to do it I think.  Even in the desire to see others do it better, be bette,r we are actually judging them. Sometimes we do it because we feel better about ourselves if we are doing something, anything, better than somebody else.

I think this is where mercy comes in... showing mercy to people that have not learned what we have learned... I know I sure want mercy from people that do life better than me... I still have so much to learn.  I can't learn it from people who judge me, I can only learn to do it better from people that are willing to help me do better. We learn so much from our families.... but often are limited to the life lessons our own family  learned before us.... I have always loved that saying "Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in their shoes."  My favorite is the Indian version "Don't judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasin's." That would be two months...but even two months is not enough to really know where someone else has come from. God tells us not to judge at all.  When we see people in need we are called to have mercy, we are called to help.

We don't really know if a person could or could not do better...we have not lived their lives... only God knows that... God knows where we have come from, where we are going. God knows when they are doing the best they can do. I am coming to understand that we have the knowledge that somebody could do better so that we can do our best step in and help them do better... but, so often, as humans we tend to use that knowledge as a basis of judgment. 

Maya Angelo says "When we know better we do better." I believe for most of us that is true.  Sometimes is seems somebody should "know better" when we are on the outside looking in... but we have no idea how they arrived at the decisions they are making. Sometime people finally know better...they have just gotten themselves in such a state that they don't know where to start to make life better.  Imagine how many of us could do better with a helping hand of mercy. The world would surly be a better place of we would each use our knowledge to reach out and help eachother.

I hope that I am learning from what God is teaching me...that the next time I notice what somebody isn't doing "right" that I reach out to help, to encourage.... I hope that anytime I am tempted to judge I use that as a reminder that I should be doing something to make the world a better place.