How Did I Miss That?

Part 6: Judgment is Self-Incriminating

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. Matthew 7:1-5

I remember being taught that whenever I point a finger at someone, three fingers point back at me. It was a lesson in judgment – as in, be careful when tempted to criticize others. Most of us are at least partially blind to our own shortcomings. The very traits we loath in others are frequently the traits we dislike in ourselves. Author William Wharton writes: “What we all tend to complain about most in other people are those things we don’t like about ourselves.”

I am ashamed to confess how judgmental I can be. I not only judge the words and actions of others, I judge their motives. There is no way for me to know the motivations of another. As individuals and as a society, we gossip ruthlessly, we bully, and we discriminate. Rendering harsh judgments has become such a common and accepted practice we hardly realize we are doing it. When we judge behind another’s back, we do it not so much to tear others down as to build ourselves up. How did we become so insecure as to desire to build our self-esteem by tearing others down?

The tendency to judge others is not new. Two thousand years ago, Jesus spoke harshly about casting judgment, telling us to attend to the “log” in our own eye before worrying about the “speck” in the eye of another. We will be judged by the same measure we use to judge others. He called us “hypocrites.” None of us is perfect or righteous enough to stand in judgment of another – especially when that criticism is unfair and unfounded.

This is why I grow so weary of political campaigns – candidates consistently try to build themselves up by pronouncing judgments of unworthiness upon their opponents. The fact that I am so bothered by this, unfortunately, is probably an indication that I tend to do the same thing. Ugh. Perhaps it is like a collective balloon being squeezed at one end, causing the other end to expand. Whenever I deny or repress undesirable parts of myself, those thoughts or actions enter my awareness through others.

One of the clearest commands of Jesus was to love each other. Mother Teresa (of Calcutta) said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” This may capture the core evil of judgment – that we cannot love and judge at the same time. Perhaps, instead of criticizing another, we should be looking within for something we can improve in ourselves. In the words of Fr. Richard Rohr, “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”

Judgement is self-incriminating. How did I miss that?