About a month ago I took my mom to a 3 month follow up
appointment with the eye doctor who performed her cataract surgery. The area we live in is pretty rural so it’s a
long drive to these appointments. It's 200
miles round trip to be exact which feels even longer than usual when driving in
a car with an air conditioner on the fritz.
To top it all off, I would have to wait in the car because of social
distancing restrictions due to the COVID-19 virus. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the trip
since this was our third time making this trip in three weeks.
Once we arrived at the center, I pulled into the parking lot
to drop mom off at the front door. There
was a vehicle just parked in the drop off area, no driver waiting, just a
parked vehicle. I, of course, start
complaining about people parking where they’re not supposed to and the
inconvenience it causes me because I should be able to drop my mom off right at
the door without having to maneuver around some incorrectly, inconsiderately
parked vehicle.
Mom goes inside for her appointment, I find a parking spot
nearby where I can see the door to pick her up when she’s done, and decide to
take my mind off the bad mood I was in by finding something uplifting and
spiritual to read or listen too. A few
minutes later I see a person exit the building and approach the offensively
parked car. As I’m sitting there trying
to decide whether to give them the “how stupid are you” glare as they leave, I
see an aide from the surgical center pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair
toward the vehicle. And then, slowly,
the realization of what I’m seeing washes over me and I feel absolutely awful.
The woman in the wheelchair had just had surgery, the driver
of the car had only just moved it there not long before we arrived and there
had probably been other cars in the pick-up area keeping them from pulling all
the way up, then they went in and got the discharge instructions and belongings
of the patient. So, I’m sitting there
watching them load up, calling myself a “hateful, horrible, awful person”, and
God, in that very gentle way He does, shows me that this is one of the reasons
why he tells us not to judge others.
We hear all the time that we shouldn’t judge others because
we don’t know what’s going on in their hearts and what work God may be doing
with them. It is a very true, very valid
argument for not judging, but what if there’s more to it than that? What if the reason God tells us not to judge
others is because of what it does to us?
Multiple studies published in multiple psychological
journals talk about the psychological and physical effects of we experience
when we judge others. The more we judge,
the more we start to experience anxiety and depression because we start to
believe that others are judging us the same way we are judging them and
eventually we turn our judgement on ourselves.
Judging others can also desensitize us making us less
accepting of others and give us an incorrect perception of reality. In an article in Psychology Today from 2015,
Rubin Khoddam, Ph.D. explains, “The truth is that we, as humans, tend to fuse
with our judgments and perceive them as reality.” He goes on to explain, “So
often, what happens in arguments is that we fuse with our opinions. We fuse, meaning that we can’t tell the
difference between what our opinion is and what the reality is. And in the end our perception becomes our
reality. We end up believing our
thoughts/judgments and take our thoughts as facts. We believe that person is horrible. We believe the furniture is ugly. We believe the movie was awful. Instead of seeing our multitude of judgments
as a perception or as a lens we put on situations, we see if as truth. By doing this we subliminally create a
separation and lack of acceptance of other’s beliefs.”
The bottom line is, when we judge someone it stirs powerful
negative emotions in us, whether it is anger, cynicism, envy, anxiety,
depression, or mistrust, those negative emotions are some of the most powerful
tools Satan has at his disposal to build distance between us and God. And, the more we engage those negative
emotions, the easier it is to default to them and widen the gap between us and
God.
Scripture tells us often to love one another. John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give unto
you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one
another. By this shall all men know that
ye are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” And in Romans 13:8-10, “Owe no man any
things, but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the
law. For this, Thou shalt not commit
adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false
witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is
bfiefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love they neighbor as
thyself. Love worketh no ill to his
neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
We’re also told to go forth and share the gospel and make
disciples. It’s really hard to do those
things if we’re failing to love each other, distancing ourselves from people by
judging them, and distancing ourselves from God by engaging in the negative
emotions associated with judging and doing that which he has told us repeatedly
in scripture to not do.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you want to see
in the world.” So if I feel that the
world has become overly judgmental and unaccepting I guess that means I need to
take an honest look at myself to see what I can change before I start looking
to change others. I know altering my
pattern of judging others isn’t going to be easy; being judgmental is pretty
much my default setting. Hopefully with
a whole lot of prayer and self-control I can overcome my “hateful, horrible,
awful” self and find a kinder, gentler, less judgmental me, and then perhaps work on changing the world,
one positive thought at a time.
