So Judge-y

I try not to be judgmental.  In the past several years I've really taken to heart the notion that my job is to love everybody and it's God's job to judge--God will figure out anything that needs to be figured out.  It's not my place to decide that someone is less or more worthy than anyone else.  You could say that judging people is above my pay grade, because I am not God.  (And thank God for that).

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I mean, there's the whole judge not, lest you be judged, and ... take the plank out of your own eye before pointing out the speck in another's, and ... he who is without sin, throw the first stone, and ... the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love others.  All of those things, and more, lead me to the conclusion that I have no business judging anyone.

Y'all.  We all are guilty, and we all deserve to be judged, but not by each other.  From each other we deserve love and compassion and an effort to be kind to each other.  And I try really hard to live that out in my life.  I've always been pretty good at creating alternate realities and seeing other perspectives, so it's not too difficult for me to imagine that people have good reasons for what they do and say.  Or, at least, reasons.  Reasonable reasons.  I've also come to realize that, no matter how put together we look on the outside, nobody's life is perfect, and all of us are struggling with something.  Which makes it easier for me empathize, which makes it easier to be compassionate, which makes it easier to love.

But there is one area in which I struggle, and that is this: I judge people for being judgmental.

Ugh!  I don't want to, but I do.  I see or hear something (that I judge to be) judgmental, and it just sets my teeth on edge.  How dare they?  How dare they judge another person when God has extended so much grace in their lives?

And then I stop, and realize.  I've done it again.  I am doing the very thing that I am criticizing someone else for doing.  How dare I?  It's definitely a plank in my eye, and I'm not sure how to get it out.

I guess all I can say is I'm working on it.  With God's help, I'm working on it, because this not-judging, I can't do that without God's supernatural intervention.