Judging Others As a Way to Avoid Problems

  Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give, and gifts will be given to you” (Luke 6:37-38)

Let me reflect on one of the reasons we judge. This may help us to see why the Lord does not want us to judge and in what sense.

1.  “Stop judging and you will not be judged.” When there is something that we do not like in people, we have a hard time dealing with those people. Interacting with them becomes a problem for us: they make us waste time, energy, or even money. Other times we just lack the patience to be with them. If they have hurt us, dealing with them still hurts. We feel the need to avoid them but, at the same time, we need to justify our avoidance. Thus, we judge them, we label them. In this way, we convince ourselves that it is their problem, not our problem. It works like a defense mechanism: it would be too difficult to acknowledge that we should treat this person differently, that we may have to give up something in order to accommodate their needs, that we also need to change, not only they. This would be too difficult to face. But, if we think, “they are like just like that, you see, nothing you can do,” then we are free from the problem.

2.  “Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.” We may make a distinction between judging and condemning. We judge others in order to avoid having to judge ourselves, having to acknowledge that we may have a part to play in the problem. We condemn them when we do something exterior which separates that person from our lives. We condemn them in order to avoid them altogether, or as much as possible. We judge them, instead, when we cannot get rid of them but judging them justifies our not dealing with them in the right way.

3.  “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Stop judging does not mean to stop judging that the other person actually did something wrong or has a certain defect. You may interiorly judge the action, but not the person. Their action might have been bad, and very bad. But the person might not have meant it the way it appeared: we don’t know. And even if they meant it, they can change. This action does not make the person irredeemable. God did not send them a lightning after doing it, nor did He put them in hell. God is giving them time. God has hope that they may change. God is offering them an opportunity to change. God keeps giving them sunlight and rain. We should do the same. How difficult it is! And, however, have we not been spared lightnings and hell many times?

4.  “Give, and gifts will be given to you.” Give your brother a chance. When you give a chance to someone who did wrong, you give them life. You open for them a space, you break their prison and make them believe again that they can change. How many people suffer because of our lack of patience! How much we ourselves have suffered for other people’s lack of patience! Let us forgive one another. Getting rid of a brother leaves us more alone. Embracing them, even with their defects, gives us not only one more brother but also a forgiving Father in Heaven.

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