People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung
One of the most harmful and yet least examined impulses of human nature is that of judgement. In silent milliseconds, we can observe a fellow human being and decide if he is worthy or unworthy, right or wrong, good or bad.
And with that judgement, just as quietly but more deadly, we condemn. We From our judge’s chair while draped in our robes of black, we pass one of the many sentences available to us in our play book.
Rather than turn the other cheek, we turn our back. Rather than go the extra mile, we force them to. We hurl insults. We raise our hands in obscene gestures. We steal back what is supposedly ours. We open the floodgates of rage into our hearts and with our minds we justify the mental, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse that we heap on our accused.
And as we pass judgement and condemnation on the other, we silently and often unknowingly hold up our get-out-of-jail-free card – the one we earned by being right, righteous, good, better. We choose to be our own judge, and we always find ourselves innocent.
At stake here is not who is right and who is wrong. What is at stake is you – your state of being. The desire to set the world right is a God-given desire implanted in us. It is etched in the imago dei of our souls.
But the fulfillment of that holy desire does not and cannot come from judgement. Judgement arises from egoistic pride, arrogance, entitlement, and a withering connection to the sacred.
It is time to bring the oft-overlooked act of judgement into the light and let it be judged for what it is. It is time to acknowledge and take the beam out of our own eye. The good news is that we have a Judge who is willing to both forgive us and to teach us his way of forgiveness – freeing us to walk this earth in peace and love.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
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