Monday 25 June
Matthew 7:1-5
The Russian playwright Chekhov said wisely, ‘You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.’ If you had to mark yourself out of ten for judging others, how high would you score? We must all be quite high scorers in this department because Jesus teaches about it in the Sermon on the Mount. As a rule of thumb, if it is in the Sermon on the Mount it is (a) very important and (b) something we all suffer from (in varying degrees).
The thing about judging others is we often get it wrong. Of course, we all like to think we are good judges of character and seldom get it wrong. Yet our judgements about others are often impulsive and rash, and we make statements like, ‘I thought that about him [or her] the minute I met them.’ Really? St Alphonsus Liguori said, ‘We must neither judge nor suspect evil of our neighbour without good grounds.’ And St Catherine of Siena said, ‘When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safe side. It may be that thy judgement is false.’
The problem with judging others is that we frequently do not have all the facts and rarely ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to judge anybody?’ God is in the business of judging and we should leave all judgement to him because his judgement is perfect, just and merciful. There is, however, one person whom we should judge and not be afraid of doing so: ourselves. Remarkably and perversely we don’t judge ourselves anywhere near as harshly as we do others.
We are also selective about the things we find worthy of judgement. Sexual weakness and failure tends to receive the full wrath of our judgement, while we are less condemning of gluttony or financial greed and other sins. In sport there is the well-known saying, ‘Keep your eye on the ball.’ Well, in living the Christian life we are called to ‘keep our eye on ourselves’. We might be able to remove the speck from our brother’s or sister’s eye and help them and serve them in this way. But not until we have turned our attention to the particularly large and cumbersome plank in our own eye!
Lord, teach me not to judge – lest I be judged. Teach me to be kind and merciful, and not rash and quick to judge others.
2 Kings 17:5-8, 13-15, 18 • Psalm 59(60):3-5, 12-13
Matthew 7:1-5
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