Judging Others

From teachings on Real Love by Greg Baer come these thoughts, which I relate to Jesus's teachings on judging others.

How easy it is for us to focus on what other people are doing that we don't like or approve of, instead of looking at what we can do to create the happiness we say we want to find in our lives. Every time we put our attention to something we have no control over (like other people's choices) we set ourselves up to go straight into our own Getting and Protecting Behaviors and pursuit of Imitation love: we feel like a victim because of what they are doing, or we attack and feel powerful as we criticize and judge others (as we gossip or become offended or just make loud judgments as we listen to the news), we find praise as we decide we're so much better than those offending others, and we can feel safe as we surround ourselves with other people and ideas that don't challenge us.

We make other people's mistakes our business whenever we criticize, judge, ridicule, condemn or blame them. We make their mistakes our business when we feel hurt or victimized by them. We even do this when we feel sorry for them. We do these things consciously and unconsciously, and probably more often than we even realize.

The trouble with all of this is, of course, that we can never be happy when we go down this road. Remember, the three pieces of the happiness puzzle are to 1.) feel loved, 2.) be loving and 3.) be responsible. When we focus on other people's mistakes, we make it impossible to do any of these - we can't feel loved when we're worrying about what other people are doing that we don't like, we certainly aren't being loving while we're judging and criticizing or fearing them, and we're not taking responsibility for what we do have control over, like taking the steps to do #1 and #2: feel loved and be loving.

Matthew 7: 1-5 Judging Others

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.