If you do not judge you are probably:
stupid
irresponsible
or a liar
People get their knickers in a twist over this. Have you noticed that when someone resorts to telling you 'you shouldn't judge' that they are doing precisely that! They are judging you!
(As in recent correspondent regarding my Nonsense post. It seems that at least two, one wrote by email, thought I was writing about them personally. If this is the case, then I can only assume they think in the manner I wrote about and that somehow I must have known this.)
Back to the point.
We all make judgements everyday. More importantly, we judge others daily, hourly, minutely even!
Huh! I hear you shriek, I DO NOT JUDGE. I am a good person. Bollocks!(English for rubbish) I say.
You do. If you don't, you need locking up and medicating . If you have children, they need to be taken away and given to someone who knows how to care for them and who does not endanger their lives.
Someone knocks at your door. You open it. You see a stranger. If you do not judge, you let him in, let him play with your children. You leave him to it whilst you go out to the shops. This man was a god send. You can get away without the children for a while.
Or it's evening time and you are walking alone along the street and you see a crowd of skinheads coming your way. You stay where you are and smile at them when you get up close.
Or you are on a country lane at night, two men step out in front of your car and ask you to take one them to get fuel as their car ran out. If you do not judge, you willingly do this. If you judge, you recognise your vulnerability and refuse, ready to put your foot down on the accelerator should the need arise.
Okay I think I made the point. (That last one happened to me-I realised that being in my physical state, I was not able to defend myself if they were not genuine.)
Now if the commandment was DO NOT CONDEMN, LEST YOU BE CONDEMNED it would make more sense.
It is never a good idea to condemn anyone. No one is beyond redemption, no one is without the tiniest bit of light in them. Above all, no one is so above reproach that they have the right to condemn anyone else.
People who do this, and there many who do so in the name of their god, are behaving in a vile and unrighteous manner.
Condemning an action as wrong can be sensible. However, even then it is not simple. Things are not black and white. For example, THOU SHALT NOT KILL. There are times when killing is the right thing to do or the most compassionate thing to do, or the lesser of evils. It means we have to use our brains.
Of course scholars say that the commandment is Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder. which makes more sense.
Oh and if you align yourself with a particular belief system, do not be surprised when others take this to mean you believe certain things. One would be a cretin if one announced one is in the KKK or BNP and then get upset when others assume one is a racist!
Rather the same as when one announces one follows a certain faith and then gets upset when one is assumed to be a believer in the principles and edicts of that faith.....
I'm not willing to let this go...
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Knitting is still going on, but I've lost of bit of the mojo. It's OK I
always get it back and I highly doubt it won't this time as well. I am
t...
5 months ago
6 comments:
There is a difference between the day to day judgments you describe and being judgmental. It is a matter of degree.
Anonymous-please give an example so we know what you mean by 'judgemental'.
In one of your examples, you rightly listed caution in certain neighborhoods. Knowing someone comes from one of those places and saying that they are all thieves, drug dealers, prostitutes, gang members or dishonest would be judgmental. There would of course be people there that are...and inviting them all into your home for lattes would be foolish and poor judgment.
If you were hiring for a job and would not even interview someone from this area simply because that is where they come from and said they are all crooks, would be judgmental.
If you were an agency that was hiring nannies and the applicant had just gotten out of prison, that would be prudent.
If the person had a clean record and good references, but they had to be a crook or they would not live there, that would be judgmental.
And you are right, judgments are made every day. We all make judgments.
Dear Anon - Thank you for your clarification of what you meant. It is not the word I would use-I use bigoted. However, I think we are on the same page. I still think though that mostly we need to learn not to condemn others. We see and hear others doings this all the time. Religious speakers especially. Though not just them. Labelling people as evil because their ideas are different of they look different is juts such an example of condemning. Or another way is that by doing so they label some others as 'not as good us'. Condemnation of people rather than behaviour and ideas is endemic.
A term has crept into my language if it has been around for ever, which is "risk assessment". I think as a person or an individual you are risk assessing all the time. Should I carry this lot down the stairs at once and if I do will I fall down the lot of them.
I agree I would use the term bigoted, although I really hope I am not.
I think, try as we might that we all probably are a tad bigoted. Awareness is very helpful though, and if we strive for treating each other with love and respect, it certainly helps to keep the biases down.
Religious groups are not going to be exempt from the foibles of man or group mentality...unfortunately there will be those who do not practice their faith as well as they should in every group (even the non-religious ones, where they have certain beliefs related to how we should treat each other).
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