Judgement

Recently, a friend divulged a secret they had been keeping for many years. My friend felt their life had reached a crisis point and they needed help. I initially was very shocked - not so much at the nature of the secret that was confessed to me, but the fact that I had no idea about this part of their life. It also was more hurtful to me that they felt I would condemn them for what had happened in the past and what had resurfaced from those days recently.

I assured my friend that while I didn't condone what had happened lately, they were still a good person and the same amazing friend. It’s not my place to judge.

Perhaps after attending the school of hard knocks and getting kicked around in my life, I’m more understanding of life’s pitfalls. Yet, I wondered how I would have reacted if my friend had told me what had happened when we were younger. I honestly couldn't think of how I might have reacted when I was more naive and sure of how things really worked.

Then I remembered a situation that an older girl at my high school became pregnant and how people were so judgmental and cruel to her. I remember vividly one particular classmate angrily talking about her when she was in another class. I wish I could remember if I stood up and defended her, but what I do remember is feeling appalled over what he said. I knew it was wrong then even as a young teenager.

People make mistakes, we all have different temptations, different challenges, and different thorns to prick us and make us bleed. Not one of us on this planet are impervious to stumbling. What isn't a problem for you might be for me. We never know the whole story of another person’s life. While we don’t need to support choices that we may not morally or philosophically agree with, we need to support each other as fellow brothers and sisters.

As I prayed this morning about what I could do to help my friend, an impression came to mind. What we need is more love, more patience, more understanding, more forgiveness, and more charity. What we don’t need is more judgement, more criticism, or more hate. We need love not hate. We need compassion not judgement. We need more love for ourselves and for each other.

Mother Teresa is quoted as saying, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

Let us each feel a spark to put away condemnation and embrace love for one another. Each of us needs to feel wanted, loved, cared for and remembered, regardless of our "labels." We’re all in this thing called life together so let’s lift each other up for the better.