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There was an incident that happened recently that just reminded me how human beings make horrible judges. According to the dictionary, the verb, “to judge” is defined as, “to infer, think, or hold as an opinion; conclude about or assess.”
First of all, since we are biased people, we cannot make a 100% spot-on judgment on everything. Secondly, we are finite; therefore our judgment on people and situations are not always 100% accurate. I say all this to preface what happened recently where I had to bring my whole family together and apologize.
About 2 months ago, we lost a miniature soccer ball that I bought for the kids to play around with in the house. Then after some time, the soccer ball just disappeared. We literally looked everywhere for it – we turned the house upside down trying to find it.
After our failed attempt to find the ball, we started to entertain the thought that someone might have possibility stolen the ball. As we went through a list of all the people that entered into our house, we came to the conclusion that some of the workers who came to fix things in our house were the guilty culprits.
In fact, I went on this speech about how we have to be careful with the people that we trust and how we must always be vigilant when workers come into our house.
Fast forward to Christmas Day.
Someone gave each of our children miniature soccer balls for Christmas. The kids were overjoyed that now they had a replacement for the ball that was stolen. Then one day as Karissa was playing with the soccer ball, she started yelling, “I found it! I found it!” Christina and I were in the kitchen area so we asked, “Found what?”
Then, she brought the “stolen” ball with holy reverence.
You should have seen our faces. We were all in shock and disbelief.
This is when I brought the whole family together and talked about passing judgment on others. But something inside of me felt that was not enough. Then, I proceeded to apologized to them for leading the charge in accusing the workers as the “soccer ball thief.” But the people that I needed to apologize to the most were the workers. Lord willing, if they ever come back to work on our house then that will be priority number one.
How often do we pass judgment on others and then at the end we realized that we were wrong?
When God judges, He judges perfectly and is justified in His judgments. But when we judge, we judge imperfectly and make unjustified judgments, which estrange and bring enmity with others.
Maybe this is why Jesus taught, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”
(Mt 7:1-2).
Thank God that He is our perfect judge!