This was submitted to
me by someone who wishes to remain anonymous. The points made have really resonated with me, so I felt it
was important to post it.
Some recent events in my family have presented me with a
front-row seat and even a participatory role in troubled relationships and
after pondering (i.e. stewing and obsessing over) what happened, trying to
understand where I went wrong, and trying to separate that from what others have
done to hurt me, I’ve begun to realize the wrong I did happened because I have
been judgmental.
Sometimes it is really hard for us to tell when we are being
judgmental. We can see pretty well
when other people are doing it, but when we are doing it, we would bristle if
someone else told us we were.
Thankfully, I remembered President Uchtdorf’s talk “The
Merciful Obtain Mercy” in April 2012 conference, the one in which he gives that
two word instruction, “Stop it.” I
didn’t remember him saying much about being judgmental, but I checked the rest
of his talk and found just what I needed to know. In fact, he laid it all out for us so we can tell when we
are being judgmental.
“When we feel hurt, angry, or
envious, it is quite easy to judge other people, often assigning dark motives
to their actions in order to justify our own feelings of resentment.”
There it is—being judgmental is to assign dark motives to
other people’s actions.
“But when it comes to our own
prejudices and grievances, we too often justify our anger as righteous and our
judgment as reliable and only appropriate. Though we cannot look into another’s heart, we assume that
we know a bad motive or even a bad person when we see one. We make exceptions when it comes to our
own bitterness because we feel that, in our case, we have all the information
we need to hold someone else in contempt.”
There’s how it happened—I assumed that I had all the
information I needed to assign those dark motives, even though I can’t look
into another’s heart. (To really
look into another person’s heart requires discernment, which is one of the
gifts of the Spirit and comes from God, and it therefore will be exhibited with
charity, not hostility or contempt.)
That’s how every judgmental thing I’ve said or did has
happened. And here’s another
thing—I’ve realized I’ve frequently been judgmental of myself, assigning dark
motives to myself, which is really strange. You’d think I’d know my own heart, but often I fail to
take all circumstances into account when I judge myself—like failing to take
into account my own ignorance, or ignoring the forces and influences that exert
pressure on me, or expecting that if everything I do doesn’t come easily
there’s something wrong with me, or expecting more of myself than I’d expect of
another person in my circumstances.
I’ve learned through personal experience that we can’t reach
out to rescue the lost if we are simultaneously judging them for being
lost. We can’t lift and inspire
the people around us if we hold them in contempt for breaking commandments of
which they know little to nothing.
A number of years ago when road rage was becoming more and
more talked about, I heard someone share what they did to try to keep from
getting angry at aggressive drivers.
They said that when an aggressive driver cut them off to an exit or
tail-gated them, they tried to make up stories about what circumstances might
be leading the aggressive driver to feel like they had to drive like that. Maybe the aggressive driver just found
out their wife had been taken to the hospital. Maybe they had a job interview to go to. Maybe they were late for a plane. That advice stuck with me, and it is
one reason I’ve been able to avoid road rage.
At the heart of that advice is the principle
that the stories we tell ourselves about why people act the way they do plays a
big part in the way we think about them and guides us in choosing the way we
treat them. And as President
Uchtdorf said, we hardly ever have all the facts about what they did, why they
did it, what they know about right and wrong, and so on.
Moral decadence is increasing in our society, which means
that not only will we be tempted by it, we will be tempted to be judgmental of
it. To carve a safe place
for ourselves when moral decadence is increasing means we will have to develop
the ability to communicate our values without being judgmental.
Here are some judgmental assumptions we may make, which will
definitely color our communication:
·
They’ll get mad if I ask them to stop.
·
They won’t care if I ask them to stop.
·
If I try to tell them why we think it is wrong,
they won’t understand.
·
If I try to explain, they won’t want to listen.
·
Even if they do understand, they’ll do it
anyway, just to make me uncomfortable.
Instead, we must assume bravely:
·
They’ll be curious and want to understand
particulars if I am kind and show concern for them.
·
They’ll be willing to listen.
·
They’ll try to understand if I communicate well
enough.
·
If they understand, they will care enough to
help me and want to change what’s wrong.
·
If they can’t or won’t stop, there must be
something that makes it very difficult for them that I don’t know about.
Let’s take some examples of different cases when there is a
temptation to be judgmental and examine the assumptions that bring this
about.
We just had an election and President Obama was re-elected
president. It is tempting to form
some kind of conclusion that the majority of Americans are choosing evil
instead of good. But that would be
formed on a number of assumptions:
- President Obama is evil. (But he’s not. He’s human just like anyone else, and
he has a lot of pressure on him.)
- The Americans who chose Obama over Romney are bad. (But they’re not. There are a variety of reasons Obama
won. Christian Science Monitorcompiled a list of twelve reasons they saw for it, some were Obama’s positives, some
were Romney’s negatives, and some were additional factors you wouldn’t
expect.)
The stories that we tell ourselves about people who have
different political ideologies and priorities are going to impact the way we
treat them. Are we going to let
disappointment about Romney’s loss color how we treat our fellow Americans,
most of whom we don’t know?
Romney’s loss does not equate to a rejection of the gospel of Christ,
rejection of the church, or rejection of Latter-day Saints as a people.
Another example: When I visited my parents two weeks ago, I learned that my
parents were having troubles in their marriage. The atmosphere in their home seemed emotionally cold. My parents’ conversation with each
other felt strained, even when they expressed affection for each other. The first week I was helping my dad around
the house. Somehow he seemed to
withdraw from me and I felt many of my suggestions to him were ignored. I didn’t know why, but I felt that he
was treating me just like he had when I was a teenager when I had done
something wrong that he didn’t approve of. When I helped my mom the next week, she unloaded on me
a lot of things that she was frustrated about with my dad. Because I had just experienced being
ignored by my dad, I found myself identifying more with her issues than I had
before, and I began to ascribe to him an insensitive and uncaring nature, one
that was only concerned about protecting his own ego. In the heat of my agitation, I said some very judgmental
things to my dad, thinking that I was doing my mom a favor by expressing things
I thought my mom would want said.
I look back at it now as an epic failure, when judgmental-ness won.
Also while visiting my parents, I learned from one of my
brothers that he didn’t believe in the church any more. It hurt to know that he rejected something
that was so dear to me. But having
just been working through President Monson’s biography To the Rescue, I felt that I should at least try to reach out to my
brother. I didn’t know how to do
it. I got the idea to ask him the
question, “Even if you don’t believe in the church, what do you believe
in?” I didn’t know what to expect,
and I suspected I would have to do a lot of listening, and I just hoped that I
could keep from feeling threatened enough to keep listening. I suspected that he needed to feel
heard. So I asked him, and that
started a conversation in which he told me things that he said he had never
told anyone else, and he allowed me to share gospel principles that would help
him. In one way, it was just as
disturbing as the situation with my parents, but from the perspective of
avoiding being judgmental, it was an absolute triumph.
There have been times I held back from sharing the gospel
with somebody because I assumed they wouldn’t listen. I’ve realized that was a judgmental assumption to make. I also recognize this has become kind
of a thought habit for me and instead I will need to practice assuming people
will be curious about the gospel.
I’ve felt the need to stand up for my standards, but looking
back I can see the difference between when I did it in a judgmental way and
when I did it with respect and kindness.
Speaking judgmentally rarely went over well and when rebuffed (as I
probably deserved), I went into a bruised hunker-down-it’s-us-against-the-world
mentality of defensiveness. On the
other hand, when I made my concerns known with the assumption they (whoever they were) would
understand, feel the same way, and help, then I had a lot more success. For instance, when I object to a
magazine cover in a grocery line, I assume that the clerk had no control over
its placement and I let him or her know the revealing clothing of the magazine
model makes me uncomfortable. I
ask him or her to let the store manager know. When I have expressed myself this way, without fail the clerk
has confided to me that same magazine made them uncomfortable too! They promise they will pass my concerns
along and I know that I have not alienated them.
Throughout life there will be many times when we see people
do wrong things. Sometimes we will
be in a position to correct them and even have the responsibility to do so, in
which case we will have to communicate very carefully, reproving clearly, with
persuasion and meekness, showing an increase of love afterward. Most of the time, however, we will not be able to do anything
about it. It will be very tempting
to be judgmental, but we can’t do that without condemning ourselves for judging
unrighteously—judging without any of the facts.
Our tendency to judge others often takes us by surprise. If we see a teenager boy with orange-dyed hair spiked in a mohawk, almost without thinking we say to ourselves, "Oh, he must be rebellious." It is up to us to recognize what we are doing, remind ourselves of our ignorance, and begin constructing a more favorable mental narrative on their behalf. There are other explanations for the hair that might make sense if we knew what they were. Perhaps that orange-spikey hair is a loud plea to be noticed. Perhaps it represents a soul so bruised that he wishes to intimidate people so that they will not bully him. We don't need to excuse the hair, we only need to understand it.
Here are some steps I’ve thought of to help avoid being judgmental:
1. When
you find yourself making a judgment about someone, ask yourself what
assumptions you are basing your judgment on.
2. Examine
your assumptions about that person.
Are you assuming good things about the person or bad things? Are you assuming they have good motives
or bad motives? Assigning dark
motives and evil intent leads to being judgmental.
3. Remind
yourself that you do not know all the facts.
4. Remind
yourself that the person may not understand that what they are doing is
wrong. (Ask yourself, “How easy
does our culture make it to learn right and wrong?”)
5. Remind
yourself that you do not know the person and the struggles they are going
through.
6. Try
to imagine what combination of events or process of inner struggle may have
brought that behavior out, or try to imagine what inner drives are at work.
7. Remind
yourself that the person is a beloved child of God just like you.
8. Realize
that the characteristic you judge in someone else is something you fear within
yourself, something you hope you never have to deal with, or something you hope
you got over.
9. Forgive
the person and pray for them.
10. Accept
that the person just is who they are,
a complex being.
11. Love
them. Remember that just as you
deserve to be loved, so do other people deserve to be loved. It is unreasonable to expect a person
to be perfect before you can love them.
What experiences have you had in which you were able to overcome the tendency to be judgmental?
