Watch How You Judge Others

Have you heard the latest blonde joke? Blonde jokes may be funny but they by no means represent who blondes really are. Many are very intelligent people. They are easy to pick on because many of us would like to be blondes and we join in our envy with others in making fun of them.

I am short. I have heard a number of short jokes. I had someone say to me that I didn't act like a short man. I wondered if they believed the short jokes. Maybe they knew a couple of short men who acted a certain way and assumed it was their height that caused them to act that way.

People assume that overweight people are jolly. They assume that their weight reflects their capricious attitude. They may assume a number of other things about corpulent people. None of them may be true.

We take a look and make a judgment. That judgment may or may not be a true to that person. We may judge good things upon another that is also not true. We may say that Asians are hard workers or that people with glasses are studious. These may be equally wrong.

Jesus told us to watch how we judge others. In the same way we judge we will be judged. Do we really understand that? We cannot look at another and condemn that person and not expect that our own failures will condemn us. We cannot make a judgment based on the way a person looks without expecting that same judgment to fall upon us.

I realize that God is the only one who can know a person's heart. I don't even know my own many times. I have reason to believe that some people are repentant of the things they have done wrong while others are just sorry they got caught. The repentant person owns up and takes whatever punishment and the others complain about the way they are treated.

Yet, even these judgments of the repentant and the non-repentant are not based on the outside look of the person. They are not based merely on their words but on their continued actions. We must be in the business of discerning who is someone to hire and fire, who is worthy to listen to and who we should follow.

So, watch how you judge. Never judge by what you see alone. Never make a full judgment of a person or a people by one sight or one experience. Look at their continued actions and, just maybe, others will look at yours.