On Judging Others
“Don’t look for the flaws as you go through life;
And even when you find them, It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind,
And look for the virtue behind them. For the cloudiest night has a hint of the light
Somewhere in its shadows hiding; It is better, by far, to look for a star
Than the spots on the sun abiding.”
IT is better to have eyes for beauty than for blemish. It is better to be able to see the roses than the thorns. It is better to have learned to look for things to commend in others than for things to condemn. Of course other people have faults, and we are not blind. But then we have faults of our own, and this should make us charitable.
We have a divine teaching on the subject. Our Lord said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” We need to understand just what the words mean. We cannot help judging others. We ought to be able to read character, and to know whether men are good or bad. As we watch men’s acts we cannot help forming opinions about them. The holier we grow and the more like Christ, the keener will be our moral judgments. We are not bidden to shut our eyes and to be blind to people’s faults and sins.
What, then, do our Lord’s words mean? It is uncharitable judgment against which he warns us. We are not to look for the evil things in others. We are not to see others through the warped glasses of prejudice and unkindly feeling. We are not to arrogate to ourselves the function of judging, as if men were answerable to us. We are to avoid a critical or censorious spirit. Nothing is said against speaking of the good in those we see and know; it is uncharitable judging and speaking that are condemned.
One reason why this is wrong is that it is putting one’s self in God’s place. He is the one Judge with whom every human soul has to do. Judgment is not ours, but God’s. “One only is the lawgiver and the judge, even he who is able to save and to destroy; but who art thou that judgest thy neighbor?” In condemning and censuring others, we are thrusting our selves into God’s seat, taking his sceptre into our hands, and presuming to exercise one of his prerogatives.
Another reason for this command is that we cannot judge others justly and fairly. We have not sufficient knowledge of them. St. Paul says: “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts.” Men’s judgments cannot be aught but partial and superficial.
We do not know what may be the causes of the faults we would condemn in others. If we did we would be more charitable toward them. Some people’s imperfections are an inheritance which they have received from their parents. They were born with the weaknesses that now mar their manhood. Or their faults have come through errors in their training and education. The nurse fell with the baby, and all down along the years the man goes about with a lameness or a deformity which mars his beauty of form. But he is not responsible for the marring, and criticism of the wounding in him would be cruel and unjust. There are hurts in character, woundings of the soul, which it is quite as unjust to condemn with anything but pity, for they are the inheritance of other men’s wrong-doing.
There often are causes for the warpings and distortings of lives, which, if we understood them, would make us lenient to those about us, and very patient with their peculiarities. We do not know what troubles people have, what secret sorrows, that so press upon their hearts as to affect their disposition, temper, or conduct. “If we could read the secret history of our enemies,” says Longfellow, “we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” For example, we wonder at a man’s want of cheerfulness. He seems unsocial, sour, cynical, cold. But all the while he is carrying a burden which almost crushes the life out of him. If we knew all that God knows of his life we would not speak a word of blame. Our censure would turn to pity and kindness, and we would silently try to help him bear his burden.
Our hearts are softened toward men when they are dead. We hush our fault-finding when we stand by a man’s coffin. Commendation then takes the place of criticism. We see the life then in new light, which seems to emphasize whatever was beautiful in it, and to throw into shadow whatever was unbeautiful. We are reverent toward the dead. Nothing but good should be spoken of them, we say. Death invests the life with sacredness in our eyes. It has gone to God. Yes, but is the life any the less sacred that moves before us or by our side, with all its sorrows and struggles and fears and hopes? We should be reverent to ward the dead, speaking of them in hushed accents, but we should be no less reverent toward the living. Mary Mapes Dodge puts this thought in this striking way: —
€< * Speak tenderly! For he is dead,’ we say;
* With gracious hand smooth all his roughened past And fullest measure of reward forecast, Forgetting naught that glorified his brief day.’ Yet when the brother, who, along our way, Prone with his burdens, heartworn in the strife, Totters before us — how we search his life! Censure and sternly punish while we may. Oh, weary are the paths of earth, and hard! And living hearts alone are ours to guard. At least, begrudge not to the sore distraught The reverent silence of our pitying thought Life, too, is sacred; and he best forgives Who says: ‘He errs, but — tenderly! He lives.’”
A great deal of our judging of others is mis judging or unjust judging, because of the /rag mentariness of our knowledge of their personal lives and experiences. It would ofttimes grieve us, and make us sorely ashamed of ourselves, if, when we have judged another severely, we should be shown a glimpse of the other’s inner life, revealing hidden sorrows and struggles which are the cause of the things in him we have blamed so much. We have only a most partial view of another’s life, and cannot form
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absolutely unerring judgments on what we see and know. We see only one side of an act, when there may be another side that altogether changes its quality. Whittier tells us of his pressed gentian, one side of which was but a blurred mass of crushed leaves, while the other showed all the exquisite beauty of the flower. Life is full of similar two-sided views of people and of acts. We see a man out in the world, and he appears harsh and stern. We see him some day at home where his invalid child lies and suffers, and there he is another man, kindly, thoughtful, with almost motherly gentleness. It would have been most unjust to this man if we had made up our judgment of him from the outside view alone, without seeing him in his child’s sick-room.
A young man was severely criticised by his companions for his closeness and meanness. He received a good salary, but lived in a pinched way, without even the plain comforts that his friends thought he could easily have afforded, and without any of that generous expenditure in social ways in which other young men of his class indulged. Many strictures were made on his meanness — as it seemed to his companions. That was one side of his life; but there was another. That young man had an only sister — they were orphans — who was a great sufferer, shut in her room, kept on her bed continually. This only brother provided for her. That was the reason he lived so closely, saving every cent he could save, and doing without many things which other young men thought indispensable, that she in her loneliness and pain might be cared for and might have comforts. That was the other side of the character, the one side of which appeared so unattractive to his friends. We see how unjust was their judgment, based on knowledge of only the one phase of his conduct. Seen in connection with its motive, the quality so severely censured became a mark of noble, manly beauty. To judge from a fragment only is to judge ignorantly and unjustly.
A tender story is told of Professor Blackie, of Edinburgh, which illustrates the same lesson. He was lecturing to a new class, and a student rose to read a paragraph, holding the book in his left hand. “Sir,” thundered the professor, “hold your book in your right hand.” The student attempted to speak. “No words, sir! your right hand, I say!” The lad held up his right arm, ending piteously at the wrist: “Sir, I hae nae right hand,” he said.
Before the professor could open his lips there arose such a storm of hisses as one perhaps must go to Edinburgh to hear, and by it his voice was overborne. Then he left his place, and going down to the student he had unwittingly hurt, he put his arm around the lad’s shoulders and drew him close to his breast. “My boy,” said Blackie, — he now spoke very softly, yet not so softly but that every word was audible in the hush that had fallen on the classroom, — “You’ll forgive me that I was overrough? I did not know — I did not know.”
Our own imperfections also unfit us for judging fairly. With beams in our own eyes we cannot see clearly to pick motes out of our brother’s eye. One of the qualities which make us incapable of impartial judgment of others is envy. There are few of us who can see our neighbor’s life, work, and disposition without some warping and distortion of the picture. Envy has a strange effect on our moral vision. It shows the beautiful things in others with the beauty dimmed. It shows the blemishes and faults in them exaggerated. In other forms, too, the miserable selfishness of our hearts obtrudes itself and makes our judgments of others ofttimes really unkind and uncharitable. The lack of experience in struggle makes many people incapable of sympathy with sorely tempted ones. Those who have never known a care nor felt the pinching of want can not understand the experiences of the poor. Thus, in very many ways, we are unfitted in ourselves to be judges of others.
Another reason why we should not judge others is that our business with them, our true duty toward them, is to help them to rise out of their faults. We are set together in life to make each other better. And the way to do this is not by prating continually about the faults we see in others. Nagging and scolding never yet made anybody saintly. Constant pointing out of blemishes never cured any one of his blemishes. Perhaps there is a duty of telling others of their faults; but, if so, it exists only in certain rare relations, and must be exercised only in a spirit of rare lovingness. We are often told that one of the finest qualities in a true friend is that he can and will faithfully tell us our faults. Perhaps that is true, but not many of us have grace enough to welcome and accept profitably such an office in a friend. A mother may tell her own children their faults, if she will do it wisely and affectionately, never in anger or impatience. A teacher may tell his pupils their mistakes and show them their faults, if it be done in true, loving desire for their improvement. But in ordinary friendship one cannot accept the office of censor, even when besought to do so, save with the strongest probability that the result will be the loss of the friendship, as the price paid for the possible curing of the friend’s fault.
Nagging is not a means of grace. There is a more excellent way, the way of love. It is better, when we wish to correct faults in others, to be careful to let them see in us, in strong relief, the virtue, the excellence, opposite to the defect we see in them. It is the habit of a certain good man, if one of his family or friends mispronounces a word in his hearing, never pedantically to correct the error, but at some early opportunity to find occasion to use the same word, giving it the correct pronunciation. Something like this is wise in helping others out of their faults of character or conduct. An example is better than a criticism.
That was our Lord’s way with his disciples. He never scolded them. He bore patiently with their dulness and slowness as scholars. He never wearied of repeating the same lesson over and over to them. But he was never censorious. Even he did not judge them. He did not keep telling them of all the blemishes he saw in them. That was not his way of seeking their growth into better, sweeter life. His heart was full of love. He saw back of all their infirmities and failures the sincerity and the desire to do right, and with infinite patience and gentleness he helped them ever toward the larger, better, sweeter life.
We need to relate ourselves to others as did Christ to his disciples, if we would help others to grow into spiritual beauty. Censoriousness accomplishes nothing in making people better. You can never make any one sweet by scolding him. Only gentleness will produce gentleness. Only love will cure infirmities of disposition. As a rule, fault-finding is exercised in any but a loving spirit. People are not truly grieved by the sins in others which they complacently expose and condemn. Too often they seem to delight in having discovered something not beautiful in a neighbor, and they swoop down upon the wrong thing like an unclean bird OR carrion. If ever criticism is indulged in, it should be with deep grief for the friend, that the fault exists in him, and with sincere desire that for his sake it be removed; and then the criticism should be made, not in the ear of the world, but “between him and thee alone.”
We should train ourselves, therefore, to see the good, not the evil, in others. We should speak approving words of what is beautiful in them, not bitter, condemning words of what may be imperfect or unlovely. We should look at others through eyes of love, not through eyes of envy or of selfishness, and should seek to heal with true affection’s gentleness the things that are not as they should be.
“How do we know what hearts have vilest sin?
How do we know? Many, like sepulchres, are foul within,
Whose outward garb is spotless as the snow; And many may be pure we think not so. How near to God the souls of such have been, What mercy secret penitence may win —
How do we know? How can we tell who sinned more than we?
How can we tell? We think our brother has walked guiltily,
Judging him in self-righteousness. Ah, well! Perhaps, had we been driven through the hell Of his untold temptations, we might be Less upright in our daily walk than he — How can we tell?
Dare we condemn the ills that others do?
Dare we condemn? Their strength is small, their trials are not few;
2l6 THE BUILD I KG OF CHARACTER.
The tide of wrong is difficult to stem.
And if to us more clearly than to them Is given knowledge of the great and true, More do they need our help and pity too — Dare we condemn?
God help us all, and lead us day by day —
God help us all!
We cannot walk alone the perfect way. Evil allures us, tempts us, and we fall; We are but human, and our power is email; Not one of us may boast, and not a day Rolls o’er our heads but each hath need to say God bless us all!”