When We Judge

Casting judgement is a reflex, a weapon that each of us wields and uses without realizing our guilt or that it cuts both ways.

Acknowledging and managing this truth requires curiosity, compassion, and intention
and the willingness to look honestly at our lives and how we show up in
the moments. I no longer judge myself for judging. The mind has a mind
of its own. I find that when judgement emerges, I pause, ask why, and
give attention to what I am feeling physically and emotionally, and then
I make room for compassion for myself and whoever I have judged.

I’m doing the work of looking; this is how I have learned how easily
judgement is practiced and how easily it can poison, too. The longer I
live, the more I appreciate what each phase of life brings and has
brought, including the time and desire to look back and, hopefully,
forward, too. Reflecting on the all-out trust and innocence of the first
years of life, I can see now how they gradually gave way to a tendency
toward suspicion, judgement, and other defenses.

It has taken me years of learning and unlearning to find a harmonious
balance between the constant ebb and flow of information, life
experiences, and knowledge that determines how and what I see.

Even as I reflect now from a hopefully wiser vantage point, I am still very much a work in progress.

Part of my work is looking at the life I’ve lived and sharing the lessons
I’ve learned and am working to unlearn, especially easy judgement. I
think of Mom’s early safety warnings about strangers. It was the first
way I began to judge and feel comfortable and justified in my suspicion
of others. Learning and unlearning how to judge myself and others only
deepened in my late teens, through the church and my own adult
experiences with our criminal justice system.

I had been voting for over 15 years when I was selected for jury duty for
the first time. I had been contacted a few times before, but it seemed a
waste of time. I would show up, be disqualified, and be sent home.

When I was finally selected, it was for a highly publicized murder case. The
gist of the case: A public servant on morning duty, just as many of us
were heading to work, happened upon the two men who later would be
accused of murdering him. This was before all the crime shows that have
desensitized us to hearing and “seeing” the details of someone having
their life taken. The judge instructed us about why we were there, the
importance of using the evidence to determine the verdict, and
reasonable doubt.

I felt out of place, like I didn’t belong in a group that was going to
decide guilt or innocence. The sense of responsibility and pressure to
get this right was magnified during the trial as I watched the families
of the victim and the accused, clearly suppressing emotions so that they
could remain in the courtroom. The trial went on for days with
testimonies and exhibits. I gave it my total focus and attention. I
think the whole jury did. When it was time to deliberate, it was
unanimous.

The accused was guilty. I came away from the experience realizing the
importance of being a credible witness and the need for certainty when
someone’s freedom is at stake.

Some years later I would be the victim of a crime.

I needed a few snacks for the children’s lunch, so I hopped in the car
and headed to the store two blocks down on the corner. I parked a couple
of feet from the door and got out of the car. I glanced to my right and
two men were casually walking up the block about 20 feet away. I didn’t
think anything of them. By the time I closed my car door and looked up,
they were beside me with a gun pointed at me, demanding my car keys.

I glanced into the face of the one holding the gun, but my eyes were
focused on the barrel that he was pointing at my stomach. I wondered if
he would pull the trigger. Would I hear the sound before I felt the
bullet, or would I feel it at all? I handed him the keys with one hand,
mindful that I was still holding my wallet in the other. They didn’t ask
for it, so I didn’t offer.

I didn’t utter a word during the entire ordeal. They pointed the gun
again and told me to lay on the ground and to get under the car parked
behind me. From under the car, I watched their feet. They got in MY CAR
and pulled off onto Seven Mile Road. I crawled from under the car as
fast as I could before the owner could come out and start it with me
still under it. I ran into the store and told the man behind the counter
what happened. He called the police.

The police arrived quickly, gathered the information they needed, and told
me they would contact me when the car was found. It took only two days
before they contacted me. They had found the car and the drivers had
been arrested. They wanted me to come in and identify them in a lineup.

I don’t recall how many men were in the lineup. But a couple of them did
look familiar. The detective had instructed me to look through the
one-way mirror for as long as I needed to be certain that I identified
the gunman if he was among them. I stared at the front and profile of
each one. One of them stood out. But I couldn’t be certain that it was
him.

I thought back to what I learned in the murder trial and what my
uncertainty could cost someone. As bad as I wanted the guilty person to
be found, I couldn’t risk accusing the wrong person. I told the
detective, and he thanked me for coming in. On the way out, he told me
that the man caught driving my car was in the lineup. I felt regret that
I hadn’t been able to identify him.

I wanted him to experience some kind of punishment for his crime. But the
chance of judging wrongfully was too much of a weight for me, even as
someone who’d learned early in life to justify judgement.

From my mid-teens through my thirties, I attended a church where it took far
less to send a person to Hell for all eternity than it took to send
them to jail. There was a disharmonious interplay between love and
legalism that fomented judgementalism. Members caught in specific sins were required to stand before the congregation and offer an apology as a
part of their repentance. Looking back now, it’s clear to me that we
were another kind of jury who could have all lined up to take our turn
at the mic. Certain articles of clothing and accessories were forbidden
and considered an indicator of one’s spirituality, encouraging
conformity. God’s love, grace, and a caring community were intermingled.

This legalism was among the beliefs and practices that obscured a broader
reality of who God is and who I am. Even as I write, I still wouldn’t
trade my twenty-plus years at that church for anything. God was there
with us. It was there that my inner healing and a transformative life
shift began. It prepared me for what was next. As the Dalai Lama and
others are credited with saying, “one must learn the rules of life
before one can know how to properly break or apply them.” I was able to
learn and un-learn, and to work through cycles of order, disorder, and
reorder (which Franciscan priest Richard Rohr teaches is the pattern for
all human growth) by staying put.

But eventually I would have to leave to fully practice what I had begun to
learn. I was at my next church for almost 20 years, and my learning
increased exponentially. It shaped who I am today. When our pastor
retired and moved to Florida, I left. I stayed in touch with her and
continued to learn from her until her death.

I still see her in my dreams, exemplifying love, grace, and a constant
reminder that judgement is a choice and we determine how freely we live
by how we choose.