specks & logs

Yesterday I was doing a little sermon prep for this coming weekend and I found myself wandering around the Gospel of Matthew.

I love what he said about judgment....(basically, he said "don't do it.")

But instead of just saying, "Judgment is a bad idea, folks."

He said, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye."

So good. On so many levels.

Reminded me the 6-week meditation class that I took with my mom last spring. We talked a fair amount about judgment/non-judgment in that course - and why it is so beneficial to suspend judgments when possible.

This brief article makes a helpful distinction between discernment and judgment. Worth a read. Discernment is seeing things they way they really are; that's good. Judgment is "what we add to discernment when we make a comparison (implicit or explicit) between how things or people are and how we think they ought to be."

Important distinction.

May you avoid judgments today...judgments of yourself and of the rest of humanity, too. And may that courageous act...that commitment to non-judgment...free up all kinds of space in our spirit.