Challenging Our Own Judgments and Stereotypes

I hate it! I just absolutely hate it when I catch myself judging someone because of their looks, their way of speaking, or their approach. It happened this week --probably more than once, but the once that stood out was when I was listening to the radio. I was appreciating what the person was saying but I found myself thinking – what he has to say would be better received if he didn’t have that accent. Oh, I hate it when I do that. Judge someone for just being who they are. But we human beings are judgemental by nature. Partly it is a survival skill. We judge others in order to determine if they are the enemy that we need to be aware of. And there are people, abusive, violent, deceptive people, that we should be very wary of. But this judgement thing has got out of hand. Jesus knew that when he told people, “Do not judge so that you are not judged.” Jesus modeled a spiritual practice of accepting each person in front of him for who they were, welcoming them, seeing beyond outer appearances and stereotypes, rejecting societal norms & connecting compassionately & unconditionally with the person. In today’s reading from the book of Acts, Peter is challenged to drop his judgments, even the judgments made on the basis of the Jewish law code by which he had lived his whole life.