“Who am I to judge!”
Pope Francis continues to shake up the religious world with his candid and well thought out pronouncements on matters of social consciousness and faith. His latest pronouncement involves two things. He used the word “gay” instead of the more traditional word “homosexuality” which is sometimes considered to be very offensive to gay people. The second thing that he did was to make the statement about judgment which comprises the title of this piece.
The basic idea about judgment comes from the seventh chapter of Matthew when Jesus Christ states that we are not to judge lest we, ourselves, end up being judged. It is a very hard thing for curious and involved humans not to pass judgment on others because the general tendency is to do it just about every day of our lives in one form or another. This writer has been dealing with the “problem” of judgment for the last several years since we became more intimate with the Bible and matters of faith. As we have traveled the road of this life, we have discovered how little that we really know or even comprehend about almost anything that we have been so quick to pass judgments on. Subsequent evnets show that! In past years we have passed instantaneous or quick judgments about things that reality has so often shown us that we knew absolutely nothing about and the subsequent results proved to us that was correct and that we were so very wrong about what we had thought. At least we have had the memory and the courage to know and to realize that was the case.
So many people pass judgments and then never seem to realize that those judgments were not right as they exist in their worlds of apparent bigotry and self involvement and self centeredness.
Pope Francis was speaking of gay people when he stated that it was not his place to judge. Over the years we have had mixed feelings about our feelings about gay individuals as we have struggled with changing perceptions of gays cast against what we have thought that our religion has taught and told to us.
We grew up in a mainly heterosexual society where there were perhaps one or two gay individuals who hid it as well as they possibly could have done out of fear of what might happen to them. It was a double whammy because these people were thought of as possibly gay anyway because of the ways that they acted but no one could really prove it and no one was sure of what might have to be done if the actual truth came out. These once and future gay souls lived in a world where they had no partners because of the lack of any population to draw from but they still possessed the feelings that they possessed anyway and could do nothing about any of it at all. This puts to the lie the old conservative shibboleth that being gay is a lifestyle choice and that it can be easily avoided if the individual merely tries harder to do so. This is really the underlying basis on which so much anti gay bashing occurs. However, on a deeper plain, it simply reflects the perception that if you are not like us you are against us and is part of a constellation that includes things like racial hatred and even bullying and taunting in schools.
It was less than a year ago that we were watching a news program with a known gay anchor and we suddenly realized that it was not our place to judge this person at all. It took a load off of our shoulders and off of our mind to suddenly realize that we had no part to play in any of this at all, if even only in our own mind. And, when we heard Pope Francis repeat what we had discovered it made us feel very good to know that we were right in what we had decided on our own. It is simply sad that it took us so many years to come to that conclusion but we were apparently not alone in that situation. So many souls sit silently by and suffer from needless contradictions in their lives that trouble them needlessly when they could be out doing some good for those who need it regardless of what their sexual predilections might be.
Judgment is not an easy thing to giver up. It is like an addiction.
We are forced into some judgments because we have to have them to get through our days and our lives. We judge whether to cross the street or whether to believe some advertisement about some product that we might be considering purchasing. And, all too often, we judge who our friends are going to be rather than letting the natural course of things play out to bring to us those that we may come to both respect and to love. We remember one person in particular whom we used to associate with due to business considerations who constantly passed judgments on all sorts of things, including us. We finally got away from this person because we could not stand his judgmental attitude while we probably kept a less obvious one ourselves.
It goes on and on but the best advise that we could give anyone is to think about what your judgments mean to those around you and to the world at large. If your judgments mean that others are going to suffer, particularly needlessly, then you are probably asking to be judged yourself. But there is also the possibility that if one can suddenly realize that they have been wrong then that growth may lead a loving and merciful God to forgive it all.
This piece is dedicated to Donald from my childhood who died of AIDS a number of years ago and who never had an easy road at all.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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