I love this whole concept of blogging. This way I can voice my complaints to the entire world wide web, or at least that portion of it that would actually read my rants. So here goes another one. One thing that gets under my skin worse than anything under the sun is a judgmental attitude (even though I seem to have one this morning). And boy these days everyone wants to point that “bony finger of indignation” at everyone else. Consider the case of that poor dude, Blagojevich. Man did he get judged right down to the last hair on his toupee. We all have our fair share of skeletons in the closet, dirty laundry and all those other cliches that basically mean, when it comes right down to it, that we are all dirty rotten scoundrels. There is really only one person that we have authority to judge and that is ourselves. Having been here in Costa Rica now for going on 8 years, I really don’t feel the sense of “judgemental-ness” that I felt growing up on the buckle of the Southern U.S. “bible-belt.” That is a little strange since the country is predominantly catholic and quite religious. Of course, catholics don’t have the reputation of playing judge to everyone else like the evangelicals. Here in Costa Rica there is a refreshing “live and let live” attitude. I mean if someone does something really bad, you won’t have to endure hours and hours and days and days of endless media bantering about how bad the person was, how screwed up his family was and how misbehaved was his pet chihuahua. No, here we just kill the bastard and be done with it…..calm down out there, I am just kidding! But really, if a 48 year old man is seen with a 20 something year old young lady, here it won’t make the scandal of the week in the local gossip column. Here human nature is generally allowed to run its twisted course without one’s reputation and human dignity being completely obliterated by the “holier than thou” crowd. In fact, here there really isn’t such a crowd, or at least I haven’t come across them if they are here (they probably hang out in Escazú, which is way above my league anyway). In life, $%#@ happens. It is just the way it is. Things don’t always go according to the rules that you may think people should live by. And just when you get too high up on your own horse, life has a way of smacking you down…..down to level that you thought you were above. So be careful. Judge not, lest before you know it, you yourself are being judged. Best just to maintain the awareness that people do the things they do for reasons that make perfect sense to them at the time, even though they may not make sense to you. Rather than judging them, try on a little empathy instead.
For in the same way you judge others, you too will be judged, and by the same measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Matthew 7:2
Comments
michael alan
I guess I like when people ‘point the finger’ or judge others, lets me quickly know who has a LIFE and who doesn’t. Occasionally I WILL cast the first stone, but only to get a ‘shot’ in before I get pummeled. As for GOD, I’ll deal with him if the time comes.