"Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive and ye shall be forgiven." Luke 6:37
I've been thinking recently about justice and vengeance. At the beginning, the core, I started with the idea "vengeance is not ours to have."
But then I continued asking, "why?" being not entirely satisfied with my assumption.
Vengeance is God's. But why is it God's? Why does God tell us not to judge? Why?
Many things have occurred to me since then.
One of these things is the fallibility of man. Man was not made to hold all the truth that was contained in The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Our minds, our souls and our bodies cannot fully contain this knowledge that we now have. At the start, the knowledge that there is distinction between the two was not ours to possess, so we should not judge because we cannot fully comprehend the weight of our judgment. All of it is beyond us.
The second idea that I was thinking was the time we spend with an individual. Even if we spent every waking moment with a person, we would still not know them well enough to judge them. Many people argue about when a person is truly themselves. Truthfully, there is no time when someone is not them self. What makes someone them self is how they are always, in every situation, in every struggle, in every success. And we can't be there for everything.
And not only can we not be there for everything, we can't see the depth of every situation. Because not only are people acting and reacting to everything, they are thinking, calculating, processing and understanding everything that is going on around them.
We do not have the ability to understand and see these inner workings. And if we did, for one person, it would clearly be a full time job. Our own life would be so focused on understanding them fully, we would nearly cease to be we. And at the end, after we've been through so much with this person, we would have to judge them?
It's nearly incomprehensible the emotions one would feel at that moment.
No.
This is not meant for us. We are too small and the task too big.
But yet we try. We think our judgments should matter to ourselves, let alone other people.
I am no one to judge. But yet I do. And this I think is a major goal for all Christians. Not to judge. To understand each person for who they are. Not their actions, not their motivations but that nebulous being of them.
I've been thinking recently about justice and vengeance. At the beginning, the core, I started with the idea "vengeance is not ours to have."
But then I continued asking, "why?" being not entirely satisfied with my assumption.
Vengeance is God's. But why is it God's? Why does God tell us not to judge? Why?
Many things have occurred to me since then.
One of these things is the fallibility of man. Man was not made to hold all the truth that was contained in The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Our minds, our souls and our bodies cannot fully contain this knowledge that we now have. At the start, the knowledge that there is distinction between the two was not ours to possess, so we should not judge because we cannot fully comprehend the weight of our judgment. All of it is beyond us.
The second idea that I was thinking was the time we spend with an individual. Even if we spent every waking moment with a person, we would still not know them well enough to judge them. Many people argue about when a person is truly themselves. Truthfully, there is no time when someone is not them self. What makes someone them self is how they are always, in every situation, in every struggle, in every success. And we can't be there for everything.
And not only can we not be there for everything, we can't see the depth of every situation. Because not only are people acting and reacting to everything, they are thinking, calculating, processing and understanding everything that is going on around them.
We do not have the ability to understand and see these inner workings. And if we did, for one person, it would clearly be a full time job. Our own life would be so focused on understanding them fully, we would nearly cease to be we. And at the end, after we've been through so much with this person, we would have to judge them?
It's nearly incomprehensible the emotions one would feel at that moment.
No.
This is not meant for us. We are too small and the task too big.
But yet we try. We think our judgments should matter to ourselves, let alone other people.
I am no one to judge. But yet I do. And this I think is a major goal for all Christians. Not to judge. To understand each person for who they are. Not their actions, not their motivations but that nebulous being of them.
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