Day 4: People We Judge

Day 4: People We Judge

This is part of a 7-day commitment during Lent 2024.

Why is he lacking faith in this area?I was judging the person’s faith.

Why is he doing this? I was judging the person’s ways and behaviours.

Why is he so discontented and weird?People were whispering behind his back. I was judging him too.

I judged, but in recent months, God also opened my eyes to see my reflection in the people I’ve judged. I saw what I was like in them. I have improved, but I am still with residues.

There’s a rule in writing: show, not tell. So this is the case. God is showing instead of having people telling me straight in the face. I might deny and be painfully upset when people tell me where I am lacking. So God holds up the mirror to my flaws – reality hits closer to the heart, in a gentler manner.


The area where the person was lacking in faith, or the things done wrong, I saw that I was once like that too, until God brought me through the furnace to burn away that part. So I could understand and empathise.

That weird behaviour people were discussing, I could understand and empathise. I was and perhaps still am weird but to a lesser degree. Behind the weirdness are the anxieties and self-consciousness limiting the person, or that low self-esteem trying to prove something.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?

Hypocrite! First remove the plankfrom your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speckfrom your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:3-5

The more I saw myself in other people’s flaws, the more I saw the light in Matthew 7:3-5. We have the same wood material in our eyes, just differing in sizes or forms. For example, I could judge another person for not trusting God to provide the spouse to do life with, but in a different form, I could not trust God to provide me with the friends to journey with. Same, same but different.

How then shall we remove the plank from our own eye?

I googled, “If wood gets into the eye“. And the top result from betterhealth.vic.gov.au: “Don’t try to remove a foreign body from your eye yourself. Go straight to your GP (doctor), optometrist or the nearest hospital emergency department.”

My guess is, we go to God for His help to remove that plank. And when it’s cleared from the eye (window of our soul), empathy and wisdom will flow into us. Only then, can we remove the speck in another person with gentleness and precision.


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