To finish up our week on vacation, my family visited a church in Cincinnati where some friends attend. The guest speaker was excellent and made many noteworthy points. One of these points has had my brain churning for a week now, so I thought I’d pass it along to my readers. 

The speaker told a story of himself sitting in the mall, sipping a Coke while waiting on his wife to shop, and “people watching.” (We all do this, right?) He said that as he saw people walking by, his head became filled with “internal gossip”. He was making judgments about everyone he saw…”Those people are bad parents…those people look like good parents…those two are definitely gay…that guy looks like a thug…that lady needs to cover herself up…that man needs to lose some major weight!” (We do this, too, right?) He talked about having an almost out-of-body experience where he felt God saying to him, “Who made you the judge of the world? Because I sure didn’t.” He said that at that point, he realized that by his thoughts, he was taking away worth from people that Christ died for, people that God loves just as much as himself. And unless that “thug” has asked him to hold him accountable for his behavior and life choices, he has no business making judgments about those things, inwardly or otherwise. 

His “people watching” in the mall now takes on a different form. He indicated that he makes an effort to stop the “internal gossip” by saying silent prayers of blessing on people as they walk by, asking God to work in their lives and pour out his love and blessing on them. How simple, yet profound. 

So…while I thought I was doing a decent job of harnessing my tongue via gossip, it turns out that judging people inwardly might be just as bad. (Yikes!) What this does is communicate (if only to God) that I am better in some way than the person I am hurling invisible and silent insults at….as if God loves me more…which is not true. 

Everyone’s a critic….but there’s only one Judge. Check yourself.