Judgement

As soon as we meet someone new we try to figure out what they’re about and who they remind us of. Part of life is making snap judgments about people and circumstances and for whatever reason, our minds have the need to classify and categorize people. It made me wonder if I was somehow limiting myself and my ability to relate to others. If I’m already judging and categorizing someone before I even speak to them, how might this affect my ability to connect… make friends or even have a conversation? Am I only interested in relationships with people I’ve put into certain categories and then ignore the rest?

What does it mean to judge? The essence of judging is when we disagree strongly with someone—over something like faith or morality or politics—and because we can’t agree we cut them off. Identifying what someone did and how it affected me is not a judgment. That is an observation. We make a judgment when we assume we know why a person did what they did. When we assume the motive for their actions and attitudes.

Judgment shuts us down and keeps us from understanding the full situation. If we’re being honest, most judgments about people are based on incomplete information. Curiosity, on the other hand, keeps us open to the possibility that there is something about the situation that we don’t fully understand.

Whenever I see people acting in ways that I think are insane, stupid, or worse–this is the question that I ask: “What’s going on with them that I don’t know?”

Our impressions of people usually come down to three basic judgments: their morality, sociability, and competence. And our judgments of people’s morality dominate our impressions. Above all, we like trustworthy, ethical people more than their immoral counterparts. Even if there is a gap or a few hurdles between personalities, common middle ground can be found for friendship.

It doesn’t mean our classifications are true. Inevitably when interacting with people, they will say or do things we may not like. Our feelings about the situation are essentially judgments about the people involved. Each judgment we make contributes to the way we think (and therefore feel) about them.

Because of our self-centered nature, we think people are out to get us. But that’s not true! People don’t do things because of us. They do things because of who they are. We don’t have meaningful relationships or communication because we are always judging the real motives behind what others say or do. It’s not what others say that hurts us. It’s what we say to ourselves about it after it was said.

Our conflicts are seldom based on what people do to us. It is usually based on our judgment of why they do it. If we don’t have a healthy self-worth we will make it “all about me.” Once we negatively touch a person’s self-worth, all meaningful communication is over. Love is saying, “I feel differently,” instead of “You’re wrong.” Even if we disagree about everything, we can still be kind to each other.