“Judge not that ye be not judged.”
It makes me wonder and question. What to judge can be the result of humility and compassion, but even then we must remain clear as to what it is that we withholded judgment from.
If we do not condemn, is it because we know we are not fit to do so? Or is it that the necessity of value among us had become a concept of little interest?
New values cannot be defined in the time of the old — so we are uncertain, our minds tired because of doubt.
And of our neighbor (who is crowding us very close these days), what of him? Who is he?
I have never been sure whether he was the kind of person people trusted.
Of course, he can be the neighbor who, on occasion, can be a ministering angel.
If you lived in this city and are really “old,” you wonder who is not your neighbor.
But is my neighbor the lout I observe, or the author I read when I am advised “to keep up with my colleagues and with the times?”
He who expresses spleen for spleen’s sake, I cannot love.
Is the plain fact then, that our neighbor is not easy to love? And most of the time we do not love him? Out of honesty to him, and to oneself, we judge both him and ourselves.
If we do not recognize our instinctive recoil, how are we to have the courage to take our stand? If we are judged, if we do not feel the recoil from us, then what is there to make us pause and judge ourselves?
Opposing truths flame in my heart. Difference, the precious difference of the individual, sharpens my thoughts.
The difference, that is also our most difficult achievement and chief honor, must have full recognition — otherwise equality becomes uniformity.
We are different from that neighbor (not equal) so we suffer and compete, rise and fall, lose and achieve ourselves.
We make a decisive choice that creates change, enforced by necessity.
Necessity can be cruel. Any generous heart and just mind will try to control the inequalities of circumstance.
As we look out for that neighbor, great good can come from greater equality: less suffering, a flowering of new talent, new pride increase understanding.
It is differentiation in action, whether he will or will not; the creation of quality, whether good or bad, is the basis of morality, clarity and order — even if the human price is too high.
Call it the gift of life or the very pulse of life. To feel with others is the creation of quality, whether good or bad.
When each one of us must come out of the crowd, as we feel to find for our difference, it makes man mount on the shoulders of the next — trampling on those who would trample on him, forcing them below.
For how can anyone be above, if others are not below?
It is a constant effort, never losing face, but gaining stature, through an immense honesty and insight from the depths built in the past.
With the uniqueness knit for self-improvement comes the test and measure of ourselves — who are we to judge!
Modern permissiveness makes it difficult to tell good from the bad, as though it were simpler to have no differences at all.
How easy to dislike and condemn our own faults when we see them in others, so that we park our sins on our neighbors.
My thoughts of how to think of others are not thoughts, but more like sobs or counterblows — perhaps just worries of an old heart, about aches of all aches.
Impersonal judgments are beyond me, beyond all but the very wise, the well-informed who relinquish judgment and observe: “some things are not matters of your concern.”
My kindly Pastor remonstrated with me. But if one’s heart aches for humanity, shouldn’t we let it be so?
It feels right to take humanity into my heart, or out of my heart and examine it and be eased of it.
You can only wish a neighbor to be strong, wise and loveable, because I try and I can’t.
Yet even at my lowest moment of inadequacy, I see my neighbor rise to such noble heights in his fateful struggle.
More often than we can guess, the gods may regard him with brotherly awe.
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E-mail Mylah at [email protected]
