Judgmental

In his blog Josh said that the most important and neglected teaching is not to judge others. However, I feel that this is not as ignored as he thinks. He states that generalizations are what are truly sinful, but generalizations are not as widespread as he would like to think. People nowadays are much more careful about not making generalizations. Ever since the concept of political correctness has been introduced there has been a decrease in the use of generalizations to describe a group. His example of a generalization from today’s culture – that Americans think all Muslims are terrorists – is in fact a generalization about the beliefs of Americans, as not all Americans think all Muslims are terrorists. His other example, racism, is not so much a generalization as much as social conditioning. Children were brought up in a culture that taught that white people were superior. It was not a generalization, it was how people were raised that taught them that whites were superior and caused racism. I am not disagreeing with the teaching that we are not to judge others; I simply disagree with Josh’s examples. I do, however, agree with him on the fact that most judgments are generally harmless. If you judge a person walking down the street that you will probably never see again there is no harm. They will never know you judged them and you will forget about them and the judgments made about them as soon as they are out of sight. This sort of judgment hurts no one, and is soon forgotten, while if you get to know a person any initial judgments you had about them are likely to change as you get to know them better. Not judging people is important, it is simply not the most important and most ignored teaching.