Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

I couldn’t help it.  While she was still walking across the parking lot, before she had said a word, I was sizing her up.  The way she was dressed, the cut of her hair, the proportions of her figure – too fat, too thin – all these were measures running through my critical faculties.  And then there was the handshake (too firm, too limp), and the sound of her voice (refined or unpolished) that went into the mix of my judgments upon another human being.  None of this was deliberate.  It simply was.

I don’t think I’m that unusual in this regard.  Our tendency to judge one another comes with the territory of being human.  I believe in sin.  I’m agin’ it, as the old preacher used to say, but I am inevitably tied up in it.  If sin is a novel concept to you, or if you think it is a hopelessly outdated idea, then I suggest you have not been paying attention.  All I need to do is see the political news for the day, not to mention all the other news of a sordid nature, to remind me that sin is rampant among us.

 

I am fortunate, though.  I had parents who taught me better.  My parents, too, believed in sin and our need to fight it with every fiber of our being, and to surrender our wills to God in order that we might avail ourselves of divine assistance to overcome sin and recover the image of God in ourselves, AND, to restore the vision to see that image in someone else.

So, from a very young age I was instructed to curb my judgmental tendencies and to train my eyes to see others through the eyes of God.  I was raised to not distrust people who looked or thought differently from me, but to distrust prejudice itself.  I was raised to not measure people by external circumstances but to give people the benefit of the doubt.  In short, I was raised with what we often call The Golden Rule, as I paraphrase it, “treat others the way you want to be treated.” 

Jesus had many things to say about judgment, most of which were warnings that judgment belongs to God, for instance, Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

As Fathers’ Day arrives this Sunday, I am giving thanks for my Father and Mother who both taught me to measure people with the same grace that I trust God measures me.  I still have to fight my instinct to judge others by the most superficial of standards (sin lies ever ready to rear its ugly head).  But God has worked me over a good bit in my life, helping me to attend more faithfully to the divine image of the person in front of me.  And there’s always the voice of my parents saying, “until you’ve walked a mile in someone else’s shoes . . .”