More than occasionally I come across people I quickly decide are as hard as nails and half as sharp. These are people about whom I make a snap judgement based on a single encounter, maybe not even an encounter with me but an encounter I witness with someone else. That quick experience and snap judgement colors the way I perceive them. I consider them harsh, hard-hearted, dim-witted, neanderthals.
As I think of the way I judge those people, silently for the most part, I wonder how many of them—or how many others—judge me the same way. I’m sure I’ve been just as much of a horse’s ass, behaved just as poorly, exposed the rough edges more than I should have done. So, surely, others who don’t know me or know very little about me have made the same characterizations about me.
One would think, then, a person would learn to withhold judgments. That is a lesson worth learning.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Among all the chaff in the “good” book, there is wheat. Hypocrisy is an illness of intellect.