Judge Not

There was a man who started to rent out an apartment in the city. His job site is quite far so he decided to borrow their company car for his daily trip. Unfortunately, there was no parking space available in his apartment location so he is left with no other option but to park along the side-street.

In the gate closest to his building, he noticed in the following days, there was this one particular car that was always parked so near the gate that it almost block the way of the other cars. The driver was a middle-aged lady whom he glanced one time to be in a real hurry while doing her questionable parking. As the weeks went by, his wondering turned to annoyance, then to irritation and finally to total frustration at how such an insensitive lady kept doing that unacceptable parking habit. His started a plan to file a formal complaint with the building management. In the end though, he prevailed upon himself to just talk directly to the car owner. And so one day, he waited near her car.

Then, she came.

The lady was walking towards her car but, this time, with her husband and a young man in between them. As they came near to the man’s position, he observed that the young man was different and unable to walk straight by himself. With patience, the man and lady were trying their best to balance the young man’s stride, slowly and carefully moving his extremities as he went through the narrow gate and as he started to move inside their parked car nearby. By this time it became obvious that the young man is physically-challenged with autism.

The man’s anger turned to sorrow as he finally realized that the only reason why the lady was always parking in that way was for her autistic son to have a manageable access whenever he went out, in all likelihood, for his therapies. He felt sorry that his anger get the better of him in pre-judging his neighbor.

It’s the time of Lent so we may very well ask ourselves and reflect on these questions.
Whom have I judged or continue to judge unfairly based solely on my own perceived facts or truth?
Whom have I prejudged without even hearing the facts?
Whom have I treated unfairly with harsh words, criticisms, gossips and rumor-mongering for a mistake he/she has made?
Whom have I labeled as a "sinner" based on my own set of self-righteous beliefs?
Do I exhibit prejudice, bigotry, discrimination, intolerance or bias in the way I treat people that I meet or comes my way?

Like the man in the story, he was most certain that the way the lady parked her car is wrong. But what he never knew then was that her actions were being done out of sheer necessity, not negligence nor ignorance or even for personal convenience.

How many times have we ourselves made conclusions about other people believing we all have our facts straight only to realize in the end that we have judged wrongly?

Jesus himself reminded us in Matthew 7:1-5 - “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye."

We are truly blessed because we have a God who, despite knowing our deepest thoughts and intentions, does not condemn us right away. Instead, He lovingly finds ways how to bring us back to His fold. He does not give up on us. He will try endlessly until the time comes for His righteous judgment to be fulfilled.

His love for us sinners is exemplified in the scene with the adulterous woman whom He not only protected from the mob prosecution but also lovingly assured that she is not condemned for her past deeds. All she needed to do was to "sin no more". (see John 8:3-11)

So if our own creator, God himself, overlooks our iniquities and move forward to helping us be restored, then we should also skip (mis)judging others. Instead, we should move towards helping our straying brother found his way back to God.

God has done and has been doing this for us since time immemorial.
We ought to extend the same to others as well.

God bless us all.

Selfless Love

Yesterday, March 11, 2012 , marked the first anniversary of the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in the Northeastern part of Japan. More than 16,000 were confirmed dead and close to 3,000 still missing as their nation mourned in commemoration.

Japan has been known to be a country well prepared for disasters and so many experts were left wondering at the huge cost of human life. Experts decided to study data and make interviews of one affected local community and they found out three major reasons. Their findings were detailed in a documentary shown by a Hongkong TV station.

First is what they termed as Normalcy Bias, which refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. (source: Wikipedia). Most people in the community never experienced a tsunami before and were seen to be calmly cleaning up the debris of the finished earthquake while the tsunami was set to arrive after "only 70 minutes".

Next is the so-called Majority Syncing Bias, which refers to the behavior of people to follow the crowd, believing that what most people do should be the right action to take also. It also clouds their judgment to react to other known and visible factors as long as majority is behaving the same way as he does. This is what happened when evacuating residents preferred to stay in their car in traffic while transferring to a community shelter. A lot of them were caught up in the raging waters of debris.

Lastly was the revelation of Altruistic Attitude. Altruism is defined as the unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. One story revolved with a Japanese man persuading an elderly neighbor with no known family members to evacuate. As the old lady has seemingly accepted her fate to die since she was living alone already for a long time, the kind-hearted man, who confessed that he can not live with the thought of leaving the old lady, decided to call his wife to persuade their neighbor. All in all, they lost around 20 minutes more in convincing the old lady to leave her house. The man continued to check other elderly neighbors as his wife and family of 4 bring along the old lady. In the end though, the man lost all his family and the old lady when the tsunami caught up with them along the road and he nearly drowned himself if he was not able to cling to a floating wooden roof. There were many Japanese who perished while saving the elderly people in their community.

The Japan disaster was indeed a dreadful tragedy but to hear how such brave men and women have taken the self-sacrificing gestures of reaching out and saving other people's lives even if it meant losing their own, was once again a testament to how love for self can be overcome with genuine love for others. To them the word of God in John 15:13 holds true - "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

Let us pray that we, while in a relatively better situation now, do not wait for a similar disaster to bring out the kindness within us, before we express our genuine selfless love for others as well.

God bless.