Being non-judgemental isn’t a favor to someone else, it’s plain honesty. While God knows exactly what’s going on in each person’s life and judges them accordingly, do we really know the reason for why someone acted a certain way? Are we familiar with the struggles and challenges in their day to day life? Are we judging them based on what our struggles are and what we would have done? Would we really be any different if we had their exact circumstances, nature, temperament, and struggles?
The only way to really judge someone is not just to know their actions, but also their exact struggles and circumstances, both now and in the past, in other words to be in “their shoes”. And since we’ll never be able to be there, passing judgement on them would be like having an opinion on something one knows almost nothing about.
Rabbi Naftali Silberberg's Tanya class takes place every Thursday night 9:00 PM at The Baal Shem Tov Library, 1709 ave J.
