Judge and Jury no more!

I have a bad habit.  One I am working very hard to break.  I have been way too judgemental in my life.  For all of you I have judged, I am truly sorry.  I'm not sure where I got into that habit.  I don't remember being overly judgemental in high school  Maybe is was because I didn't really think I was anything special back then.  I was an average athlete and a slightly above average student.  I wasn't president of anything and rarely was the team captain.  I had plenty of great friends and really wasn't one of those people who needed or wanted to be hang out with the "popular crowd." 

But somewhere along the way I became overly judgemental.  I think it was in part due to a realization that I wasn't a good or smart as I thought I was. I started to get myself involved in things where I was the leader and I really wasn't ready to lead.  So I think my judgement came from a sense of insecurity on my part, a defense mechanism to find fault in others so that I could rise above them.

At that time I wanted to hold in everything, manipulate the process of whatever I was working on and not delegate the details.  In part because delegating would reveal that I wasn't capable of whatever I was tasked to lead.  It's truly funny to me now how afraid I was to delegate, because now I tend to over delegate. 
Understanding how judgemental I was came in part from my new found faith.  I don't lace scripture often in this blog, but I will now as it emphasises my point.  I was reading Matthew and came across this:

  “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Mathew 7: 1-2

And it started to help me begin to realize several things.  First, others were judging me just as harshly as I was judging them.  Second, what business of mine was it to somehow rank, place or evaluate other people's abilities.  The more I thought about it and talked about it with my friends, the more I came to realize just how destructive I had become.  For those that know me well, I'm sure you have seen this in me.  For those that don't or maybe have only known me the past few years, maybe this is a surprise. But the truth is I let my mouth serve as my weapon and I made ill advised comments in many arenas in my life. 

Now I know that this is like many other forms of addiction.  And like other addictions there are people I may have hurt or disappointed who now have fairly judged me as someone they don't want to be around.  But, like other addicts, all you can do is press forward one day at a time, repair relationships where you can, and make sure that new relationships are built on a more firm foundation. 

Keep the change!