Bishop Brown stood in the common, legs crouched, hands held ready. As the disk sailed across the clear blue sky, he leapt and caught it with a loud, “Yes!”
His wife, Peggy, laughed as he held it above his head like a trophy, then readied herself for her own catch.
Soon, they settled into an easy rhythm, chatting and joking as each spinning toss unwound the cares of the day.
The phone was ringing as they walked back into their apartment, and on answering it, Bishop B recognized his neighbor’s voice, “Steve!” the neighbor barked, “How am I supposed to teach my kids to keep the Sabbath holy when you’re outside tossing a Frisbee around!”
Fighting the urge to laugh, Bishop B assuaged his neighbor then turned to his now-steaming wife. “Are people going to judge us all the time?” she asked.
He reached forward and tucked a loose curl behind her ear, “Sadly, yes.”
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Sometimes, I think Mormons want the Law of Moses reinstated. We’d like to count our steps on the Sabbath and our neighbors’ steps and measure their hemlines–”Is she rolling her garments up?” “Do they have Diet Coke in the fridge?” “Did I see them walking into that R-rated movie?”
We love rules. Oh how we love rules. And we can find quotes from prophets and apostles reaching back 180 years to prove any directive or point of doctrine.
As Saints, we are constantly asked to evaluate ourselves–our habits, our attitudes, our actions– and I think that sometimes our introspection turns to INSPECTION of others. I’ve certainly been guilty of thinking, “Well, I may not be doing this perfectly, but at least I’m at church every Sunday unlike so-and-so.”
Our tendency to judge becomes even more dangerous when it’s extended to those outside our faith. My neighbors have every right to drink alcohol and to go to brunch on Sundays– and even if they were LDS, it wouldn’t be my place to judge their actions.
There are times when we watch others simply to avoid making the same mistakes– like the way we slow down at the scene of a car accident and try to assess what went wrong. But we already know the rules of driving: watch where you are going, don’t get distracted, follow the speed limit. Similarly, we already know the rules of life and just like the blazing crash on the freeway, we can’t truly know every contributing factor in people’s lives.
So what do you think? When is righteous judgment appropriate? Do you feel judged? How do you teach your children not to judge? How do you eliminate then temptation to judge others?
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