Judgment Means Crossroads

The word Judgement in scripture comes from the Greek word "krisis" which means crisis or crossroads. Recently, a friend posted a picture on Facebook showing a young mother in an airport with her infant lying on what looked like a rather clean blanket on the floor, while she was looking at her phone. There were large red circles drawn around the cell phone and the infant on the floor. When I questioned why my friend posted this since we don’t know this young mother’s story, another person entered the conversation. It quickly turned quite ugly. In my attempts to explain that I have come to a place where I don’t want to cast judgement because of the plank in my own eye, I was brutally slammed as being judgmental.

Judgmental about being judgmental. Truly a conundrum, isn’t it?

I don’t like being viewed as being judgmental, however, the truth is, we all are. It is, after all how we are designed. From the earliest moments of language development, social scientists tell us, that this is how our brains function. It is actually quite fascinating to learn how we learn. The first thing we do when we receive new information is to decide how this new information fits into our existing schema (what we already know).

My favorite story that I use when I teach my undergraduate course on growth and development is from a memory I have of my best friend’s little boy, Jeremiah. We were driving on the highway, and we passed a van. Jeremiah, being about 18 months old at the time, pointed from his car seat, saying, “Look! Twuck!” His mom, my dear friend, said, “That’s a van. Can you say van?” To which Jeremiah replied, “Not a twuck!”

This is how we learn new information. It fits our current schema, or not. It is a truck or it’s not a truck, just like Jeremiah’s thinking at 18 months of age. Eventually, we learn there are more ways to describe the world around us, and thus our vocabulary grows.

This picture of the young mom on her cell phone, appearing to be ignoring her baby who is lying (on a blanket, mind you) on the floor of a public airport solicits very similar thinking.

That is: Good moms don’t ignore their babies and they don’t put them on dirty floors in public places. Just like Jeremiah’s “not a truck,” those re-sharing this picture have put this mom in the “not a good mom” category.

My thoughts on this are: We don’t know this young mom’s story.

Did she just come from a long flight where she held her baby for several hours, now awaiting her next flight with yet more hours of constant holding? Is she traveling alone with an infant? Is she raising this child without support? Did she think the baby needed to be flat for a few moments after being held on an airplane without much wiggle room?

The answer is, we don’t know.

So, until I learn someone’s story, I will choose to not put people in my own limiting categories. I would rather err on the side of grace. Slamming a picture on social media to show the world what it looks like to be “not a good mom,” is, in my opinion, quite the same as Jeremiah’s decision at that moment to not learn the word van, but to place this new vehicle into the “not a truck” category.

Life teaches us there are far more than two categories. Those of us who have been mothers understand that we all do things that very well might fit under the “not a good mom” slot. Does this make us not a good mom?

I sure hope I have journeyed beyond that place where I judge a person’s character based on one snapshot.

We come to the crossroads—the time of judgment. Do we cast our limited view, (good mom, or not a good mom?) or do we side with extending grace?

I am truly working more and more on extending grace. It may not be easy, but when I realize how much I pray others extend that same grace to me, it certainly becomes most important to live out the Golden Rule. (Remember that one? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you).

Next time you come to the crossroads of judgment, what will you do?