Slow to Judge, Quick to Understand

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”Proverbs 18:2 How quick do you judge others? How often do you feel misunderstood? I will be honest, I’m guilty of both. Look, no one likes to be misunderstood, yet we often make faulty judgments of people and situations because of insufficient knowledge and lack of understanding. Misunderstandings, and our failure in resolving them, are often the cause of relationships falling apart. We either lack the understanding or simply no longer try to understand. We judge based on partial information and don’t seek to verify or give the person the benefit of the doubt. We assume we know their motives better than them and refuse to hear them out when they try to help us understand. These baseless presumptions and assumptions are used by Satan to cause much damage in relationships, causing division, feeding our pride and deceiving us to think that our assumptions are always right and by not allowing us to humble ourselves and admit that we judged wrong. Then we get all worked up and upset because we don’t know what the other person is going through. The lack of communication then adds fuel to the fire that is already smoldering. So listen, kind of like we were told in Matthew, let’s try and be slow to judge, because the way in which we judge, we will also be judged. Be Nice. Grace Wins.