This isn't bad. Actually, none if this is bad. If anything, it can turn into something really really good. Meeting new people and learning all about them and their lifestyle can radically change your life and open your mind. This rarely happens though. Almost all of the time, when we meet new people or adapt to a new area with new people, we judge. Almost always, we judge. We don't care enough to drop what we are bringing in this culture with us in order to learn about other people. Instead, we use what we have with us to judge people against our way of life. We compare them to what we consider normal. I experienced this in the past three weeks here at college.
I met a student here, a freshman like myself, during my first week. Tall, handsome, athletic and musical. He has it all. Rather than lowering my judgmental defenses though, I raised my judgmental weapons and took aim. Based on the way he talked about himself, his church, his friends, his talents, and his family, I immediately had shots being fired from my judgmental weapons. I hardly knew him and yet I had already shot through him multiple times with judgment and learned to dislike him to a point of almost hating everything he did and said.
Imagine that. Within a matter of a week, someone who I had never met before was already classified by me as someone I did not like. I never even gave him a chance. But, through some work of God it seemed like, things changed.
My roommates and I leave our dorm room unlocked when we are in the room for anyone to come in as they please and talk or hangout with us. A couple of days ago the three of us were in our room playing XBOX when our dorm room door swung open to, you know it, the freshman who I had judged. He came in and sat right down and began to just talk with us. Immediately I was ticked, not wanting to deal with anything he was going to do or wanting to listen to anything he was going to say. I really did not want him here. But, something happened.
I was playing guitar when he came in. Nothing special, just an acoustic guitar and I was randomly playing some chords. After a couple of seconds had passed, he began to sing along to the song I was silently playing. I wasn't singing at all, but for some strange reason he knew the song and immediately picked it up. He was singing along with my playing and we got so into it that we had our entire room singing it loud and all. Afterwards we were all laughing and enjoying what had just happened through music, and I began to realize how wrong I was about him. I realized I had wronged him and made a terrible mistake of judging his every trait and quality. In the midst of my judgement, I missed his desire to play music with me and get to know me and be my friend. My judgement ruined what could have been a great start to a friendship.
It's hard not to judge. Clearly I just wrote about the ease I had judging that fellow friend of mine. It's easy to judge and paint a picture of someone's life for them in your mind. It's easy to hate someone rather than learning to love them, but it ruins friendships and relationships. Because of my swiftness to judge him I lacked the one thing we are all called to do, and that's love. I was too busy hating everything about him instead of searching for things to love about him. He gives me high fives, hugs, hand shakes, encouragement, positivity, and the desire to play more music with him. My judgement, if held onto, would have hidden all of these things from me. I was taught something so important within the first two weeks of school: having judgment over love as a foundation for a friendship will only leave you hating somebody for who they're not rather than loving them for who they are.
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