We All Sit in Judgment....at some point.

The word 'judgmental' has been on my mind alot lately and of course, I looked up the definition...and it pretty much means to be in judgment of ..(excellent question, READER, what does judgment mean?) but more harshly and judgment pretty much means an authoritative opinion. And I thought 'wow, they don't make judgmental seem that bad at all...and it has such a bad rap.' So it pretty much means a harsh authoritative opinion. Ah-hah! Well, then I started to think how we HAVE to sit in judgment of some things. We have to judge our friends, our children's friends, their teachers, the babysitter, the school our child attends...and the list goes on. Mostly we judge things to keep ourselves and our children safe. But I guess the part of the definition that we should pay MORE attention to is that fact that we should be 'authoritative' on the subject of our judgment. We shouldn't jump to quick conclusions based on false info or mis-read info. And judgmental adds the word harsh. We should try to use the golden rule when making our judgments...'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' We should be as lenient as we can allow ourselves to be ...we should give them the benefit of the doubt..we should evaluate whether the info we are judging them on is related to what we 'need' from this person. For example, I find out the babysitter is gay. Does this effect her ability to do the job? Am I just being prejudice and judgmental if I allow this fact to obscure the other wonderful qualities she has (in this scenario we are assuming she is PERFECT, otherwise.). We should just make sure we have adequate information when passing judgment on a person. <--I think that statement sums up what I'm trying to say here.> But I try to keep in mind that only God can pass ultimate judgment and when I feel I've been judged harshly or brutally or incorrectly then I try to find comfort that his is the ONLY judgment that matters because he is not MISREADING the info..he sees what's in my heart and that's where it counts.