Things are not as they seem; they are generally as we are

Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in a wealthy family’s home. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion’s guest room. Instead they gave the angels a space in the cold basement.

As the angels made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it.

When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, “Things are not always what they appear to be.”

The next night they came to the house of a very poor but hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had, the couple let the angels sleep in their bed so they could have a good night’s rest.

The next morning, the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field.

The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel, “How could you have let this happen? The first family had everything, yet you helped them. This family was willing to share the little they had, and you let their cow die.”

“Things are not always what they appear to be,” the older angel replied. “When we stayed in the basement, I noticed gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owners were so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share their good fortune, I sealed the wall so they wouldn’t find it.”

“Then last night as we slept in the farmer’s bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I told him to take the cow instead. Things are not always what they appear to be.”

Jesus told us, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

Almost everyone is guilty of some grave misjudgment. Almost everyone has suffered from someone else’s misjudgment. Yet we consistently disregard this commandment of Jesus.

We should not judge others for three reasons:

1) We never know all the facts or the whole person. No one knows the intensity of another’s temptations. The person with an even-tempered disposition knows nothing of the temptations of the person whose passions can fly off in an instant.

The person brought up in a good Christian home knows nothing of the temptations of the person brought up in a slum, or in an abusive home. If we realized what some people have to go through in life, instead of condemning them, we would praise them for being as good as they are.

2) Being strictly impartial is almost humanly impossible. The Talmud reminds us, “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” General impressions of people often come from our own perspective. Only a completely impartial person has a right to judge. It’s not part of human nature to be completely impartial. Only God should judge.

3) Jesus gave us the prime reason we should not judge others. No one is good enough to judge another. Jesus drew a vivid picture of a person with a plank in their own eye trying to extract a speck from someone else’s eye. The humor of the situation makes the point – only the faultless have a right to look for faults in others.

None of us are faultless. We would do well to concentrate on our own faults, and to leave the faults of others to God. As someone once said, even God doesn’t plan to judge human beings until the end of their days, why should you and I?