You’re Not Entitled to Be Prejudiced

We live in a world where everyone feels entitled to their opinions which makes us criticize and put down others based on our perspective and the way we see them.
As christians, we have been taught by Jesus to be different from the world by loving and caring for our neighbours and all we meet. Therefore making the right judgement and choice is important.

Exercising judgement on people is not totally wrong. Our Lord Jesus Christ is condemning “being judgemental” or “being prejudiced” or “being hypercritical” and not “judging people” or “appraising people” or “examining people”. “Judging people” means to discern the truth based on facts where necessary while “being judgemental” is finding faults with people and criticizing without cause based on personal feelings and assumptions of biased heresay.

Don’t judge outwardly, judge inwardly and thoroughly. Judging right means to make discerning decisions and know the difference between right and wrong. That is how a christian is supposed to judge.
There are two ways of being judgemental:
1.⁠ ⁠Judging people based on their physical and behavioral appearances: we spend alot of time assessing and evaluating people, judging them on how they talk, how they look, what they wear, the work they do, how much money they have and so on, thereby forming an opinion of a person due to what you see (judging a book by its cover). You can never make correct judgements of a person from their appearance, or fine clothes or fine jewelry without knowing who they really are. When you don’t have correct facts about something or someone, you end up making foolish and false conclusions that can end up damaging people’s reputation. Believers should be careful to not judge without having correct facts as facts matter.

1.⁠ ⁠Our experience: sometimes we use our hurts, experiences and personal standards to judge others. For example, the person who loves going out will judge an introvert as not being socially sound, one who is smarter than another in class may judge a slower student as not being intelligent. Being judgemental can make us not see the talents and gifts that God has blessed them with. It also makes us fail to see our shortcomings. The reason why God gives greater honour to the weak, despised ones that are unpresentable is so that there will not be any division between us for we are one. The bible specifically says that, God intentionally chooses the foolish, the weak, the low and despised to shame those of us who consider ourselves wiser, stronger and more respectable. Therefore make judgement in the right order, with the right heart for the right purpose but never be prejudiced.

Bible reference:
Matthew 7:1-5
John 7:24
James 2:1-4
1st Corinthians 1:27-28

Pst. Emem Chinedu Emeka