“It is very tempting for us to pass judgment based on partial information.”
The Trapper
There was once a trapper who lived in the Alaskan wilderness alone with his two year old son. On one occasion their food supply was running low and the trapper was forced to leave the cabin to hunt in the middle of a storm. He left his son under the protection of his faithful dog.
As the man ventured into the wild the storm grew more intense and more violent and the trapper was forced to take cover for the night in a stand of trees.
When he returned to the cabin the next day he found the door open. As he went inside he saw the furniture overturned and everything in disarray. Obviously a great struggle had taken place. He searched frantically for his son but could not find him. Then he saw his dog, cowering in a corner with blood all over his muzzle.
The trapper came to the conclusion that the starving dog had turned on his son and killed him. In a fit of grief and rage he took his axe and killed the dog.
Then he began to search for his son once more, hoping against hope to find him still alive. All of a sudden he heard a familiar sound. He followed the sound and found his son hiding under the bed. The boy did not have scratch or a drop of blood on him. In a flood of relief he gathered his son into his arms. When he turned around, he saw there on the floor the body of a wolf.
The trapper then realized why the dog was covered in blood, it had defended his son against the wolf.
There is a Latin maxim “quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.” Literally it means, “what is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.” In other words we all filter information that we receive through a bias. We are all conditioned to judge circumstances according to our own experiences and prejudices. This becomes exceptionally problematic when we are quick pass judgment on an individual or an institution based on partial information. Everyday we encounter misleading statements designed to lead us to think in a specific manner. We see carefully composed and cropped photographs and videos that tell us only a partial story. The Church has experienced this for centuries, assumptions, lies, and falsehoods designed to twist the popular idea of what we believe.
Can we truly know anything for certain? Or is most of what we “know” simply a judgment based on our experiences and education?
The Old Man
Author Max Lucado, in his book “In the Eye of the Storm,” tells the story of an old man who lived in a tiny village. The old man owned a beautiful horse that was even admired by the king. The old man’s friends urged him to sell the horse and relieve himself of his poverty, but the old man thought of the horse as a friend, not a possession, and refused to sell.
One day the horse was missing from the stable and the old man’s friends gathered around him to chide him for not selling the horse when he could, for now, obviously, it had been stolen and the horse was a curse.
But the old man responded, “”Don’t speak too quickly. Say only that the horse is not in the stable. That is all we know; the rest is judgment. If I’ve been cursed or not, how can you know? How can you judge?”
After a few days the horse retuned, leading a dozen wild horses behind him. This time the friends admitted their error, the horse was a blessing because it had brought a dozen other horses that could be tamed and sold for even more money. But again the old man corrected them.
“Once again, you go too far. Say only that the horse is back. State only that a dozen horses returned with him, but don’t judge. How do you know if this is a blessing or not? You see only a fragment. Unless you know the whole story, how can you judge? You read only one page of a book. Can you judge the whole book? You read only one word of a phrase. Can you understand the entire phrase?”
The old man had one son. One day, while taming the wold horses, the son fell and broke his legs. Again the neighbors were quick to comment on the curse that rested upon the old man and his son, but again the old man averred.
“You people are obsessed with judging. Don’t go so far. Say only that my son broke his legs. Who knows if it is a blessing or a curse? No one knows. We only have a fragment. Life comes in fragments.”
A few weeks later the country engaged in a war with its neighbor. Soldiers came through the village and conscripted all the young men into service. They left behind only the old man’s son, for he was injured.
The villagers cried out that their sons were likely gone forever, but the old man was blessed because his injured son was spared.
The old man spoke again. “It is impossible to talk with you. You always draw conclusions. No one knows. Say only this: Your sons had to go to war, and mine did not. No one knows if it is a blessing or a curse. No one is wise enough to know. Only God knows.”
Judge Not
We live in a world that has become hyper-sensitive to the least suggestion of offense. Businesses are shut down and lives and careers are ruined over assumptions made based on appearances. But even in our age of instant communication we seldom know the whole story. Nearly everyday we are exposed to scandals, high profile court cases, and people acting in ways that shock us. It is very tempting for us to pass judgment based on partial information.
But Our Lord has made it clear to us that we must allow the good and the bad to exist side by side. It is not our place to judge for we may be wrong. Some actions of course are intrinsically evil and must be condemned, however when it comes to individuals we must be much more careful. It is the proper disposition of every Christian to think the best of everyone, to consider every situation in the most charitable light possible.
The wheat and the weeds grow alongside each other. It is God’s part and not our own to separate good from evil at the harvest.
As faithful servants we must recognize that we could be wrong about someone we suppose to be evil. Intolerance gives rise to fanaticism. In our zeal to root out evil we run the risk of harming the good and becoming unfaithful servants of God.
Only God knows.
Pax Vobiscum
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time