Heart to Heart Chat
† Heart to Heart Chat – September 15, 2024
Have you ever experienced this? You meet someone for the first time. Somehow, you don’t like that person and do not feel like developing a relationship with that person. During my college years, I had a similar experience. The first time I met him, did not like him. Never cared to develop a friendship with him either. This sounds totally irrational, but it does occur to humans. Can we find any logical explanation for this kind of human behavior to like or dislike someone at first sight? It could be due to the differences between our personalities. I don’t think such a disliking or liking happens through immediate judgement of the other person.
There is a saying, “Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.” Many of us know ourselves well – or at least, we think we do – and are familiar with our own ways of responding to and reconciling ourselves with the challenges and joys of the world. Yet out of this healthy self-knowledge develops a dangerous habit: Knowing our own psyches and souls, we assume that everybody else expresses themselves in the same ways. From this faulty assumption, we draw flawed conclusions about other’s thoughts, feelings and dispositions based on how we interpret their external presentation.
St. Paul warns his fellow Christians about their temptation to be judgmental. Even though we cannot look into others’ hearts, we believe that we know how “normal” people (which too often means most like me) think, behave and act. As a result, we sometimes imagine that our own habits and preferences reflects God’s, and ready to condemn others for their failure to be like us. Perhaps we are enthusiastic about our faith and express ourselves vocally and judge someone else who is not that way as less involved in faith or don’t care about their faith. On the flip side, we prefer quiet, reserved devotion and view those who pray or sing loudly as brash and irreverent. Even before Paul’s time God warned us against this tendency in 1Samuel 6:7. God does not see as a mortal, who sees the appearance. The Lord looks into the heart.”
If we are not called to be judges, what is our purpose? We are called to be mere servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. To be servants of God is to transcend all our prejudices and preconceived categories. We are called to love God and serve Him in every person we meet without judging them. There is no single, divinely ordained way in which to manifest or express our faith in daily life. What unites us all as one is the Love of Christ that dwells in our hearts and to question that based on externals would be a grave injustice. As good Christians, let us meet every fellow Christian with kind understanding and true compassion that we need not be judges of their behavior rather lovers of their hearts.
Your Brother in Christ,
Fr. Xavier Ilango