Judge not?

Clearly I have failed in my non-blogging endeavor. My newest resolution is to quit trying to quit, since each time I try, it never works. I suppose in the pre-webblog days I would have been posting my thoughts on church doors or something...or something.

Anyway, to the point. I have a question for you, and that is: to what extent do we withhold our judgement?

In recent years, I have found myself to be a considerably judgemental person (though not really any more than your average soul, I think). This "finding" has been the result of many judgements (which, of course, I rarely recognize as being such until later) being proven wrong via more information...basically, I tend to come to a lot of assumptions and "conclusions" that are only based on the reality I see, which is seldom reality at all.

I've said many times that I am constantly learning how pretty much everyone has some life conflict going on below the surface...and I think the thing is, we may never know how that affects what we see coming out of them. We'll never understand the full context of their actions/character (at least not until we better know them/their situations...and still, even then...), and so making an assumption regarding "why they did that" or "why they're like that" would usually be fairly ungracious, no?

Of course, some situations would seem pretty cut-and-dry. Most illegal activities, while perhaps explained by hidden motives or situations, are probably not truly justified by them. But still, often when I hear about a ruling or decision of some sort, I wonder if we really knew the full story...mistakes have been made, after all.

And then there are those situations/people that affect you personally. It's harder, isn't it, to take a step back and extend grace when you're closer than just an impartial observer, when your understanding of a situation actually does affect your life (i.e., when you can hardly help coming to some kind of "understanding," even if it happens to be the wrong one). What to do then? It's not easy to be 100% gracious.

questions, questions

So there's the whole biblical answer, which I have yet to really dig into...probably should do that...but I want to hear what anyone else out there thinks, anyone who read all the way down and cares to share...