Tomorrow, I will begin my next monthly challenge: a month of no judging other people. While my first monthly challenge was fairly concrete, this next one is more ambiguous.

I am not limiting myself from making judgments of non-human entities, unless doing so would indirectly criticize people. I am not limiting myself from making judgments of other humans either, as long as the judgment is neutral. However, if a judgment directly or indirectly implies a person is good, bad, better, or worse, then I will avoid it.

I am avoiding both negative and positive judgments, because positive judgments give the implication that those who are not doing what is being praised are inferior. Thus, a positive judgment of one person is almost invariably a negative judgment of another person. It does not have to be, but it is more times than not. However, I will not monitor the positive judgments too strictly, as it is the negative ones with which I am most concerned.

Neutral judgments are fine. If I see someone always watching what they eat, I might judge that they are trying to lose weight or eat more healthy, but I don’t say they are good or bad for doing so. Even in these cases, I will be very careful what I say, because even though I may not be assigning a value judgment to an action, others still might perceive it as being judgmental. Here is what I will do if I find myself judging other people:

1. Turn the judgment upon myself. I have noticed that most of the things I judge others about are also things with which I struggle. So, when I find myself having these thoughts, I am going to scan my life and look for the character flaw from which they most likely originated.
2. Do something, however small, to correct the fault I discover in myself. This doesn’t mean I will make it my next major focus in life; it just means doing something to lessen it. For example, suppose I find myself judging someone for being harsh. I scan myself and realize that I can often be cold toward others when just focusing on accomplishing my own agenda. I purpose to smile more often and memorize a verse about a bright countenance.
3. Stop judging completely. After turning the judgment away from another person and onto myself, and having made a small correction, I will then lose the whole judging complex. I will stop judging myself. While judging yourself periodically and making correction to your life is a great practice, wallowing in self-loathing is decidedly not so.

Another thing I am really going to watch out for is judging the judgmental, which I wrote about here. When I become less judgmental of people in general, I tend to become more judgmental of those who judge. But this is inconsistent.

My prayers will be very general this month. In prayers for others, I will allow  myself to thank the Father for other people’s good qualities and might pray for something specifically if I know or feel strongly they would want me to do that.

One last thing I want to mention. My primary motivation for doing this is not Scriptural. A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking of making Matthew 7:1 (Judge not, that ye be not judged) my next Scripture focus, but ended up deciding on something else. However, I felt being more mindful of my judgments would be a good practice regardless, and so decided to make it my next monthly challenge, since I have been thinking about it a lot.

In the next post, I will update you on how my month of no sitting progressed.