Judging Less, Tolerating More

Last November, I was sitting at my desk, working on a paper, when I heard a noise in the kitchen. I thought it was kind of strange that something was making noise in the kitchen since I was the only one home. But since I was the only one in the apartment, I figured the noise couldn't be of much consequence. So I kept on typing. And I kept hearing a noise. I thought to myself, "Either there's a mouse in the kitchen, or someone is at my kitchen window." But we had mice traps all over the place, so I couldn't imagine how a mouse would survive in the kitchen. And we lived on the second floor of an apartment building, so even though there was a fire escape outside our window (which, incidentally, went all the way down to the ground), I figured it had to be my imagination.

But the noise continued. I felt like a babysitter who had just watched a scary movie and just knew there was a murderer outside the house, looking in through one of the windows.

The noise wouldn't go away. So I got up, walked into the kitchen, and saw a man entering our apartment through the kitchen window. I was shocked.

The moment he saw me, he jumped back, onto the fire escape, and started running down the stairs. I ran to the window. I was still flabergasted. But I managed to shout out,
"Yeah, you better run! You better not come back, either. I'll call the cops!"

He didn't seem too impressed -- or intimidated. He yelled back, over his shoulder, "Go ahead!"

So I did. And the cops came. And they never found him.

I was seething mad. Why did this guy think he could break into our apartment? What gave him the right to violate our home and take our stuff? My wife and I alternated between anger and feeling vulnerable.

I could have rationalized this anger in many ways. The actual incident wasn't that bad, but the "what ifs?" were terrifying. What if I had waited two more minutes and he made it all the way into our home? What if he had a weapon? What if I hadn't been home? What if I hadn't been home but my wife was? It made me sick to think about how much worse it could have been. That didn't help my anger or feeling violated.

It took me a while to cool off. To stop thinking about the awesome moves I could have used to neutralize the attacker and make him beg for mercy, had I another chance at the encounter. To stop thinking about the cops catching him and throwing him in jail. To start thinking about what this man's life was like and why he felt so trapped, so cheated, so desperate that he needed to resort to this kind of illicit behavior to get by. To start thinking about his needs and his motivations.

I'm not exactly proud of how long it took me to stop being angry and start trying to be understanding. But this is just another instance of the axiom: we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. We constantly give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but rarely extend that courtesy to others.

That's not to say that what this man did was right. And there is such a thing as righteous anger. But at the same time, especially in light of Jesus' parable in today's Gospel (Mt. 13:24-30), we need to be less judgmental and a whole lot more tolerant.

The parable about the wheat and tares (probably the bearded darnel, a weed known to look a lot like wheat until the final stages of maturity) reminds us that malicious acts are a part of life. Bad things happen to good people. But that doesn't mean we ought to retaliate against, dominate, or isolate those who choose to do wrong.

In today's Gospel, Jesus reminds us that ours is not to judge. Neither is it our place to weed out those we might not agree with, who pose a threat to us, or who are different from us. Our role and responsibility is to be tolerant and trust that God -- the only one to fully understand people's situations and motivations -- will be the just, merciful judge when it matters.

That doesn't make us any less responsible for our own moral thoughts and deeds. In fact, it makes us all the more accountable. Today's Gospel is not only a reminder that we ought to focus on doing what is right, true, and good, but also that we must be tolerant of others, no matter if they offend us or hurt us on purpose or by accident.

The world would be quite a different place if we focused on being more tolerant and less judgmental. If we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions, can you imagine how different the world would be if we tried to do the opposite?