Growing up, whenever fights broke out between kids you would always have everyone blaming someone else. "He started it, it wasn't me! It's her fault! I didn't do anything!" Yeah, you get the idea. And then, of course, the kids who weren't involved in the fight would start picking sides. At that point the teacher would typically tell everyone to be quiet and that everyone was innocent till proven guilty. That usually calmed everyone down and from there the hunt for the culprit began.
These days, there's no such thing as innocent till proven guilty, other than in court maybe. For example, so and so is a suspect in a murder trial, there's no hard evidence against him, nothing. Yet, despite that, he's ripped apart by people who believe that he is a murderer as they call him names, threaten him, etc.
I see this most often online if I'm reading an article and happen to glance down at the comments. A week or so ago, I was glancing at an article by People magazine online about how a girl from a popular tv show was accusing her mother of abuse. There wasn't a whole lot of information in the article, nothing saying that mother was definitely guilty, no mention of doctors finding any injuries that coincided with abuse, nothing really other than that the girl's older sister had been granted temporary custody and the mother wasn't allowed to contact her daughter. That was it. But when I glanced down at the comments, every single one I saw accused the mother of being abusive. Some were simply calling her liar, others called her fat and ugly, several accused her of being a terrible mother, and a few went so far as to threaten and cuss at her.
Now granted that's a more minor instance, but its something recent that I read. It gets even worse when you get into the more high profile cases and murders and what not. But I think what I find so sad about things like that is that people say these things without a thought because they can post anonymously. And even its not anonymous, the words just come so easily. But what if that mother turns out to be innocent? Well, then great she's innocent. There's no remorse for what was previously said, most people just shrug and go on with their lives. Many times when I happen to glance at the comments, the immortal words of Thumper from Bambi cross my mind: "If you can't say something nice...don't say nothing at all." I think those are good words to keep in mind. Can you imagine how much better things would be if people followed that?
As for the judging, who are we to judge? God is the only true judge. "Vengeance is mine," He says in Romans. Now we can certainly still dislike things, but its not up to us to judge people. Several years ago I remember hearing someone change the golden rule around to say, "Judge others the way you want to be judged." Generally, no one wants to be judged, which means we shouldn't be judging others. But we still do and like I said, it comes so easily. Looking at cases like this, I think we should all be more mindful of what we're saying, writing, and even thinking. Because if you make it a habit to judge easily and without much thought, you might find yourself saying something you regret and can't take back. Just keep that in mind.
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