What’s wrong with being judgmental?
Afriend recently shared with me that her daughter had been bored at work and quit her job. She asked her parents to support her until she “got back on her feet.” In relaying the story my friend confided, “I hate being judgmental, but I wish she had found a new job before she quit this one.” “What do you mean you hate being judgmental? You’re her mother — your job is to be judgmental!”
This incident made me wonder when did being judgmental become the eighth deadly sin? When did we start criticizing the judging more than the underlying behavior?
Whether we admit it or not, we all judge. We have a little voice in our head that says things like, “How rude to talk so loudly on your cellphone in a restaurant,” and “How lazy to leave your shopping cart in the parking lot.” The issue is not whether or not we judge; the issue is whether we speak up and share our judgment.
Most of the time we are not going to tell the loud talker or shopper what we think. We’ll keep these thoughts to ourselves. But there are other situations where maybe we should. The fear of being called judgmental should not be the determining factor on when to speak up.
For example, my friend later realized that parents have the right, if not the job, to judge, speak up and then hopefully redirect the undesirable behavior of their (even grown) children. Trying to avoid the judgmental label is not the goal of good parenting; raising good people is.
Our obligation to judge and speak up extends to other loved ones as well. It’s a matter of choosing the right words — what we used to call constructive criticism. Instead of saying, “you have a big mouth,” we might say, “I know you didn’t mean to, but last night you dominated the conversation.” While the initial punch stings, somewhere our loved ones know we’re right and that we were willing to risk their wrath to keep them from embarrassing themselves again.
Once we go outside the purview of close friends and family, we still judge, but speaking up becomes trickier. We do not have the same investment in these relationships. A co-worker boasts that she returned a dress “she only wore twice.” An acquaintance once again sends back his “overcooked” three-quarter eaten steak and demands that the waiter take it off the bill. While we shake our heads in silence at these “wear but don’t buy” and “eat but don’t pay” values, speaking up is probably not worth the risk of offending these people.
There comes a time, however, when the balance shifts. Even if we are not invested in the relationship, an egregious act calls for us to do what is right, not what is comfortable.
I still feel guilty when I think back to a dinner party I attended a few years ago. There were about 20 of us squeezed together around two folding tables. Wine was flowing, and the conversation was animated. Just as I was scooping cannoli cream into my shell, one of the guests told a “joke” with an offensive ethnic slur as the punch line. I cringed in my seat and wondered how to handle the situation. I ended up doing nothing.
Was I wrong to silently bear witness to such an offense? Should I have found the courage to express my outrage?
We need not be the morality police, but, we also need not endure defamatory behavior. Isn’t silence consent? When an individual’s actions impinge on the dignity of others, isn’t it time to stop worrying about being labeled judgmental and start worrying about doing what’s honorable?
Maybe we have lost our motivation to speak out on the things we can change because there are so many things we can’t. We feel helpless in the face of chaotic global markets, congressional stalemates and horrific mass shootings of innocent people. Faced with so many overwhelming issues, it’s tempting to fall into the “it is what it is” and the “whatever” pool. Let’s resist this laissez-faire approach and instead find the courage to judge right from wrong and to speak up when it’s called for.
If the same dinner party situation came up today, I would like to think I’d muster the nerve to say, “It makes me uncomfortable to tell you this, but more uncomfortable not to: I found your joke offensive.”