Thank God For Judgemental People

Posted on November 25, 2003 in Attitudes

“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”* (2 Cor. 3:6)

Thank God for judgemental people. Some of the time.

Once I heard a woman — who was totally unaware of the irony in what she said — declare “I hate judgemental people.” I do not.

Every time I look for a house, I think of that person who came up with the idea of naming the streets and putting numbers on the houses. I grew up in a city laid out according to the Mormon plat. It was easy to find my way around the grid where planners stuck to the original concept, to know where to look for the east and the west, the north and the south.

A judgemental person worked out that design.

Thank God, too, for the engineers who worked out the circuitry that this machine I am typing from is based on. I do not deem myself capable of this feat — it takes a persistance of a frame of mind in which I do not feel comfortable.

Thank God for Dr. Samuel Johnson and curse him, too! Thank him and curse him for the dictionary! It is a great tool for introducing yourself to unfamiliar words and a tyranny when it is used by an obsessed mind to read in meanings beyond what you meant, to attempt to limit you to her or his world.

Thank God for the men and women of perception, the spirits who wash down the channels of human intercourse, who overwhelm and erase those checkdams set by some judgemental people for no other purpose than to give themselves the pleasure of constructing virtual certainties. Thank God for the happiness that subdues excessive concrete thinking. Thank God for the sanity of balance.

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* But only when the letter is used to contain the spirit.