That Bible Study Was Boring

George Dunn joined us and led our Free Store conversation on Thursday morning.  He started by telling us that he wanted to talk about judging people.  He said that the bible said a lot about this and that although he wasn't a scholar he had learned some things from experience over the years.  He told us that one of the main things Jesus said about it was that we shouldn't judge others because we will be judged by the same standard we use against them.

George went on to tell us that at one time in his life he worked with a very smart group of scientists at Glaxo Pharmaceuticals.  He said they were all Ph. D.'s and could be very difficult to work with because they were arrogant and thought they were better than everybody else.  But he learned from this that no matter how smart someone is there is always room for improvement.

George told us that at one time he had a very hard time dealing with gays because he grew up with a lot of prejudice.  But over the years he started to wonder why he was just singling out this one group of people.  He told us that it occurred to him that the bible mentioned a lot of sins that people commit but that we don't go on a crusade against every thing that we find disagreeable.  He suggested that maybe we should organize a compaign against "damn liars" because the bible condemns lying which made us laugh.

On of our new friends said it was easy to be judgmental.  She said that someone might leave our bible study and say "those people don't know what they are talking about and that bible study was boring."  She went on to say that if you only look for the negative that you miss all the good stuff.  Our friend George said that "people have been judgin me recently and I've been acceptin it without sayin much."  He said that he had been on the streets and done a lot of things in his life and that he tried to have compassion on people.

Someone brought up that bad behavior always looks worse when someone else does it than when we do it ourselves.  He said that he can't stand jerks that tailgate his car but then when he tailgates someone else he doesn't see himself as a jerk.  Our friend Larry told us about a time someone pulled up really close behind him which made him angry.  So he just put his head down and kept going at his own slow speed.  He said that he grumbled to himself all the way to the stop sign but that when he looked back the car had turned off and was nowhere to be seen.  This made us laugh as we realized that judging others can actually have a more negative effect on us than on the person we are judging.

As the conversation moved to a conclusion one of our new friends said that we can be very harsh and judgmental about people in the things we say.  He also said that if you dig a ditch you have to careful because you could very well fall into it yourself.