Judging others

Last night, I watched the final of The Apprentice on television. I don’t watch much TV, as I tend to have meetings most nights, but I became rather hooked on this programme - normally taped and watched via the video while I do the ironing on a Sunday evening!

What fascinated me more than the tasks themselves was the people involved in them. Some I liked; some I took against, one in particular who was prone to catty comments about the other contestants behind their backs. It left me thinking about how we make judgments about other people.

With people that we know, we tend to judge on the basis of our direct experience of them. On the whole, if someone is friendly and interesting, we like them and wish the relationship to continue; if someone we meet is rude or unhelpful, we tend not to like them so much.

Television often skews the real picture, and portrays people in such a way as to produce an effect that the programme-makers are looking for. I don’t know through watching The Apprentice what the people are really like, only how they have been portrayed. But how do we make our decisions about other people? It’s worth thinking about.

The Christian view is that all people are created by God and therefore have value and worth. God loves everyone. Jesus gave the difficult commandment that we should love not only those whom we like, but also our enemies. We naturally gravitate towards people who share our interests and values, but how do we treat those with whom we violently disagree or who live in a way that we don’t like?

Love can change people. Jesus’s love for the unlovely transformed them into new people. Our love for those whom we struggle to like can also have a transforming effect - on them and on us.
With best wishes
Sarah