Judgement Leads to Missed Opportunities For Friendship

Today’s reading: Romans 14:1-12

It was painful one day telling my friend who grew up in another country that the website he has hired me to spruce up might come across to visitors as a potential scam. Fortunately, he didn’t agree with me.

This man is as honest as they come. And the story of his time in the U.S. is as inspirational as life gets. As a child he always thought of Americans as heroic and longed to live here. Finally as a young adult, he decided to come — even though he had very little money and knew very little English. Upon his arrival, he knew only a few acquaintances from his home country and they were able to offer him only a small amount of help. But he struggled his way through community college, became a United States citizen, and earned an MBA all in a surprisingly quick amount of time. He now runs a successful business and is very proud of his perfect record with the Better Business Bureau. No one has ever even come close to filing a complaint against him.

But, yes, his website is filled with broken English. (A common problem that he and I now chuckle about is his habit of typing “under niece” when he means to say “underneath.”) And, frankly, the many errors might make even me hesitant to do business with him — if I did not know him personally. Fortunately, many of his customers are, themselves, newcomers to English and are not put off by his problems with writing. And, even more fortunately, many customers are able to forgive his site’s weaknesses and simply give my friend a call. Once they do, they always find him to be, as I say, as charming and as honest as they come.

But he would like to have even more customers, and his MBA tells him that he must achieve better credibility with those to whom he cannot communicate personally. So he now hires me to produce well-written content for his site.

But meanwhile, he has never seen fit to remove much of the error-filled content. And that, I’ve told him, is a big mistake. In a fit of annoyance over this one time, I mention that I am very reluctant to tell people that I write for his site. I am afraid that they may find the error-plagued articles and assume that I wrote them.

“Well, that’s good,” he responded very calmly. “I’m not sure I want you telling people that you write for the site anyway.”

Ha. Great answer!

Though I struggle with it, I admire my friend’s attitude toward this. He has taught me much about being fearless in the face of judgement.

And he came quickly to mind as I pondered today’s reading.

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” (Verse 10)

Anyone who visits my friend’s website and decides not to be his customer simply because of a few articles written by a brave, brilliant man who happens to still struggle a little with English is making a mistake. I will say again that my friend is as honest and as inspirational as God can make a man. And everyone who takes the time to get to know him will see I am right.

So I am proud of him for not worrying too much about the errors on his site.  The shame is on me for encouraging him to give in to the sinful, judgmental ways of our world.  I am tempted, in fact,  to toss in a few errors purposely in the next round of articles I write for him.

Thanks be to God for making all of us perfect. May I always remember that.