Judge not....

I know we've all heard that we shouldn't judge others, it is in the Bible after all, but I also know that doesn't keep us from doing it.  Hey being Christians doesn't mean we're perfect right?  My wife and I are currently going through PRIDE classes so we can be licensed for foster care.  Both yesterday and today we were in a class given by Tacoma's Youth For Christ to receive the first half of our PRIDE training.  One of the things they focused on today was that we shouldn't be so quick to judge.  You never know what a child is going through.  The next time you hear a kid screaming in the grocery store you can't really assume that their mom is beating them!  It could be they saw something in the store that reminded them of a traumatic event that just set them off.  We can't assume all birth parents are bad for their kids.  The whole goal of the foster care is to get the children back together with their parents if at all possible.  It's kind of funny that we went to church tonight and got kind of the same message.  Our pastor talked about the pharisee and tax collector who were both praying and the pharisee says to God "I do everything right, not like this tax collector, I fast twice a week, I tithe" and he just goes on and on.  The tax collector just humbly keeps his head down, beats his chest and asks for forgiveness for his sins.  In their times people would judge the tax collector as the bad guy and the pharisee as the good guy, but in reality it was the other way around.  The tax collector knew he had sinned and confessed while the pharisee tried to earn his way through works.  It just goes to show that judging has gone on since the dawn of time, well at least since after the fall of man.  So maybe we should all really think about it and not be so quick to judge when we see something going on.  Our eyes don't always know the whole story.