I once saw a scene in a movie in which a chef confronted a restaurant critic who had written a terrible review of his restaurant. The chef explained that the words the critic had so casually written had genuinely hurt him.
The critic had written his review and moved on with his day, perhaps not giving it a second thought. But for the chef, those words were personal. He had put his time, talent, and effort into something he cared about, and someone had dismissed it with a few paragraphs.
That scene stayed with me because it reminded me how easily we can hurt one another without giving it much thought.
We see someone do something we don't like, hear an opinion we disagree with, or encounter someone behaving badly, and we quickly form an opinion. We make assumptions about who they are and what kind of person they must be. Sometimes we express those judgments out loud. Other times, we type them into a comment online, never considering what the person on the receiving end might be going through.
I've had experiences that reminded me just how much we can miss when we judge someone too quickly.
A Man, a Barking Dog, and a Very Bad Day
I once encountered a man who began yelling at me and cursing at me rather viciously. He was nearly beside himself with anger over a barking dog. His reaction seemed completely irrational, and I could feel my own anger rising in response.
I wanted to blow up. Part of me wanted to fight and give him a piece of my mind. After all, why should I stand there and let someone treat me that way?
But deep inside me, another voice was telling me to stay calm. Don't lose your temper. Don't let this turn into something worse.
It wasn't easy to listen to that voice, but I did.
Later that same day, I went up to the man to talk. I asked him if he still wanted to fight. I did that partially to show both of us that I wasn't a coward. I hate unfinished business.
What happened next was something I wouldn't have guessed from our first encounter.
As we talked, I learned that he had been going through an extraordinarily difficult time. His father had recently died. His sister was robbing their mother of thousands of dollars, and his brother had been killed in prison.
He was dealing with grief, family betrayal, and the loss of a brother. Whatever was happening in his life, he was carrying a tremendous amount of pain.
I couldn't know how much of that pain had contributed to his anger over a dog. But I began to understand that the angry man I had encountered earlier was also a man dealing with more than I had known.
He apologized for his behavior, and I apologized for the barking dog.
I explained that I had been forgiven for doing many bad things in my life.
I asked him if I could pray for him.
He said yes.
Somewhere between that first angry confrontation and our conversation later in the day, something changed. The hostility gave way to understanding. We became friends, and he even asked if he could give me a hug.
All of this happened within the span of a few hours.
Think about that for a moment. At the beginning of the day, we were two people who seemed headed for a fight. By the end of it, we had found a way to connect with one another.
The difference wasn't that his problems had suddenly disappeared or that what had happened earlier was somehow acceptable. The difference was that we had taken the time to talk.
We Don't Always Know the Whole Story
I often wonder how many times we encounter people without having any idea what they're going through.
Perhaps someone is rude to us in a store. Maybe a friend snaps at us for no apparent reason. Maybe someone posts an angry comment online or says something that strikes us as ignorant, unreasonable, or unkind.
Our first reaction may be to judge them. And sometimes their behavior really is wrong. But we rarely know the whole story.
What if they've just lost someone they love? What if they're worried about a family member, struggling financially, or facing a problem they don't know how to solve? What if they're having the worst day they've had in years?
We don't know.
That doesn't mean we should excuse every kind of behavior or allow others to mistreat us. We can establish boundaries, disagree, and stand up for ourselves without adding unnecessary cruelty to an already difficult situation.
But perhaps we can learn to separate a person's behavior in a particular moment from our judgment of who that person is in the sight of God.
We see the anger, but not the grief. We hear the harsh words, but not the worries that may have preceded them. We witness a single moment in someone's life and sometimes act as though it tells us everything we need to know.
It doesn't.
I could have responded to that man with the same anger he showed me. We might have fought, and that would have been silly — two grown men, old enough to know better, throwing punches and wrestling on the ground, or worse.
Instead, I listened to the voice telling me to remain calm, not reach for a little friend of mine that could have taken the situation somewhere neither of us wanted to go.
Later that day, I chose to approach him and talk. I'm glad I did.
I don't know what would have happened if either of us had made different choices. But I do know that an encounter that began with hostility ended with prayer and a hug.
I might have missed all of that if I had allowed my anger to make the decisions for me.
A Little More Kindness
Too many of us, myself included, can be careless with our words. We criticize without considering the consequences. We make assumptions without asking questions. We judge people without knowing what they're facing.
And in a world where a few seconds are all it takes to publish a harsh comment for everyone to see, it's easier than ever to forget that there is a real person on the other side of the screen.
We don't have to agree with everyone. We don't have to pretend that bad behavior is good. And we won't always be able to resolve a difficult encounter with a conversation.
But we can pause before reacting. We can choose our words more carefully. We can be firm without being cruel and honest without being hurtful.
Most of all, we can remember the Golden Rule: treat others as we would like to be treated.
And perhaps we can remember another simple teaching: A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.
Sometimes, especially when it's hard.
We may never know what someone else is carrying. We may never discover why they acted the way they did. But we can leave room for the possibility that there is more to their story than we can see.
We cannot control how other people treat us, and we can't erase their pain or solve all their problems. But we can choose how we respond.
And sometimes, that choice can change the course of an afternoon—or the beginning of a friendship.
Before we judge someone, perhaps we should stop and ask ourselves one question:
What if I don't know the whole story?