Judgement and value judgement

A conversation about judgement happened, the other day, in our home. We were discussing whether or not we were still in agreement about the vision statement that we had formed for our home a few years back. One person said that they felt that a certain part of the statement should not be there because it seemed to be there for the express purpose of using it to judge people.

Our mission statement is as follows:

We the people of  "Grok the Planet " are committed to changing the world, one soul at a time. Our goals are to constantly continue to grow and improve ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially as well as physically and to encourage others to do the same. We will achieve these goals by each one of us being a leader, living in excellence, being impeccable with our word, not making assumptions, not taking things personally and striving to do our best in all things.

This fear of being judged brings to mind several other fear based issues that this person seems to have, self esteem and possibly acceptance as well, things we can discuss at another time. We quickly assured this person that judgement was not at all the reason for that part of the statement. And it really is not. The whole vision statement is a declaration of intent. It speaks about what we stand for and a little about how we intend to reach our goals.

But as I think about it now, this statement is also a yardstick through which we can measure how we are living our lives, individually and as a group. We can measure our vision against our recent actions and see if we are living up to it. It occurs to me that it IS a tool for judging how well we are doing. And I can see where someone that fears judgement could see it as a potential weapon that could be used against them.

The kind of judgement this person fears is that they will somehow be unworthy of acceptance or labeled a bad person or something along those lines due to not measuring up. The things is that just is not the way the others of us think. We believe that it is not any man's right to judge another person for you never know what is truly in their heart or mind. One can only fairly judge themselves.

Now having said that, it is really not possible to interact with other people on a regular basis and not place value judgements on the things that they say or do. Those value judgements do not say anything about that person as a whole. You are not making them out to be a villain, subhuman or in some way unworthy of being liked or loved. You are just more or less describing whether or not you agree with the choices that other people make.

The intentions of our statement are clear. And from time to time, we will be using our mission statement to determine whether or not we are doing what we say is important to us. If we are not, we will be talking about that and deciding whether or not what we want has changed. If it has, we will get to renegotiate our agreement one way or another. If it has not then we will discuss how our actions get to shift so that they are back in line with our vision.

Value judgement will occur and things that one might not like to hear may need to be said. If this does  happen it will be in a spirit of love, with an intent towards constructive criticism in the hopes of either keeping the harmony within our home and vision or restoring it as the case may be. Harsh destructive criticism and judgements intended to tear a person down and make them feel small have no place in our home.