Ideas can be True or False
Actions can be Right or Wrong.
People can be Good or Evil.
When there is a conflict, both parties need to be able to separate the people from the problem. The problem may boil down to ideas or actions that one or both parties are taking. However, if people don’t separate people from the problems, people will either attack others or become very defensive.
Two people can have opposing ideas but do the same action. Atheists and Christians, for example, don’t agree on why they should serve the poor, but they both do the right action, which is helping the poor.
Right actions don’t necessarily always follow from the right ideas. People can do good with the wrong motive.
Wrong actions, also, don’t always come from wrong ideas. People often mean well, have the best motives and ideas, but the execution becomes disastrous and does the antithesis.
Don’t judge people, judge ideas and actions
We must judge ideas (as true or false) and actions (as good or bad) but never judge people as to good or evil.
We should judge people as to their ability, for example, to do a particular job well. I must be able to judge between my wife and my two-year-old to know my wife can be left alone by herself without supervision when my two year old can’t be.
But when it comes to judging people as good or evil, when it comes to judging their motives, it’s best left to God. When we make this separation, it will enable us within a conflict to be able to separate the people from the problem. It will allow us to treat people with respect and dignity, even when we vehemently disagree with their ideas and actions. It will also enable us not to be overly sensitive when people criticize our ideas and actions because we would already know that we are not our ideas and actions. We are much more than that.
All humans have respect and dignity – regardless of their ideas and actions – because they are humans. Period! I, personally, believe people deserve that respect and dignity because they are created in the image of God. But even if one were not spiritually-minded in the same way I am, I think it’s amply clear from Natural law that all humans are created equal and have dignity and respect as an inalienable right.
Yet, I think it’s important to remember the scriptural passages that say we are all evil and that all the inclination of man’s heart is evil. God sits in the right place to judge us evil. And he is the only one who has that right.
