It is so easy to go amiss in my judgments.  In fact, even making judgments in the first place may be my first mistake.

Let me illustrate with a fairly recent incident that you may have heard about.  At a Right-to-Life march in D.C. an American Indian, an older Viet Nam veteran who was participating in another march, felt threatened by a group of teenagers from Kentucky.  Some of them were wearing “Make America Great Again” paraphernalia.

When I heard about the incident, I immediately sided with the Indian.  Why?  There were several reasons.  Some of my reasons may have been rational.  Some, probably not.

For one thing, the slogan “Make America Great Again” belongs to President Donald Trump, and he has made quite a few anti-Indian comments in the past several years.  This was probably my best “reason,” which shows how weak my case is.  To immediately think ill of the young people was crazy premature of me—as my wife wisely pointed out.  (I sometimes wear shirts from Goodwill.  This doesn’t mean that I endorse everything that is written on them.)

Another reason that I sided with the Indian (Mr. Phillips) is that I was a short, scrawny kid when I was growing up.  I couldn’t have fought my way out of a paper bag.  I was teased and taunted and bullied by bigger kids—which was just about everybody in my class, and many who were two grades behind me in school.

Teenagers were a special terror to me.  I remember (I was about 13 at the time) a kid in about the 11^th grade, picking me up by the neck for no reason that I could discern at the time, and holding me off the ground until I nearly passed out.  He was all by himself.  I can understand how a crowd of teenagers could be intimidating to an older guy, or any person for that matter.

We all respond to things and people out of our own autobiographies.  However, it is best to be skeptical about interpretations based on our own experience.

So, I began to ask myself questions, trying to get past my own prejudgments.  Do I know the teenagers who were involved in this event?  Did they have a prior history of taunting?  Do I know Mr. Philips?  Do I know who really provoked this confrontation?  Were any of the participants really aware of their own motivations, or the motivations of others?  Am I aware of anyone’s motives other than my own?  Am I even aware of my own motivations?  Even when there is lots of videos (as there were in this case), can I be sure what was going on?

All these questions have the same answer: I don’t know.  Having asked the questions, I now know what I don’t know.  Or, at the very least, I have a suspicion as to what I don’t know, and it is a lot.

Now, of course, my ignorance cuts both ways.  I don’t know that the teenagers were guilty of anything.  I also don’t know that they are innocent.

But there are two things that I do know, beyond any doubt.  The first is that I need to not jump to conclusions, one way or the other.  The second thing is that I need to think about my own actions, words, and attitude.  In what way might I make other groups or individuals feel threatened or disrespected?  Do I give enough attention to how my attitude, words, and actions might be taken by others, no matter how I may intend them?

It isn’t the evil outside of me for which I am primarily responsible.  It is my own evil.  I am afraid in my zeal to condemn evil (as I perceive evil) out there, I have neglected to address the evil in my own heart.  I need to know what I don’t know.  Even more, I need to know—and deal with—what I do know.