Judgment

Talk about a loaded word! What comes to your mind when you hear "judgment"? A court settlement? A line call on the field of play? Some sort of final exam for life?

I'm entering the wonderful world of speech tournaments. It's one of the perks of being a parent. Jackson made the school speech team, so Katy and I have volunteered to be judges.

Good judges, as it turns out, have some pretty hard work to do. It's not nearly as hard as the work the competitors are doing, but to honor these students, I have to be honest, attentive, careful, deliberative, and a good interpreter of rules. I also have to be willing to make a decision. Somebody in each round did better than all the others. My job as a judge is finally to make constructive comments to help each competitor get better next time, and then to rank them.

One thing I'm learning from the students is that they expect and deserve good judgments from the judges. The critique sheets they receive are like gold. They take each one seriously and use the comments to improve before the next competition.

What they don't deserve in any way is to be treated judgmentally, either by their teammates, their competition, their coaches, parents or, yes, by their judges. And they learn how especially important it is not to be judgmental toward themselves.

There's a difference between judgment and judgmentalism. The -ism is a form of condemnation. The other is an act of life-changing grace.