Avoid Judgment and Criticism

Try not to give way to criticism, blame, scorn, or judgment of others when you are trying to help them.

Effectiveness in helping others depends on controlling yourself.

You may be swept away by a temporary natural urge to criticize or blame, unless you keep a tight rein on your emotions.

You should have a firm foundation of spiritual living which makes you truly humble, if you are going to really help other people.

Go easy on them and be hard on yourself.

That is the way you can be used most to uplift a despairing spirit.

And seek no personal recognition for what you are used by God to accomplish.

I pray that I may try to avoid judgment and criticism.

I pray that I may always try to build up others instead of tearing them down.

Blame

As kids, he {God} has us perceive monsters coming to get us; as adults who think they’re beyond this whole monster business, we grow blind to the monster’s identity and full of guilt at how we’ve cooperated with its tricks.

And it’s here where we become trapped:  we train ourselves to get used to the discomfort and alienation of evil, since the trick of sin isn’t so much the evil itself as much as the self-hatred it engenders, the sense of that we are no longer the sons of the Father and worthy of facing him, and so we build our lives, build cultures, around the pain of this identity loss.

Dino Gerard D’Agata, Praying with Saint Paul

 

Lord, when we are tempted to define ourselves
by the compromise that sets in when we do evil,
by the feeling of guilt and recrimination,
lift us with your grace and help us see
that our cooperation with evil is the source of this,
 and that you only stand by, ready to make us
new in every instant.  Amen.

Avoiding Blame

Higher Power, help me take responsibility 

for myself and my actions, 

because blaming others will only keep me stuck.

Responsibililty

It is always tempting to take credit for the gifts of grace and to lay the blame elsewhere for my faults.
If I do not claim responsibility for the choices that are truly mine, neither can I ask for or accept forgiveness.
To heavy for me, mine own offenses; to heavy not to allow my Creator to wipe them away.