Who am I to judge?

My wife had 28 aunts and uncles, and 43 first cousins. Four of the oldsters are still alive, and 34 of her cousins. I had 28 aunts and uncles, and 39 first cousins. Seven of my oldsters are still alive, and 38 of my cousins.

That gives you quite a lot of experience in family life. And that experience is what gives me pause, if I am ever tempted to speak glibly about Other People's Sins. The single worst person I have ever known personally made her husband's life and her son's life miserable, in big ways and petty ways -- and yet she was once my mother's best friend, before she married my uncle and my mother married his brother. I have no idea what demons of insecurity and anger took up residence in her heart. To call her "abusive" would be at once an understatement and a misstatement. She was what she was, and if she made others suffer, she suffered plenty herself, and my uncle, a very nice but somewhat weak-willed man, was not the fellow to tame her or to give her whatever she needed out of life.

It's easy for me to say that every one of my other aunts and uncles was a better person than she was. In fact, I did like them all, no exceptions, and I liked all of my cousins too (whether they all liked me is another question). But if you ask who were the greatest sinners, who stood most stubbornly against the grace of God, who wandered farthest from his fatherly love, I have no idea, and I don't know how anybody can dare to guess.

The words of Jesus, "Condemn not, lest ye be condemned," do not refer to actions whose moral quality we must judge, both in the general and the specific case. But they do certainly refer to persons. And here is where social media sometimes astonishes me. What on earth gives people the notion that they stand in the warm summer of God's approval, by comparison with others whose sins have been dragged out into the arena?