Judge Not: Deep Sorrow, Not Bigotry, May Be Speaking

1. In these strange and vacillating times of Brexit and identity politics, in which every tribe in England takes solace in the familiar, I think it is important for us to cut each other a little slack when speaking words of woe. We should be very slow to judge; for we may not know who it is that is actually speaking, as the voice of the seeming bigot may in fact be the voice carrying in its dark strains the emotions of great sorrow. Now I am not naïve as to imagine that every bigot screaming obscenities at me, asking me to catch the nearest aeroplane to fly back to where I came from is not a racist. Hell no! I have had my fair share of xenophobic encounters and mean-spiritedness to know the difference.

2. In this Episode, I read an old blog-post I first published in 2019 in the hopes of helping us not to be quick to judge when confronted by a racist attacker, any racist, directing violent abuse at us. For we may never know what kind hell the attacker maybe in. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship once said: “Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”

3.Look up Episode 003 of Conversations with Stephen Kamugasa, and please subscribe to Conversations with Stephen Kamugasa podcast through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our guest thought leaders.