"On Judging Others" (part 1)

Recently I picked up a book I read years ago: Love Covers by Paul Billheimer; in it he argues that what is most needed is for followers of Jesus to love one another and not allow doctrinal differences to divide us. Some of what he writes was aimed at the generation he lived in, and his references to some issues no longer pertain; nevertheless, the heart of what he writes is very pertinent to our times.

At the end of the book, he includes a writing by Frederick W. Faber about judging others. It is rich in wisdom and insight and is very challenging, so I want to share parts of it with you. To keep it to shorter portions for the sake of being able to ponder and pray over it, I'll take 3 or 4 postings to share it. The following is from Frederick Faber:

1. It is a universal law that when we judge others, whether individuals or multitudes, we come to erroneous conclusions from the mere fact that we naturally judge over-harshly.
It is one of the effects of our fallen nature to put the worst construction upon what we see or hear about others, and to make small, if any, allowance for the hidden good that is in them. Also, we unwittingly judge of others by the worst parts of our own disposition, and not by the best. It is natural for us to judge of ourselves by the best things in us, but we judge of others by the worst things in us. It is so common to impute our evil to others, but to think our goodness is peculiarly our own.

2.  Severity is one of the natural accompaniments of a young and immature state of grace. 
Many religious people think that the power to detect evil in others is a special gift from God, to be prized and cultivated, and if such people are inclined to hunt for evil they can always find it to their satisfaction; but the practice begets a habit of suspicion which is utterly ruinous to the deep love of God and to Christlikeness of disposition. Men are never industrious in handing out the good about others, but have a terrific swiftness in seeing the evil; and even religious people, in many instances, have an awful propensity for circulating the evil, but they are very slow to tell the good. It is also a trait among human beings to be most severe with those of their own class, or guild, or profession...