Less Judgmental, More Forgiving

In his talk, Elder Gerrit W. Gong spoke of how we are to seek perfection in Jesus Christ:

His is a gospel of second and third chances, made possible by His atoning sacrifice. He invites each of us to be ... less judgmental and more forgiving of ourselves and of each other, even as we strive more fully to keep His commandments.

Nobody is perfect. Even as we strive to be perfect, it's going to take us a long time and many corrected missteps to get there. We're all in the same boat in that regard. Most people are trying to be decent people, at least from their own points of view, so we should all try to give each other some credit and cut each other some slack.

Many people in the world are more judgmental, of themselves and/or others, than is entirely healthy. I'm one of those people. Being too hard on myself and others is something I could stand to work on. I think we could all use more compassion, including self-compassion, and less judgmentalism.

Jesus Christs forgives everyone He can, and we should do the same. Naturally, we shouldn't tolerate, support, or assist in bad behavior, but we should forgive it, and we should try to understand and have compassion for those who engage in it. We're all human. We're all imperfect. We all struggle with various things. I think we should be able to empathize with each other about that.