This post may contain affiliate links meaning I make a commission on products purchased through my links. See my full disclosure for more.

“How Do the Savior’s Teachings Help Me Make Righteous Judgments?” on February 26 Let's chat about that second lesson in February that we're going to teach in Young Women's and Young Men's. It's all about judgment. Dun dun, dun. A little scary, right? But we're actually talking about the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters six and seven, “How Do the Savior’s Teachings Help Me Make Righteous Judgments?”

When we think about righteous judgment, we totally agree. We don't want people judging us. We don't want people holding grudges against us. It makes sense, but then we think about the judgments we make, and we might tend to think that they're absolutely correct, appropriate, and needed. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them! But let's face it, a lot of the time our judgments are unrighteous and we need to fix them.

Save it for later, pin it now!

As we approach this lesson, we definitely need to do so with humility so we can learn and teach it appropriately. Remember, as we go through this lesson, we want to pay attention to the impressions that we receive, so then we can go and act.

Listen, Watch, or Keep Reading

Throw those Socks

Grab some balled up socks or super soft balls- we don't want them to hurt anybody. Hand one to each person in your class with a question taped on top. These questions I drew from Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk, “The Merciful Obtain Mercy,” which is all about making righteous judgment. He has some great questions that we can ask ourselves to see if we need to improve such as:

Am I holding a grudge against someone else?
Do I gossip even if it's true?
Do I purposefully exclude someone?
Am I punishing another because of what they've done?
Do I envy another?
Do I wish to cause harm to someone?

After you've passed out these socks and they've had a chance to read those questions, head to John 8 and read about the woman who was caught in adultery. In verse seven, it says,

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Pause here and invite your class in a similar fashion. “Those of you without sin, throw your socks.” Use a cup tower or a doll or target to represent where to throw the socks. The point being none of us are without sin so nobody should be throwing a sock just like nobody in that story throws a stone. They all walk away. Then finish reading the story (through verse 11) and discuss it further.

Yes, she did something wrong, but how did Jesus judge and treat her? What can we learn? How can we apply what Christ did?

We learn that we don't judge people. We judge situations, activities, conversations, ideas, and sins, but we don't actually judge people.

If we don't judge people, then what about when we have to vote and choose political leaders? We look at their fruits. What are they voting for?

What about our friends? We're supposed to surround ourselves with good friends. How can I not judge people if I'm supposed to judge who my friends are? Let's judge how we act around them. Are we keeping the commandments? Are we loving others or are we becoming snippy? Are we tempted to do things that we shouldn't be doing? How we act around different people will help us judge which friends we want to have in our lives.

What are some situations and other things that might require righteous judgments? What are some questions that they might have? This is a great time to discuss them.

Measuring Stick

How do we know if we're judging righteously?

When we use a search engine, we look at those top rankings, right? After we do our search and we usually click on one of those top three links. Maybe we scroll down past the ads and then click, but we usually stay on the first page, right? We don't really go to page two or three, even though what's on page two or three could be better. We are usually not going to put in that time and effort to go and find the absolute best article in answer to our question.

We even have AI content or artificial intelligence. It writes these articles for us and is programmed to put in all those keywords that those search engine robots look for resulting in that AI content ranking to be one of those first three links to click when you search, even though their answers may be completely wrong! How are we supposed to know how to judge righteously when things like that are happening all around us?

We need to have a righteous standard to measure things by. That is why we have to learn from Jesus. What are some righteous standards? Well, we have the commandments, but you know what else we have? We have the new For the Strength of Youth Guide. This guidebook is teaching us exactly how to judge righteously. Read through a section together with your class. and show how we can judge righteously because of these righteous standards that we have and hold dear.

Making Compassion the Default

We have a natural tendency to judge. How many homeless people have we walked by and instantly judged unrighteously? Or what about going through the hallways at school? What about when we go to Walmart?

Have you ever been scrolling online and clicked on a video because it had this great image in the beginning or a great hook? So you clicked on it and then they totally didn't deliver. They didn't even show you what you wanted to see or tell you what you wanted to hear. It's so frustrating, but they know that you're going to judge them within a split second, and so they show whatever they think you're going to click on- even if the rest of that video doesn't deliver on it! It's a first impulse and everybody knows it.

We have to train ourselves to think differently. I was talking about judgment with Heidi in our last Faith Story podcast episode. She runs a charity often helping those that struggle- those who are homeless, living in their cars, lost their jobs, etc. They're fallen upon hard times. I asked her how she doesn't just instantly go to that snap unrighteous judgment.

Do you know what she reminded me of? The spirit leads with compassion. It's not just a good idea to have the Holy Ghost with us always. It's so necessary! Our church leaders tell us that all the time. We need the guiding influence of the Holy Ghost in order to survive these last days.

Think about some of the duties of the Spirit. The Holy Ghost helps us distinguish between right and wrong. He guides us, warns us, comforts us, and helps us to see others as God does. The Holy Ghost can help us feel love and compassion for others.

When we strive to have the Spirit with us, it is so much easier to judge righteously and to stop those poor snap judgments that we sometimes make. What are some other ways that we could train ourselves to not just go to that quick faulty judgment? If we strive to have the Spirit with us, what are some other things that we might do? Talk about it with your class. Some examples that I came up with include:

Service. When we serve, we definitely have more love in our hearts and are more charitable.
Prayer. Pray for love.
Study the FSY guidebook- know those principles and guidelines that we should use as we make judgments.
Study the life of Jesus Christ. Get to know Him and His teaching, and strive to be like Christ.
Learn to let go. Forgive.

Another great thing to do is to focus on improving ourselves instead of somebody else. We don't need to tell them how to change when we can change ourselves. President Thomas S. Monson has a great story that has been turned into a video that is recommended in the Come Follow Me manual as well. It's from October 2010 and is such a great modern day example of casting the beam out of our own eye before we focus on somebody else's mote in their eye. It’s the story about a woman looking through a dirty window. This is a perfect time to show it and to talk about how we need to focus on ourselves instead of other people and putting everything on them.

The Things We Say Matter

We judge ourselves, don't we? We probably judge ourselves more harshly than anybody else, right? Comparison, like Mark Twain, said, is definitely the thief of joy. Men are that we might have joy (see 2 Nephi 2:25). We're supposed to have joy, so we don't want comparison, but we do it all the time.

We know all our faults and we compare that with everybody's highlights. This has been happening long before social media. We only ever see this top surface of so many people. For example, we only see that person coming to church with the perfect hair.

Remember, as we are on social media, there is something behind the camera- that big mess or there are filters.

Speaking of filters, this is a good time to have some fun with filters of your own. Download a fun filter app. I used three filters for my example. I took my photos right before I did my video. We have so many different filters that we can use and make ourselves look different. that is often the case with social media.

Sometimes I see friend suggestions on social media and I can't even recognize the person by their photo. I have to look at their name because of the filters they are using. We have to remember that that's not reality.

We have to remember in those TV shows and in the movies that those people aren't actually teenagers, they're like 10 years older. They have grown and trained exclusively just for that part, just to look that specific way. They've even probably gone through surgery sometimes.

Things turn out that way on TV or in a book because it is written to happen that way. It doesn't necessarily mean that's how things are going to happen in real life. We have to remember that and not compare ourselves to those alternate realities.

How do we need to judge ourselves? Just like we talked about before, we need to do it by righteous standards and love, we often need to remind ourselves how God views us as divine and with great potential. How we talk to ourselves matters and it makes a difference.

Yes, we are imperfect, but that does not mean we are hopeless. We have weaknesses, but that does not mean we are worthless. We have to trust God and His whole view of us.

Introduce some affirmations to your class that can help us stop judging ourselves so harshly. A really good place to take affirmations from is our patriarchal blessing. Go through that if you have it and highlight certain words to use for your personal affirmations. God is telling you exactly who you are and who you can be. That is the most important way to look at ourselves.

Another way to form a good affirmation is to think of things you constantly tell yourself such as, “Ugh, I am never going to get this.” Instead of telling yourself that, retrain your brain every time you hear yourself saying that and try saying something like, “This is hard, but I can do it. And I could do it with Christ's help. As I keep practicing, I'm going to get better.” Or you can simply say, “I can do this. I will do this.”

Other affirmations you could use are:

I am a child of God. He loves me and He will help me today.
I love myself.
I forgive myself. That one's so important.
I am not alone even when it feels like it, and even when I don't think anybody else understands Jesus Christ does.
I am needed and I am wanted.
I am strong. I am brave. I can do hard things.
Happiness is for me.

How we talk to us matters. We need to be kind in judging ourselves as well, to use righteous judgment as we judge ourselves.

Print Some Affirmations

Popcorn is ridiculous

We also judge the promptings that we receive. As we strive to listen to the promptings of the Holy Ghost, there are two ways me might judge those promptings.

First, we can judge whether they come from God or maybe they're coming from somebody else. Elder Dale. G Renlund gave a great talk on this in General Conference October 2022 where he gave us a great framework to help us judge our promptings and our thoughts- whether they come from God or whether they come from somewhere else.

Second, we may judge our promptings as maybe beneath us. Ridiculous, too insignificant to even matter. Embarrassing, as something we don't want to do and so we ignore it. We’ve got to be careful with those kinds of judgments.

Of course, we don't know better than God, but often we judge our promptings thinking that we do.

Here's a funny example. Years and years ago, I would come home from work and I make myself popcorn. I started to get these promptings that I shouldn't be eating the popcorn, but that was ridiculous. Why in the world would I not eat popcorn? It's a fine snack. There's nothing wrong with it. I mean, popcorn is great. Why not? Sometimes I would ignore it and sometimes I would stop. Eventually it happened enough that I was like, this is ridiculous. Even if I feel it’s ridiculous to not eat this popcorn, I'm getting prompted to not eat it and I need to listen. I don't care if I don’t know what else to eat, I don't know better. I need to just listen.

Long story short, it turns out that I am allergic to corn and I cannot eat popcorn to this day. It makes me super sick. So popcorn, while it's not bad for everybody else, it is bad for me. I needed to listen to those promptings and not think that I'm better than them.

Those are some great ways that you can talk about righteous judgment and how we can learn from our Savior the best way to judge. It's not about people, but about situations.

Remember at the end of your lesson, testify of the principles and doctrines. Also, invite your class to act on the promptings that they have received to act. We need to have the faith to act on the things that we have been told in this lesson. Just like my popcorn example, let's act on them even when they sound ridiculous as long as we know that they come from God.

Chat with you next time.

Featured