Judging Others

Now here's an interesting take on the need for gratitude (aside from the hundreds of biblical injunctions of course). The magazine Inc. ran an article titled "Listening to Complainers Is Bad for Your Brain." Apparently neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session. And the news isn't good.

The article summarizes the research:

"Being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity—including viewing such material on TV—actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving. Basically, it turns your brain to mush."

Possible Preaching Angle:
So, basically, too much complaining (either listening to it or dishing it out) turns your brain to mush. The article provides three practical steps to avoid that negative, brain-numbing experience of complaining, but that advice can't top the Bible's simple command: "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:18).

A pastor and his family on an early morning flight had been delayed for hours and were feeling sleep-deprived and anxious. As the plane landed, another family behind them attempted to exit quickly, with the teenager rushing ahead. The pastor shares:

I stuck my arm into the aisle to block the rest of the family from passing, like I was Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. “None shall pass.” “We’re all trying to get off this plane,” I said to the family, “Let’s wait our turn!”

They had words with me that I cannot share here and pushed past my arm. I was fuming.

As the passenger disembarked, a flight attendant approached, explaining that the teenage girl had been experiencing a panic attack and needed assistance. The family had been trying to help her. The family was not rude; they were desperate.

How did I, a former chaplain trained to notice physiological signs of stress, miss that this young lady needed help? How did I let my core value of courtesy block my capacity to see what was really going on?

I was operating out of assumption and unable to see reality. Rather than see that this young lady needed help getting off the plane, all I could see was a family rudely skipping the line, and I must intervene.

Whether we move toward self-righteousness or self-protection, the common denominator is self. This is what every follower of God has in common: We get caught up in ourselves, we get triggered, we forget others, and we forget the Lord.

Ah, how the heart is bent towards self-righteousness! Even criminals look down on other criminals. That's what happened in a strange story from Spain. According to the First Thoughts blog a 64-year-old man in the city of Jaén reported a home burglary. The victim, who happened to coach a youth soccer team, listed several electronic appliances as stolen.

Days later, police received an anonymous call from a payphone. It was the burglar, informing them that he had left three videotapes in a brown envelope under a parked car. Apparently, the stolen tapes were evidence that the soccer coach was also a criminal. The thief included a note stating that he wanted the police to do their job and "put that (expletive) in prison for life." Nine days after the burglary, the police arrested the soccer coach.

The article concludes: "There is a well-worn adage that evangelism is one beggar telling another where to find bread. (But) so often, I live out my Christian faith more like a criminal telling the cops where to find the crooks. This should not be. When I find myself picking up the phone to report that others have fallen short, may I instead speak the words of another thief: When you come into your kingdom, remember me (Luke 23:42).

A recent study by The Washington Post has revealed a startling number of cases where innocent people have been accused or arrested for crimes because they were identified through a faulty deployment of AI-driven facial recognition software.

Katie Kinsey is chief of staff for the Policing Project at the NYU School of Law. According to Kinsey, such software is often used to analyze low-quality, grainy surveillance photos or images, and as a result perform demonstrably worse in real-world situations compared to laboratory tests involving crystal-clear, high-resolution images.

Additionally, police often succumb to a phenomenon known as “automation bias,” where people tend to believe that machines or computers are less biased and more trustworthy. This phenomenon, combined with other identification techniques with limited efficacy like witness testimony, often create scenarios where officers hastily jump to conclusions without doing their due diligence. Sometimes officers fail to account for the possibility that innocent citizens might bear physical similarities to criminal suspects. Other times, they rely on the facial recognition hit without using other forensic evidence for confirmation.

For example, a medical entrepreneur named Jason Vernau spent three days behind bars after being arrested for check fraud after police used facial recognition to ID him as a bank customer. In this case, the software was correct; Vernau had been in the Miami bank where the fraudulent check was deposited, but he was there to deposit a legitimate check. Had officers done even a cursory examination of his financial documents, or the time stamps in the security footage, they would’ve ruled him out as a suspect.

“This is your investigative work?” That’s what Vernau asked the detectives who questioned him. “You have a picture of me at a bank and that’s your proof? I said, ‘where’s my fingerprints on the check? Where’s my signature?’”

After Vernau was released, prosecutors later dropped the case, but Vernau said he is still working to get the charges removed from his record.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This story highlights several themes that resonate with biblical narratives, particularly concerning justice, false accusations, and the dangers of relying on flawed systems or human biases.

The Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) program is a federally funded law enforcement initiative that trains officers to recognize symptoms of drivers under the influence of illegal substances. It’s like a field sobriety test, but for harder drugs instead of alcohol. Proponents of the program argue that it's the best available tool to detect drugged drivers.

But various industry experts are criticizing the program for its questionable scientific basis and lack of consistent testing protocols. They are calling it a process that can be easily manipulated by officers seeking to make drug-related arrests.

Haley Butler-Moore, a nurse, experienced the controversial nature of DRE firsthand when she was pulled over in Colorado for speeding. Despite denying any recreational drug use, the officer insisted her eyes suggested otherwise. At the officer’s suggestion, Butler-Moore agreed to undergo a DRE evaluation, unaware of its implications.

After observing her behavior and vital signs, the DRE officer concluded she was impaired by a double dose of her prescribed depressants. Butler-Moore insisted on her sobriety, which was later confirmed by a blood test revealing no traces of drugs or alcohol. She said, “I just felt like I was another test subject for them, and that felt really unfair.” The attorney representing her in a suit against the arresting officers said, “It's such utter nonsense. A cop can use it to manufacture whatever conclusion of impairment they want.”

In 2012, a group of Maryland defense attorneys sued creators of the DRE program, presenting to the judge a group of cases that they felt was police misconduct under the guise of DRE. They called a number of expert witnesses. Judge Micheal Galloway ultimately ruled in their favor, saying that “the DRE protocol fails to produce an accurate and reliable determination of whether a suspect is impaired by drugs and by what specific drug he is impaired.”

Despite this ruling, the DRE program has continued to expand, training more than a thousand new officers every year.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God cares about justice for people; leaders who abuse their position dishonor the authority they have been given.

A popular pizza chain known for its snarky ad campaigns has been forced to apologize after a sustained public outcry over its latest special. In early October, D.C.-based &Pizza (pronounced “And Pizza”) announced the addition of “Marion Berry Knots” to its dessert menu, referencing the late former mayor of the District of Columbia Marion Barry. The ads for the new product made extensive references to Barry’s drug use and public drug arrests (“so good, it’s almost a felony”).

Marion Barry was arrested in a drug sting in 1990 and was eventually convicted of a misdemeanor drug charge. After six months in prison, Barry was elected to the city council in 1992, and re-elected mayor in 1994. Despite his death in 2014, the memory of Barry, the district’s first African American mayor, still looms large over residents of Washington, a city with a sizable African American population.

The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), called the ad campaign “inflammatory, and culturally-insensitive,” calling for its removal. The organization also challenged &Pizza to donate to organizations doing substance abuse prevention as a way to rectify the wrong.

“Candidly, we made a mistake," said &pizza CEO Mike Burns in a statement. “And for that, we sincerely apologize.”

Legal representatives for Barry’s widow Cora Masters Barry and the Barry estate called the apology insufficient, issuing a cease-and-desist notice request that &Pizza refrain from profiting from Barry’s name, image, or likeness.

D.C. restaurant owner Peyton Sherwood said:

Barry’s life was about opportunity, dignity, and equality for everyone in Washington, D.C. To reduce that legacy to a crass ad about his darkest moments is not only offensive it’s cruel. It disregards the immense good Barry did for this city and the battles he fought on behalf of all its people.

Possible Preaching Angle:

A person is more than their failures. Every person is a mixture of good and bad, failures, and successes. We should always look to remove anything in our own eye before we try to remove the speck in other’s eyes (Matt. 7:1-5), even if done in jest.

The Paralympic Games is a celebration of athletic achievement for those with physical disabilities. It has been marred by a growing concern: “classification doping,” (which borrows language used to describe performance enhancing substance abuse). Athletes are misrepresenting the extent of their disabilities to gain an unfair advantage over competitors.

Double amputee Oksana Masters, a prominent Paralympic athlete, believes officials are more interested in maintaining a positive image than addressing the issue. "They want to keep the warm and fuzzy narrative going," she said. "If they knew what's really going on behind closed doors, they'd be shocked."

The Paralympic classification system is designed to place athletes into competitions with others who have similar impairments. While some disabilities are easy to categorize, others are more ambiguous, relying on the judgment of medical classifiers and the integrity of the athletes themselves.

The most infamous Paralympic cheating scandal came at the 2000 Sydney Games, where Spain’s intellectual disability men’s basketball team won the gold medal despite fielding a roster with 10 players who did not have disabilities.

Physician Kevin Kopera, a volunteer in the Paralympic classification system, is cautious about dismissing the issue. "I don't believe anyone can say to what degree misrepresentation exists in parasports," he said. "Any statement in this regard would be speculative. Certainly, to say it doesn't exist would not be realistic. The stakes are too high."

One of the lasting byproducts of the worldwide pandemic is the fact that many face-to-face institutional interactions of modern life have been conveniently relegated to virtual meetings. Among those institutions affected are our beleaguered court systems.

So, in late May, when social media feeds across America featured a clip of a man attending court via Zoom, the novelty was not in the platform itself, but about what the man was doing. Corey Harris appeared before the Honorable Judge J. Cedric Simpson on Zoom, while driving.

Harris told the judge, "Actually, I'm pulling into my doctor's office actually, so just give me one second, I'm parking right now.”

The judge said to the Harris’ public defender, Natalie Pate, "Maybe I'm not understanding something. This is the driving-while-license suspended (case)? ... And he was just driving and he didn't have a license?"

“Those are the charges, your honor, yes,” said Pate.

At this point in the video, Judge Simpson becomes quite incensed, and orders Harris to turn himself in or face arrest. People online got a good laugh at the man who appeared to be so flagrantly disobeying the law, virtually appearing in court driving while his license was suspended. Harris eventually spent two nights in jail over the offense.

There was only one problem: Harris’ license had actually been reinstated back in 2022, but because of a clerical error, the judge was not aware of the reinstatement. Harris was driving because he assumed that they knew his licensed had already been reinstated, and was surprised by the judge’s harsh reaction.

According to USA Today, the charges against Mr. Harris have been settled. As a result, many of the people who poked fun at him now owe Harris an apology for jumping to conclusions. Among them is Nate Burleson, co-host of CBS This Morning, who took a whole segment on the show to explain the situation for viewers.

“We’re sorry,” said Burleson, with co-host Gayle King nodding in light penitence. “You were right all along.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

We can show the love of Jesus to people by extending grace to them and not always assuming the worst about their actions or intentions.

In the spring of 2000, a unique library was established in Copenhagen, Denmark. It's called the Menneskebiblioteket, which is Danish for, “The Human Library."

The library is, in the true sense of the word, a library of people. Readers can borrow human beings serving as open books and have conversations they would not normally have access to. Every human book from their bookshelf, represents a group in society that is often subjected to prejudice, stigmatization, or discrimination because of their lifestyle, diagnosis, belief, disability, social status, ethnic origin, and so on.

Instead of checking out a book, you can have a conversation with someone who will share their story of being deaf, blind, autistic, houseless, sexually abused, or bipolar. The mission of the Human Library? To break down stereotypes and prejudices by fostering dialogue. Yes, you can ask these human books questions!

Their motto: "Unjudge someone."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Isn't that what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount? "Do not judge, or you too will be judged." Instead of focusing on the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye, Jesus told us to “take the plank out of our own eye” (Matt. 7:1-5).

Because the British royal family lives under constant media scrutiny, it’s usual for any member of the family to stay out of the limelight for an extended period. So, when Catherine of Wales hadn’t been seen in public for months, and her Mother’s Day photo was scrutinized as possibly being doctored, conspiracy theories began to proliferate.

All these theories proved to be irresistible for online jokesters. “Perhaps Kate Middleton had been using a body double, or was in a coma, or was engaged in an illicit tryst,” people speculated online. Even American late night comedy hosts were getting in on the action.

But it turns out the truth was much less exciting, and much scarier: Kate Middleton was undergoing chemotherapy treatments for a form of cancer.

For many people, this news created a regretful reckoning. A 58-year-old woman named Dana spoke to reporters at The Washington Post about this. Dana had been joking with her friends about the Kate Middleton rumors; when she heard the truth, she was filled regret. She said, “This woman’s sick and afraid. And I just lost my mom to cancer. I am devastated at my inhumanity.”

Many of the online entertainment personalities simply ceased joking and moved on to other targets, but CBS’ late-night host took an extra step, apologizing during a segment of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He said:

There’s a standard that I try to hold myself to. And that is I do not make light of somebody else’s tragedy. Any cancer diagnosis is harrowing for the patient and for their family. Though I’m sure they don’t need it from me, I and everyone here at The Late Show would like to extend our well wishes and heartfelt hope that her recovery is swift and thorough.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Telling jokes can be a great way to bring levity to your friends, but take care that your jokes do not veer into harassment or defamation of character.

For years, Jalon Hall was touted as a bright spot for Google’s reputation for diversity. Hall is an African American deaf woman, and had been highlighted on the company’s official social media channels. On LinkedIn, Google praised Hall and said she was “helping expand opportunities for black deaf professionals,” and on Instagram she was hailed as “making life at Google more inclusive.”

But for Hall, those platitudes were only words, and were not backed up with actions. Hall recently filed a lawsuit against Google for failing to provide the accommodations they promised her, and for creating a hostile work environment by characterizing her complaints according to racialized stereotypes.

In an interview Hall said, “Google is using me to make them look inclusive for the deaf community and the overall disability community. In reality, they need to do better. I’m standing in the gap for those often pushed aside.”

Hall says when she was hired as a content moderator in 2020, the company promised to provide interpreters to help her review content as part of YouTube’s child safety regulations, but the company refused. And a manager in another division called her an “aggressive black deaf woman” and advised her to “keep her mouth shut and take a sales role.”

Hall says she filed three HR complaints before she sued, and wants to remain at Google to help promote a better work environment for others.

I’ve noticed along the way of life that some people are much better at seeing people than others are. In any collection of humans, there are diminishers and there are illuminators.

Diminishers … make others feel insignificant. They stereotype and label. If they learn one thing about you, they proceed to make a series of assumptions about who you must be.

Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know how to ask the right questions at the right times—so that they can see things, at least a bit, from another’s point of view. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, respected, lit up.

Illuminators are a joy to be around. A biographer of the novelist E.M. Forster wrote, “To speak with him [gave you] a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” Imagine how good it would be to offer people that kind of hospitality.

The northeast Portland location of Pho Gabo, a family-owned Vietnamese restaurant, was forced to close after the restaurant received an anonymous complaint about the smell of the food. The closure prompted swift condemnation from five state representatives of Vietnamese descent in the Portland area.

In response, Portland city commissioner Carmen Rubio instructed the Bureau of Development Services to pause investigating any more odor complaints until the city’s regulations can be evaluated.

The problem stems from the fact that, as currently written, if an inspector travels to the location and can smell anything food-related, they’re required to write it up. The city’s enforcement structure privileges the complaint of one anonymous person over the legion of satisfied customers patronizing the restaurant, which has been in that location for over three decades.

Five Vietnamese American state representatives issued a joint statement: “We believe that, as currently written and enforced, the city’s odor code is discriminatory and not objective by any known standards. We stand ready to work with Commissioner Rubio and ensure that city code is fair and reasonable, and ultimately the city of Portland retains the vibrant food culture celebrating our diverse community.”

A statement from an organization advocating for Asians and Pacific Islanders read, “Long used as a tactic for displacing and removing Asian communities, olfactory racism has deep roots in this country dating back hundreds of years. With this closure, our community is losing a vital small business and reinforcing harmful stereotypes and tropes around Asians, our food, culture, and right to belong.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Selfish behavior can potentially generate great loss for a community; generosity and humility, however, can multiply the blessings within a community.

According to Alyssa Mercante at video game site Kotaku, many gamers today lament what they perceive to be woke culture running amok. According to them, the multiethnic casting of central characters must be a result of diversity consultants forcing racial quotas on otherwise uninterested creators. If not for these overly aggressive interlopers, goes the thinking, the characters would hew more closely to their established norm (which just happens to be mostly male and/or white).

This is especially the case with Sweet Baby, Inc., a creative firm that works with game studios like Remedy Entertainment, publisher of titles like Control, Quantum Break, and Alan Wake 2. Mercante says that there’s a group on Steam, the main PC-gaming marketplace, with 100,000 members, dedicated to detecting which games that Sweet Baby has consulted on. Many such gamers think that Sweet Baby’s influence led to Remedy casting a black actress in one of protagonist roles.

“It’s absolutely not true,” said Kyle Rowley, Remedy game director for Alan Wake 2, when asked on X whether Sweet Baby mandated the casting. And when Mercante spoke to people at both Remedy and Sweet Baby, she found the opposite to be true.

Kim Belair, CEO of Sweet Baby, Inc., said, “Sweet Baby is, at its core, a narrative development company. That means anything from script writing to narrative design to narrative direction, to story reviews. One of the things that we do offer is cultural consultations or authenticity consultations … but the perspective is never that we’re coming in and injecting diversity. For the most part, it’s the reverse. It’s that a company has created a character, and they want to make that character more representative and more interesting.”

Sweet Baby co-founder David Bedard insists that the diversity of representation in video games is a byproduct of developers wanting to make the game better for all players. Blair said, “We are not censors. We have no interest in false diversity or in tokenization. We have an interest in making stories better, and making characters more interesting, and in developing a stronger language around narrative design…Those are the things that we are really passionate about.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

You don’t have to be politically liberal or woke or whatever to consider the needs of others as more important than your own. That’s the kind of life that Jesus modeled and that the Apostle Paul wrote about.

Beauty has its privileges. Studies reliably show that the most physically attractive among us tend to get more attention from parents, better grades in school, more money at work, and more satisfaction from life. A study published in the Journal of Economics and Business found that good-looking banking CEOs take in over $1 million more in total compensation, on average, than their lesser-looking peers. “Good looks pay off,” the authors write.

New research from Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance similarly finds that comely managers of mutual funds lure more investments and enjoy more promotions than their counterparts, even though their funds don’t perform as well. The researchers suggest this performance gap may be because handsome managers approach risk with arrogant levels of confidence.

Scientists attribute the human tendency to give attractive people better treatment to something called the halo effect. Basically, we tend to assume that good looks are a sign of intelligence, trustworthiness, and good character and that ugliness is similarly more than skin deep. This may help explain why attractive people are less likely to be arrested or convicted, even after controlling for criminal involvement, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The gospel works by grace not by beauty—God saves us in Christ not because we are beautiful and worthy. He saves us despite our lack of spiritual and moral beauty. But he saves us to make us truly beautiful in him.

Garret Keizer was asked by his minister to visit an elderly parishioner, Pete, in a nursing home. Garret finds out that Pete loves bananas, so he starts bringing some on each week’s visit. Garrett said:

I was standing with my Chiquitas in line at the supermarket behind one of those people who seem to think they're at a bank instead of a store. She must have had three checkbooks. I shifted from one foot to the other, sighing, glancing at the clock. I wanted to catch Pete before supper. No doubt I was feeling the tiniest bit righteous because I was about the Lord's business on behalf of my old man, who needed his bananas and was looking forward to my company. And here was this loser buying an armful of trivial odds and ends and taking my precious time to screw around with her appallingly disorganized finances.

When I finally got through the line, I watched her walk to her vehicle feeling that same uncharitable impulse that makes us glance at the driver of a car we're passing just to “get a look at the jerk.” She got into the driver's seat of a van marked with the name of a local nursing home and filled to capacity with elderly men and women who had no doubt handed her their wish lists and checkbooks as soon as she'd cut the ignition.

In today's highly politicized media climate, various opinions surround several ongoing conflicts. These conflicts include the ongoing war in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas. Amidst these tensions, New York Times columnist Catherine Pearson offers tips for navigating holiday gatherings.

Pearson's advice aims to help individuals maintain composure and connection during challenging times. These tips were curated from hundreds submitted by readers who were asked to contribute their own best practices in avoiding family drama.

“Control the setting,” suggested one reader in Georgia. “We host, every year, every holiday … It has been easier to be where we can control the environment and where we have a safe space.”

“Find a connection,” suggested another reader in Arizona, who cited a mutual love of music that draws two brothers together during the holidays, despite very different political views. “We brought our guitars to the gathering … when we’re singing, we can’t fight.”

“When in doubt, talk sports,” says a reader from Florida, whose family has an unofficial list of topics to avoid in order to keep the peace. “When issues arise, we enjoy the old fallback: ‘How about those Mets?’”

There were even helpful responses in the comment section. One commenter suggests putting out markers and construction paper and having everyone decorate their own placemat. Apparently giving everyone a project can help cut down on arguments.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As we gather with our families and as our broader church family, let's not allow our differences to keep us from loving one another and treating each other with respect.

U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee recently expressed remorse for her words after an unverified audio recording of her was released to the public. Jackson Lee, who is running for mayor of Houston, was recorded chastising an unnamed staffer with an abusive tone that included several instances of profanity.

The woman in the recording, who sounds like Jackson Lee, said, “I want you to have a (expletive) brain. I want you to have read it. I want you to say, ’Congresswoman, it was such and such date. That’s what I want. That’s the kind of staff that I want to have.” In the recording she’s also heard describing another staffer as a “fat (expletive) idiot.”

While neither confirming nor denying the authenticity of recording, Jackson Lee maintained her desire to treat all her staff members with dignity and respect, and acknowledged that because of her eagerness to effectively serve her constituents, she occasionally falls short of her own standard of conduct.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those entrusted with positions of authority and responsibility have an obligation to watch what they say. Leaders and public servants need to use words to build up, not to tear down with insults or profanity.

Of all the helping professions, police work seems the most suited to a dark, sardonic disposition often referred to as gallows humor. It’s the byproduct of being subject to crime, degradation, and violence on a day-to-day basis. Still, the case of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer should help officers reflect on the consequences of their words, especially when they’re caught on camera.

Auderer’s bodycam footage recorded him joking with another officer while discussing the death of a pedestrian. SPD officer Kevin Dave had been driving over 70 miles per hour in his police vehicle while responding to an overdose call when his car struck and killed 26-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk. Auderer had been summoned to evaluate whether Dave had been impaired at the time of the accident. Auderer was recorded saying that the city should “just write a check,” and implied that eleven thousand dollars would suffice, because, “she was 26, anyway … she had limited value.”

Auderer later wrote in a statement to the city’s Office of Police Accountability, "I intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers. I laughed at the ridiculousness of how these incidents are litigated and the ridiculousness of how I watched these incidents play out as two parties bargain over a tragedy."

Auderer admitted that anyone listening to his side of the conversation alone "would rightfully believe I was being insensitive to the loss of human life." The comment was "not made with malice or a hard heart," he said, but "quite the opposite." Still, police watchdog groups were not satisfied with the explanation, and several demanded Auderer be suspended without pay.

At the time of her death, Kandula was a student enrolled in the information systems program at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus. After her death, her uncle Ashok Mandula arranged to send her body to her mother in India. Mandula said, "The family has nothing to say. Except I wonder if these men's daughters or granddaughters have value. A life is a life."