At the end of chapter 2 in We Make the Road by Walking, Brian McLaren asks, “Share a story about a time when someone played god and judged you, or a time when you played god and judged someone else.”  I like everyone have been on both ends, but a particular story came to mind of being judged.

When I was a senior in high school I had a track coach whom I very much respected and admired.  Our team was faring poorly. One day, the coach who had became angry and frustrated, called the whole team together and began speaking harshly about our attitude, focus, and performance.  In the middle of his stern chastisement, I began to laugh.  As he witnessed this, in a moment, he judged me to be arrogant and disrespectful.  He called me out, and with distain in his voice, spoke of his disgust that I must think myself so much better than the other athletes that I wouldn’t take him seriously.  And the judgment stuck.  He remained my coach through the end of the season, but never saw me the same way again.   I experienced private shame and a painful separation, a being cut off, as this relationship I had so highly valued was irreparably damaged.

So why had I laughed?  First, you need to know that at the age of 17, I appeared quite mature in many ways (good student, athlete, and I had a part-time job); however, I was not mature or very experienced sexually. Also, I had deeply admired my coach, but really had never thought of him as anything other than a coach.  For instance, I knew he had a wife and child, but I had never thought of him cleaning gutters, mowing the lawn, or engaged in any other family matters.  Lastly, he was a strong authority figure in my life and I never thought of him as a person lacking control.

So here’s what happened.  I was standing with my team listening as my coach, with frustration and anger, gave us a “dressing down.”  As he spoke a teammate turned his head and whispered to me under his breath, “I bet his wife didn’t give him any last night.”   Ten words.  I was naïve enough that, puzzled, it took me a few moments to process what those words meant.  And then it all came together.  Sex had been mentioned! With me at that point of my life it was like saying “fart” to a six year old.  So too, I was being presented of an image of this man as a sexual human being, this man whose identity up until that point was totally encapsulated, in my mind, by the one word “coach.”  Also included in the those ten words, was also the "turned-on-its-head" insinuation that this idealized authority figure in my life could be meekly under the authority of his wife.   I was shocked, surprised, enticed, intrigued, tickled, … and I was mortified that, beyond my ability to control in that moment, what welled up inside of me was laughter.   I laughed, and was judged as being disrespectful and arrogant! When really, in that moment, I was simply immature.  

I would feel pain over that incident and the result of having been, for all intents and purposes, written-off for good by someone I so admired.  As I think back on what could have been different, I wonder what would have happened if the coach had called me to his office and checked out his assumption, asked me why I had acted as I did.  Probably nothing would have changed, however, because I knew then that I would not “rat out” the person who spoke the ten words, and I was still the immature 17 year old who would be mortified to discuss anything sexual in nature with an adult.   

Now all these years later, I find the experience has served as a gift to me.  It reminds me to be careful of “once and for all” judgments. Things are not always as they seem, there are back-stories I may never know.  Only God knows which is why only God can judge without misjudging.