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Seeing, knowing and judging, let’s be careful
Let’s support one another
A beloved poem from the 1800s tells of six blind men who wanted to find out what an elephant was like. So they went to visit one. Each man approached it from a different direction, each taking hold of a different part of the elephant and describing what he discovered. One felt a tusk and concluded that an elephant was like a spear. Another, feeling a thick, sturdy leg, decided an elephant was like a tree. Still another, grabbing the trunk, declared that an elephant is like a snake, and so on.
The poem concludes that these men
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
They were right about their descriptions of what they had experienced. They were being true to what they knew. But they were wrong because they failed to account for what they didn’t know. How can an elephant possibly be like a spear, a tree, and a snake? It’s clear when we see the whole picture. It’s not so clear when we refuse to consider anyone else’s experience.
This mistake is humorous when applied to elephants but tragic when applied to people. Sometimes we are so quick to judge. We make casual assumptions about people based on limited information—the way they look or talk. But in reality, we are all blind. Our perceptions, our experiences are limited. It takes patience and humility to withhold judgement, gather more information, and hear other viewpoints.
The same applies to many of the confusing and divisive issues of our day. Many people seem so adamant that they are right and anyone who disagrees is wrong. But those who come closest to the truth are those who are willing to look for it everywhere—even in the perspectives of those who see things differently.
In our quest for truth, we can look to God for guidance. After all, He sees and knows things we cannot, no matter how observant we are. So with one hand, we hold to the truths we know, and with the other we reach out in humility and goodwill, because there’s always more truth to receive.
As to the difficulties of arriving at justice and fair judgement, one philosopher observed: “We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased.”
It is high tribute to say of any man that he is just in all his judgements. And it is higher tribute to be able to say that he is generous as well as just in judgement. Ungenerous judgement is an unfortunate character fault, and perhaps no one is ever innocent when an ungenerous person is his judge.
It sometimes seems that there is nothing men do quite so much as misjudge other men. Whether knowingly or not, it is a perennially prevalent fault to permit personalities or prejudices to enter into the judgements of others. There isn’t anything that anyone could do that couldn’t be misjudged by one who wanted to misjudge. There was never a mortal man in whom fault could not be found by one who wanted to find fault. There is no act or gesture that could not be misinterpreted by someone whose mind was so set. There is no uttered word to which someone could not give a different meaning from what was intended.
No sentence is ever written that could not be read in different ways. There is no one who could not in some respects be presented in a bad light by a prejudiced person. In other words, either we can decide to see the best side of a man or we can decide to see his worst side, and we see the side we want to see.
Perhaps this is in some degree inevitable so long as people are imperfect and that seems likely to be for a long time. But the fervent petition of Solomon could well be the earnest plea and prayer of each of us: “Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart … that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge. . . ?” Whether it be among our friends or family, among our own intimate associates or absolute strangers, one of the greatest qualities of character is to be just and generous in judgement.
And with a plea from Paradiso again we could well let Dante give us these words of constant warning: “O mortal men, be wary how ye judge.”
By Samuel Enos Eghan
Email: samueleghan@gmail.com
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
