"Judge not, lest ye be judged." I admit I fall into the category of people that Richards addresses when he says that most Christians think of this as a horizontal command with vertical implications. If you judge others, God will judge you. With the same measure that you judge others, God will judge you. Yet there is no clear indication that this passage is vertical instead of horizontal. Like when we pray "Father forgive us as we forgive our debtors," as if God's forgiveness hangs on ours. Christ's warning in Matthew is that the more we judge others, the more others will judge us.
Around this theme, Richards encourages clear and careful thinking around the way that judgment effects our lives. He argues that we are more effected by our judgment than others. We are the ones that mislead ourselves when we come with presuppositions or when we judge the motives behind actions.
I appreciated a section on consequences. "People learn through consequences. We call it love when we intervene, make decisions for them, and get in the middle of their stuff. But love is based on truth. When we violate scriptural principles, it is not love." Even thinking that ones own suffering is punishment from God can be "denial that these consequences are the direct result of my actions and that God has nothing to do with it."
So many principles in "How to Stop the Pain" ring true. How easy it is to misjudge the words of text, to wrongfully hang a good friendships foundation on a misconstrued comment or lack thereof. In a recent dialogue I was confronted with the idea that even thinking through an important conversation in ones mind ahead of time can be dangerous inasmuch as it misconstrues another's attitude, thus setting up a predispostion based on what I think (s)he thinks and the supposed response. If I expect a certain response in a conversation, I am doing more talking than listening, more judging than understanding.
