Eps. 23: Don’t. Judge.
Episode Description
Marriage struggles are easy to judge from the outside and difficult to understand from within. Doc and Crystal reflect on times they formed opinions without knowing the full story and encourage married friends to offer prayer, support, accountability, and love without choosing sides.
What We Get Into in This Episode
Why outside observers rarely know the whole story
The regret that can follow harsh judgment
Supporting couples without choosing sides
Loving people through different stages
Prayer, humility, and appropriate accountability
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it risky to judge another person’s marriage?
People outside the marriage rarely know every detail, history, or private conversation, so conclusions based on partial information may be unfair and damaging.
How can I support a friend whose marriage is struggling?
Listen, pray, offer appropriate care, and resist imposing your preferred outcome as the only acceptable solution.
Should I choose a side when married friends are in conflict?
Support can focus on care and accountability without assuming that one person has shared the entire story or recruiting others into the conflict.
Transcript
Hey y'all. So, today we are talking about Don't you judge me. Don't judge. Don't judge. Don't judge. Um, we've just had some experiences through our marriage that have really taught us about um loving on people instead of judging them and their situation. Um, you know, beautiful marriage is called that for a reason, right? [laughter] It's it's not easy to be married. um it is very rewarding, but it requires a lot of work and the intricacies of staying married requires that each person evolve with time and that can create some real bumps in the road.
Bumps craters. [laughter] Potholes. It's like turbulence in the in the airplane. Yeah. And um it's really easy to see somebody on the outside looking in like if that was me I wouldn't be I wouldn't be putting up with that. I would just and in all honesty I have I have done that and we have definitely done it. Okay. We have definitely done that. And when I tell you to this day, I regret it.
Um, and have asked for forgiveness. Um, because I've grown and understand now that Um, you go through different paces and stages and you just have to love people where they are. Um, so whether you got a friend group, not a friend group, but a group of friends who are married Um, and one one couple might be struggling or one couple is up and the other one is on the fence. Yeah. You know, it our job as members of the body of Christ is to love on and to support one another, not to judge. Um, you never know what's going on in somebody's house. No. Yeah. You never know. And I know that, you know, we've had situations where we've come home and we've had discussions like, I can't believe so and so is doing this and I can't believe and here we are.
I'm talking about judging hard and not not knowing the particulars of what's going on in in their marriage. And I think like she said is that we need to love on them where they are, right? um because I think that's very important. I think, you know, if you take that approach, it can be very rewarding in the end because, you know, I know we've done that in the past. And I think it's easy to kind of get caught up in someone else's issues and someone else's drama in their marriage and trying to choose sides. Oh, man. Yeah. Trying to choose sides. I mean, you know, he I he when we got married, it was like, "Okay, so this these my friends and that [laughter] means that y'all going to be friends." And then I was like, "Well, these my friends and that means that y'all going to be friends and we going to be friends." We just talked about that.
um and so through those relationships as they grow, you know, you grow to love people and um when things ain't right, it's hard. um but you can't be picking sides like Yeah. Just just love on them. Love love love on your friends. Pray for them. Pray for them. Pray with them cuz you never know. You never know. We like to insert how we feel, how we think, how we would handle, how we should handle. And that's just not our place.
Yeah. It's not our place. So don't judge y'all. Please don't. All right. [clears throat] We'll see y'all next time. Holla. Bye. Okay.
