I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual

by Luvvie Ajayi Jones

So the fact that we think OUR magical floating being with special powers and great hair is more valid than the next person’s is absurd. People be all: “OMG! Prophet Muhammad was NOT real. Jesus Christ was, though.” Okay, how do you figure? How can you prove one and disprove another, when they’re basically different forms of the same symbol?

If the goal of believing in a higher power is to show us that we are all connected, we are all here for a reason, and we are all part of something greater than us, then why do we use our holy books to justify hate? We have created systems of persecution based on passages in the Bible and Qur’an. We have started wars in the name of Jesus and Muhammad, as if they sent us on a mission to ruin everything nice. We’ve sat in the ivory towers of our religions and used these doctrines to kill millions of people over centuries, all around the world, and that is an everlasting shame.

There are more than seven billion people on this earth, and it would be silly if we all believed in the same things, the same doctrines, or the same God.

Man as the default representation of God is a patriarchal idea and has been used to shape how society treats women.

If the prosperity of megachurches was parallel to the prosperity of the people in the community they were in, there would be less to judge them for. But what is the point of a million-dollar mansion surrounded by shacks? What is the point of a billionaire whose closest friends are destitute?

Far too many pastors are exploiting the very people they should be helping, and all they do is tell them, “This is what Jesus wants. This is His will.” How about NO, with your greedy ass? They are the worst PR reps for Jesus ever. Churching has become a business, and the distrust of it has been well earned.

But some of these giant churches are built in neighborhoods where most people are living in abject poverty. There are far too few that work toward building up the condition of the very congregation they purport to serve, and far too many wealthy shepherds with starving sheep. That cannot be holy.

People are being told to pray their illnesses away, as if medicine (or therapy) couldn’t be Jesus’s tool to help you get better.

Religion is supposed to be a user’s guide to good living, but good people don’t need a Good Book to know they shouldn’t be intergalactic imbeciles. And terrible people just like to use it as justification for their awful ways.

Every entity needs checks and balances, and people are outchea running amok in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I’m Christian, and my side-eye to many religious institutions doesn’t make me any less faithful. All shepherds shouldn’t be followed blindly by their sheep. A sinner is just a saint who fell down, right? Well, some of us sinners fall down, stay there, and then use God as the reason why we wallow on the floor.

Alls I know is that you can’t represent hate, misogyny, discrimination, and lack of common sense while saying you’re acting on behalf of Christ or any other celestial being. Get some decorum about your lifespace. Saints and Aints, let us live life well and good, but please leave Brown Baby Jesus out of your shenanigans.

It’s interesting how we correspond now more than ever because of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, yet we are failing at basic communication worse than ever.

Why should we have to see the lifeless bodies of people before we can come up with empathy? If we need to see blood run from people’s skulls to be affected by their deaths, then we are monsters. Even in our outrage, it is a spectacle.

Someone unknowingly live-tweeted the assassination of Osama bin Laden when he posted a tweet saying he heard helicopters in the quiet town of Abbottabad, Pakistan. I’ve been on Twitter when numerous major events have happened, and each time, I am awed by how technology and the World Wide Web have made our possibilities for connection limitless.

The digital age has also allowed the rise of citizen journalists; people can tell stories that combat the false narratives spread by the mainstream media. You can live-tweet what is actually happening at a protest, so there’s a different perspective from the tales of violence and mayhem on the nine o’clock news. You can write a blog post about the state of education in your district, so that when funding is cut, we have the stories of those who are actually affected. You can bring people along with you as you experience things firsthand. That is the awesome power of social media.

However, it’s not all progress and nuance in the news. I am judging us for the way digital platforms have mutated how we report and engage with news and led to the dumbing down of our ideas and our critical thinking.

Playing the game of “FIRST” is not serving us well because as outlets race to tweet and report, they are misreporting important facts, credibility be damned. Too many formerly stalwart publications are rushing and end up getting the stories wrong. That can’t be how it works.

As the old saying goes: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” I would prefer a later truth than a quicker lie.

people are prospering from being unapologetically offensive, trite, and stupid. And we are tweeting ourselves into high blood pressure and ulcers trying to tell them to do better.

Instead of using the new-media landscape to spur us to higher quality, we have instead become sloppier than ever: Tweet first, research later. Post first, rescind later. Guess first, confirm later.

This is why media literacy is important. We need to know when we are being fed bullshit (which is always) by the press, and we need to know where to turn to when that happens (citizens on the ground telling the stories), and then we need to confirm those sources. We must remain critical and questioning because we are being pissed on and believing it’s raining. But we can all monitor the trash we’re letting in and out and keep ourselves vigilant. Read beyond headlines, call Dr. Google, and don’t be a part of the problem. And if the website you got the information from uses Comic Sans as its font, you should not only disbelieve it but vow to never go there again, because they know nothing.

Well, I disagree that bloggers should not sometimes switch lanes, even if just for a moment. I cannot ignore what’s happening around me because I’m afraid to alienate readers. If the audience I’ve built leaves because I talk about what is important to me, I got the wrong people. There’s always a threat of backlash or loss of money from speaking up. I get it. I’m a professional troublemaker and loudmouth. I have pissed people off many times. I’ve probably pissed people off with this very book, but it’s worth it to me to take personal risks for public gain.

Even a whisper of truth matters in an echo chamber of lies.

Shirley Chisolm said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” Some of us are mad delinquent on this rent. We owe back pay, but that’s okay. We just need to start now. We can start doing better any time we want.

Then there is my urge to folks to “Do Something That Matters.” As democracy crumbles in front of our faces, people who are in power and who have the ability to stop this (especially the Republican Party) are being punk asses. “Coward” feels like too kind a word to use for people who are allowing the empire to fall so spectacularly, as they choose party over country. They are covering their own asses as we near constitutional crises each and every day.

But this dumpster fire we find ourselves in feels wholly unnecessary. It feels like it could have been avoided. But maybe not. Maybe it is necessary. This feels like a reckoning. I live in America. A country where a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, hate-mongering reality TV star can go up against the most qualified person to ever run for office and win. A country where a hapless idiot of a man can share a stage with a woman who has spent thirty years in public service, competing for the same job, AND WIN. Land of the fuckboys, home of the ridiculous.