Judge not, that you be not judged (Matthew 7:1)

Every human being, each of us, bears a burden throughout our life. In the course of life that burden becomes ever heavier. It can even become ballast that weighs us down. What is it that piles up as we grow older? Often those are our possessions—but at all times they are our experiences, our memories, our worries… They are etched into our memory, but also into our figure, our gestures, our facial expressions. Everything we have ever thought, spoken or done leaves its traces in us, visible and invisible.

But when we really want to meet someone, we have to leave all that ballast behind every time again, in order to get an unprejudiced view of who the other is. If we don’t do that, we just see ourselves instead of the other. In the words of the poet:

“What is most difficult of all?
To see with the eyes
What lies before your eyes.” *

What you then see is called observation. You will only find the truth if you can observe, without prejudice.

One is there in our world who observes everything, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-encompassing. And only if we see with the eyes what lies before our eyes, without prejudice, do we come near to Him.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 2,2026

* Goethe, Xenien aus dem Nachlass 45.