[In what follows, I'm using myself as an illustration that others will hopefully be able to take and use for themselves. I want to make clear that I'm not trying to garner sympathy in the event that it could be taken that way.]
My life experiences have been a rocky roller coaster at best. When I was four, I lied and told a girl's parents that she had said a swear word, and consequently got her spanked, because she had made a friend of mine cry. At six, I chased my sister around with a nail file like it was a knife. At the age of ten or so, I held my Special Education teacher up against the wall by her throat. As a child, I could be violent, and could occasionally nearly strangle to death a peer who had frustrated or angered me. As a teenager and young adult, I became very involved in my church and later went to Bible School. I pounded on the doctrines and rules of my religion, and drove away and hurt a lot of hurting people. As an adult I couldn't keep a job on average for more than a year or two, and most of them were for far less time. I moved my family from state to state, and even into Canada for a time, either looking for work or trying to finish my schooling so I could find a more stable position. As a result, my children never really had a stationary home environment for very long. I changed churches and denominations several times trying to be a part of the "true" church or faith, or at least trying to find it. I packed my family into an R.V. at one point with $3,12 in my pocket and set off from Arizona across the U.S. believing that this is what God wanted us to do, effectively making my family homeless for a year and a half and relying on Him to provide, almost a year of which was spent squatting on my uncle's land in Arkansas after the R.V. broke down and we couldn't repair it. After that I brought my family to California where we spent seven years in a bedroom in my mother's house making the most money we had ever made in the best jobs we had ever had, and still unable to make it on our own.
"I did the best I could." I say honestly.
"Well it wasn't good enough!" A voice might respond, either in my head or from someone observing the situation.
Compared to whom? I ask as I reflect on this exchange. Who else has found themselves in my exact situation, with my biology, neurology, and exact life experiences? Compared to another man who was born with mild to moderate Asperger's, whose father left at five years old, who developed an attachment disorder from living with his two clinically narcissistic and emotionally abusive mentally ill sisters, whose first religious training was in a politically conservative, non-denominational Evangelical church and Bible School? Seriously, compared to whom was it not good enough?
Every human being is unique. Every human being has a unique biology, neurology, and set of life experiences. Every human being has a unique set of "programming" which dictates what they see as "right" and "wrong." And that programming drives every human being to do what they understand to be the "best" thing to do for themselves in any given decision point in any given moment. Every human being is literally trying to do the best they can with the cards they've been dealt without exception.
"But what about...?" Fill in the end of the sentence. The best any human being can do almost always inadvertently causes some kind of harm somewhere. It's never intentional. It's never truly desired. But it happens as we continue to believe that what we're doing in the moment is the "right" thing to do even if it hurts someone, because we ourselves are enslaved to our own sense of what is "right" and what is "wrong," which of course is the fundamental malfunction in human beings.
You can't ask a human being to do anything more than the best they can do for themselves or others. But the best one person can do may look very different, even opposed to the best another person can do.
Jesus taught, "Don't judge so that you won't be judged." Non-judgment is one of Jesus' fundamental teachings and is born from His teachings and commands to love one another as ourselves. When we love the other person as ourselves, we recognize that they're doing the best they can just as much as we are, and were we dealt the same cards they were, there's the strong possibility we would have chosen the exact same route they have.
I literally did the best I could with my life under the circumstances. I'm still trying to do the best I can with it. My understanding of what that means has changed over the years, and so have I. Consequently, my best has also changed and will continue to change as I do.
I and we need to apply that understanding to both ourselves and everyone else around us.
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