I Read The Switch As A Verdict

He switched, and by the time you got to your desk you had a number.

That is what happens and it happens fast. He answered you in English in the corridor, and somewhere in the eleven steps between there and your chair a whole assessment assembled itself: not good enough to be worth the time, noticeably below the threshold, getting worse rather than better, and everybody has probably noticed.

None of that was in what he said. He said four words about a meeting.

This is the thing you do, and you know you do it, and knowing has not once stopped it happening.

You take a small ambiguous event and you produce a grade from it, and the grade is always specific and always slightly worse than the last one. It happens in about four seconds and it is finished before you sit down.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are running an examination that nobody is administering, and you have been the examiner in it the whole time.

That is not a comfortable sentence and I do not mean it as a criticism. Being somebody who assesses himself constantly is usually why a man is good at his job, and almost every strength you have runs on the same machinery. It is the same engine doing something useless with a corridor.

So I am not going to tell you he was not judging you. I have no idea what he was thinking and neither do you, and that is closer to the point than either of us assuming.

It is a very small thing that I should be judged

There is a line in First Corinthians where a man puts the whole question of other people's assessment in its place, and he does it in about a sentence and a half.

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. (1 Corinthians 4:3, King James Version)

A very small thing.

Now this is a man being actively assessed by a whole church that has opinions about him. This is not somebody who nobody is looking at. He is describing a real judgment being made about him by real people, and he calls the size of it small.

You have been carrying something at a weight the written word calls very small, and a corridor has never once been the size it became by your desk. 1 Corinthians 4:3 names a genuine assessment and then puts a size on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a man who arrived at his chair with a number.

Now here is the clause that will do the actual work, and almost nobody quotes it.

Yea, I judge not mine own self.

He includes himself in the list of people whose assessment does not settle anything. Not just them. Him. He declines to be his own examiner, and he does it in the same breath, as though the two were obviously the same problem.

You were never appointed to grade yourself, and an assessment made in eleven steps has never once been more reliable for having been made by you. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a careful man out of his own examination chair, and 1 Corinthians 4:3 refuses the self judgment in the same sentence as the other kind.

And here is the third thing, which is the next verse and the reason any of this holds.

He hands the assessing to somebody else. Not to nobody, and not into the air. The verse after says he that judgeth me is the Lord, which means he is not pretending the question does not exist. He has moved it to a desk that is not his.

You have somewhere to put this question that is not your own head, and a question handed upward has never once had to be answered in a corridor. 1 Corinthians 4:3 sits directly beside a line naming who does the judging, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds what a man cannot settle about himself.

Four seconds is not evidence

Here is the practical half, and it is about what actually happened in the corridor.

There was no data. That is the flat truth of it, and it is worth sitting with, because the whole assessment got built without any.

You do not know whether he was late. You do not know whether he had a number in his head he was trying not to lose. You do not know whether he switches with everybody, or whether he did it to somebody else an hour earlier, or whether he was thinking about his mother who is ill.

What you had was four words and eleven steps, and out of that you produced a paragraph about yourself.

You have been reaching conclusions on almost nothing, and four words has never once been enough material to grade a man with. The Spirit of God is the one with a man assembling a paragraph out of a corridor, and 1 Corinthians 4:3 calls a real and considered judgment a very small thing.

Now here is the piece about the machinery, because you will not switch it off and should not try.

The assessing is not going away. It is how you work, it is most of what makes you good at it, and a man who genuinely stopped noticing how he was doing would be worse at everything. Trying to become somebody who does not evaluate himself would be a bad trade.

What can change is what you do in the eleven steps. Not the instinct. The eleven steps, which is where a fast reading becomes a settled verdict.

You have a habit that runs in eleven steps, and an instinct has never once been the same thing as the conclusion it reaches. 1 Corinthians 4:3 has a man decline to be his own judge without pretending he cannot think, and the Holy Spirit is the one with somebody walking back to a desk.

And here is the cost of the verdict, said plainly.

You will not try with him again. That is what a verdict does, and it is the only real damage in the whole episode. The four words cost nothing. The grade you built out of them will cost you every future attempt with that man, and possibly with the two people who sit near him.

You are the only one who can make that corridor permanent, and one switch has never once closed a door without somebody agreeing to it. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a man to try again with the same colleague, and the written word hands the whole question of assessment to a desk that is not his.

Same man, same corridor, this week

So here is the assignment, and the person is not negotiable.

Try again with the same person, in the same language, once more this week.

Him. The same colleague. Not somebody safer, and not a stranger where it costs less, because the whole point is the verdict and the verdict has his name on it.

Say something small to him in the language this week. The same kind of thing. About a meeting, about the weather, about anything.

You have one attempt to make with the man the verdict was about, and going back to the same person has never once been the same as making a point. 1 Corinthians 4:3 puts a real assessment at its true size, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a corridor with a man opening his mouth for the second time.

And here is what to do in the eleven steps afterward, whichever way it goes.

Say one sentence, out loud or under your breath, on the way back. Something like: he answered how he answered, and it is a very small thing.

That is not positive thinking and it is not pretending. It is naming the size of it, which is exactly what the verse does, and it is enough to stop a reading turning into a grade before you reach the chair. Then stop, because one attempt is the assignment and nobody owes anybody an improvement.

You have eleven steps and one sentence to say in them, and a reading named at its true size has never once hardened into a verdict. The Spirit of God is the one walking back down that corridor with a man, and 1 Corinthians 4:3 declines the self judgment in the same breath as everybody else's.