Who Are You To Judge?

Shame: the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself ...

This morning I felt that way. I realized I had been harboring judgments and even anger toward people I know nothing about. Not really anyway. What I do know is what I have heard. What I don't know, is their side of the story. Even if what I've heard is true to the very last grain, who am I to judge? By now you're probably wondering what and I am talking about. Well, I am speaking of AIG. I'm sure everyone has heard about the billions of dollars the government gave them to keep them afloat and then about the "bonuses" the employees were still receiving. AIG has quickly become the object of America's hatred. Here are some things you may not have heard or thought of. The following expert if from piece in the Washington Post.

"A solitary flat-screen television hangs on the back wall of the trading floor inside the headquarters of AIG Financial Products here. Wednesday afternoon, the most-talked-about employees in America huddled around it to find out just how despised they have become. They watched quietly as members of Congress referred to them as greedy and incompetent. They heard more than one demand that their names be released to the seething American public. They heard the chairman of American International Group, Edward M. Liddy, tell lawmakers that people, in e-mails sent to AIG-FP, suggested that the firm's leaders "should be executed with piano wire around their necks."

People are actually calling for employees of AIG to be killed! And not just shot, but killed with piano wire. Can you imagine being the target of death threats just for working at a financial company? Pasciucco told the team to remain professional and keep working hard to extricate Financial Products from its more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding derivative contracts....

"In reply, they told him that they worried mostly about getting shot, despite the guards now patrolling the parking lot, the front door and some of their homes. A sense of fear hung in the room -- the palpable, unsettling kind that flashes across people's eyes. But there was anger, too. No one would express it publicly, of course. Who wants to hear a wealthy financier complain? And yet, within those walls off Danbury Road lies a deep sense of betrayal -- first by their former colleagues, now by their elected leaders."

What people may not realize is that most of the people responsible for AIG's real problems are long gone. Those who remain to handle the mess, never even lost money for the company. The bonuses and payments some of the employees are just now getting were actually offered to them when the former president of the company was getting ready to leave early last year. AIG was becoming unstable and people were thinking of leaving. The president offered them the money since the year ahead looked grim and they needed all their employees to stay and keep working to fix the problems. From what they say, a lot of them never even saw any of that money.

"People are trying to do the right thing," the same Financial Products executive said. "Guys have worked their [tails] off to try to get value for the taxpayer. This isn't money that's being advanced to us. People have performed the work and done it exactly as we asked them to do." Pasciucco cringed at the notion, articulated by many lawmakers and even President Obama, that Financial Products is a firm of nearly 400 reckless and greedy derivatives traders. In actuality, he said, nearly all the troublesome sectors of the business -- namely, the risky credit derivatives written on mortgage-backed securities -- are now out of the equation, as are the people who worked on them."

Most of the people who received $100,000 or more in bonuses were asked by their bosses to return at least 50% of it. From what I understand a lot of them already have. I also, understand that a lot of the employees who were genuinely working hard to get AIG out of this mess will be leaving the company. Who can blame them. Relentless work, death threats and much more. The public continue to be livid with AIG. Suggestions to kill the employees as well as blow up the AIG headquarters is unending. AIG workers houses are being staked out and one man has already relocated his family after his address was leaked to the public.

So, my point? Whether these people have done ever despicable thing they've been accused of or are really trying to do the right thing at the risk of their lives, doesn't matter. They are sinners just like me. They make mistakes just like me. They are made in God's image just like me. Yes, certain decisions and actions have consequences, but surely we are not the ones to pass judgement upon them.

"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?" - James 4:11-12