In The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen suggests that one of the main things that has to happen for us to come to conversion and purity of heart is that we must move from being a judge to being a repentant sinner. From judge to repentant sinner, what is being suggested here? Psalm 51 haunts the heart with the refrain: “A humbled and contrite heart you (God) will not spurn.” Fr. Rolheiser writes that our problem is that, despite considerable sincerity, our hearts are rarely humble and contrite. The norm is the judgment of others, anger at them, and a certain moral smugness and self-righteousness. Seldom are we on our knees with our heads against the breast of a forgiving God, contrite about what we’ve done and left undone—our betrayals, our sins, our inadequacies. Most of the time, our posture is that of the judge. Our faults are rarely at issue as we adjudicate others’ need for repentance and pronounce judgment on them. Most of the time, our own judgmental attitude and self-righteousness are hidden from us. In our own eyes, we are never the hypocrite, the one sitting in judgment on somebody else’s life. No. We are the honest ones, the compassionate ones, the humble ones. It is strange how each of us so clearly sees the judgmental attitude in the other and yet is unaware of how brutally judgmental we are. One man’s prophet is another man’s fanatic; one woman’s freedom fighter is another woman’s terrorist; and one person’s pro-life struggle is, for another person, the dealing of death! What is true here regarding the self-righteousness and self-blindness that exists within our ideological circles is perhaps even more true within the ordinary give and take of our daily lives. We are invariably judges, never repentant sinners. Conversion begins when we stop standing as a judge in order to kneel as a sinner. When we are humble and contrite of heart, we will not be spurned by God or each other.