“Man seeth the face, but the Lord beholdeth the heart.”Thomas à Kempis · Imitațiunea lui Cristos · 1418 · cartea I, capitolul 7
Deeds can be imitated, but intentions cannot — only the One who sees the heart can judge fully.
Thomas à Kempis sets two kinds of knowing against each other: the human one, limited to what can be seen, and the divine one, which reaches past gestures into intention. The mechanism is simple: outward actions can be imitated, but motives cannot. A person may give alms out of vanity or out of love, and from the outside the two look identical. Our judgments of others are therefore always provisional, and peace comes from leaving the final verdict to the One who sees everything.
If no one can see another's motives, then other people's opinion of us does not say who we are. Thomas à Kempis draws a less obvious consequence from this: peace comes not from being understood, but from no longer depending on it. You can do the right thing while colleagues assume you want praise. If you place your worth in their gaze, you are captive. If you place it in the fact that the One who sees the heart knows the truth, misjudgment loses its power. One question remains: what does a day lived with this detachment actually look like?
Passage 1 showed what to do with other people's opinions. Thomas à Kempis takes the idea further, toward how you judge them. If others' motives are inaccessible to you, your verdict about them is only a guess with high confidence. He suggests treating it as such. The neighbor who ignores your greeting may be arrogant, or may be having a terrible day. Both look identical from outside. The proposed practice is simple: postpone the sentence and mind your own intentions, the only ground you actually have access to. This is not naivety, but an honest limit on your jurisdiction. What remains to see is what happens when judgment is still necessary, for instance when deciding whom to trust.
Why it matters It helps whenever you are tempted to judge someone quickly by looks or behavior, or when you suffer because others misread you while your heart is different.