My gracious, isn’t the Information Age something? Among the many changes motherhood has brought to my life, an overwhelming deluge of decisions, research, and opinions washes over me daily. If I chose to listen to it, I could be carefully admonished at each turn that every decision I make for my baby, from her method of birth to the brand of pacifier (or horrors, do I dare even give her one?) is sure to determine whether she grows up to be President or is headed for a life of unproductivity and crime.

What has especially struck me this week is how passionately, almost frantically the proponents of each option serve it up as the only possible ethically responsible choice. And Heaven help you if you read the comments section of any article, where moms who did or didn’t follow that path battle it out. Let me say, I am all for each woman making an informed decision about her birth plan and baby care. But what is it in us that upsets us so when someone else chooses something different? Why do we take it so personally?

For example, I recently saw a Facebook post featuring an ad page from a national store featuring both formula and pumping supplies on the same page. The comments were fascinating, from celebrating that the store was clearly breaking free from the “horrors” of the formula industry to griping that the formula ad was an inch or so larger than the one for the breast pump, so clearly the store didn’t really care about women yet. Some were snarking that anyone who would pay for a pump and bottles when the breast was free are really stupid, and others were defensively posting that it was no one else’s business if they fed their baby formula.

Then there was the blog post I read which, best as I could tell, was written purely from one mom to another, encouraging anyone who, that particular day, felt like they hadn’t accomplished much in worldly terms while they’d met the needs of their infant. Lovely, right? Until one mom commented in response that sometimes that was true, but that her newborn twins sleep through the night already, so she just wanted to let moms know not every baby will destroy your sleep or productivity forever. Also encouraging, right? No, she was verbally ripped apart by other commenters for “shaming” any mom whose little one wasn’t on that sort of schedule. Moms who were tired and maybe hadn’t made it out of their pajamas by dinner time (and had all but given up on dinner time) were so wounded, even infuriated that someone else dared suggest they were having an easier time. And when she mentioned those hours of sleep were partly due to efforts on the parents’ part to set a schedule, she was dismissed as unfeeling – clearly a mother who heartlessly let her babies cry for hours in the process).

Yes, our bodies were designed to house and then expel a baby, and to produce the nourishment that baby needs. And yes, some moms have grown up without the understanding that they have choices, and it’s lovely to provide information to them. But instead of love behind that information sharing, it can easily slip into browbeating. You don’t breastfeed? Never mind that we don’t know your reasons why, we’ve gone ahead and judged that you’re selfish and lazy. You breastfeed? Never mind that we don’t know how easy or hard that is for you, we resent your superior Earth mama attitude. You had a c-section? How sad for you that you failed to endure something you should have avoided! You had an unmedicated water birth at home? How irresponsible of you to not consider the risks you were taking!

But here’s what has really struck me in all of this… don’t we sometimes act this way as Christians as well? We forget that our responsibility is simply, from Mark 12:30-31, “And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’No other commandment is greater than these.” Instead, we are so convinced we are right and the other person is wrong that we fear showing them the love of God isn’t sufficient and that loving that neighbor makes it our job to identify and eradicate their various sins. I’m not sure whether we fear God isn’t up to His own task of changing that person’s life or we’re so scarred by our own bad experiences that we feel we must bombard that poor sinner with rules and regulations and dress codes and whatever else make us feel like we’re doing a good job of rehabilitating them. But that’s not our job.

So maybe this week, we can find ways to simply encourage in love. Offer to help the new mommy if you’ve already been down her road, but butt out if she declines. Look for a way to lift up someone else who’s struggling in life and bite back the urge to tell them what you would do in their place. Hand out grace more freely than rules, and if you feel the urge to improve someone’s life today, perhaps focus on your own. I’m willing to bet you’ll feel more encouraged yourself!