Do Not Judge?

             “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

 

There are people who love to trot out parts of this passage. For them it’s a weapon with which they hope to defeat and silence their enemies: Christians. And sometimes, it’s a good thing they do, because too often, Christians make the sinner the target. But Jesus taught that we are to treat others as we would be treated. Even pagan philosophers taught that in a discussion, attacking people is wrong. The issue is the proper subject matter, not the participants. In other words, (the) sin is the issue, not the person.

Of course, the individual who points out that it’s wrong for Christians to judge are quite often the same people who will point out that German Christians supported the Nazis because they didn’t speak up against them. That would have involved judgment.

The shooting in Texas comes to mind, as do statistics about child abuse, rape, pedophilia, human trafficking, racism, and Russia’s attack on Ukraine. If we aren’t to judge, should we suggest with our silence that these things are acceptable? Both standing against evil and standing for good require that we judge.

There are two basic motives for judging. The first is self-centered. The one judging If you continue reading in the passage, Jesus tells us that we are to remove the plank from our own eye, and then address the speck in the other person’s eye. So there are circumstances in which judging appears to be acceptable, and I submit that the element that gives us permission to judge is if we are judging the sin rather than the sinner because we love the sinner. The goal of drawing the person closer to ourselves and to God is different from the goal of making them look bad and separating them from ourselves and God.