Are we supposed to judge others, or not? D. A. Carson has quipped, and is often quoted, that John 3.16 is no longer the best known verse of the Bible in western cultures. Instead, it’s Matthew 7.1: ‘judge not, that you not be judged.’
Which tells you a fair bit about our culture’s reception of Christianity. It’s got into our marrow this idea that the Bible says you should not judge others. I suspect that my questioning if that is what the Bible says rankles a bit. I’ve known fellow ‘leaders’ in churches be visibly shocked when I’ve wanted to include judgement among the roles of elders, despite that being the witness of the Bible (e.g. Deuteronomy 1, Acts 15, 20, Ruth 4, Hebrews 13).
When I suggest that perhaps judgement is how we exercise wisdom, choosing between different goods, and that Adam’s sin was in taking that wisdom to judge rather than waiting to be gifted it like Jesus did, heads start to spin a little. Not because of what I’m arguing really, but because of the word judgement itself.
Perhaps there are different kinds of judgement? Well, yes, there are and as ever one of the first steps in thinking clearly is to distinguish (or to judge).
Firstly, we need to compare Jesus’ command to not judge—which we should take very seriously—with John 7.24, where Jesus commands us to judge not by appearance but with the right judgement. There is clearly a good and bad kind of judgement. This in itself isn’t saying much, it is almost impossible to move in the world without making some judgements, some of which are about others. You cannot operate a business if you can’t make judgements, you can’t pastor a church, you can’t decide to marry this person and not that one, and a thousand more tiny adjustments aside.
If we return to Matthew 7, we should note that Jesus is in the latter stages of the sermon on the Mount. For all I described it as a command in the previous paragraph, I should nuance that. The Sermon describes the way of human flourishing—I’m following Jonathan Pennington’s argument in The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing—it’s a set of wisdom teachings.
Jesus described not judging using the parable of removing a mote from another person’s eye while you have a plank stuck in yours. It’s deliberately funny and we’ve all met that person. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all been that person. The point isn’t, though, that you shouldn’t point out motes in others’ eyes; the point is to get your house in order. It isn’t OK to have a mote in your eye and you might need a friend to point it out, but Jesus teaches us to judge un-self-righteously. Which is not an easy thing to do, but it is not a calling to not make any judgements.
Then we read on and find the connected next teaching in verse 6. We are told to not give holy things to dogs or throw pearls before pigs. There are occasions where you need to judge someone as a proverbial dog or pig in order to not give them holy things. We instinctively don’t like that; I winced a little while typing it. Yet we should notice that this immediately follows Jesus’ teaching on not judging others. So, are we supposed to judge others, or not?
This is when remembering that these are wisdom sayings is helpful. Like the famous proverb that says not to answer a fool according to their folly (Proverbs 26.4), which is immediately followed by the equally famous proverb that says to answer a fool according to their folly (Proverbs 26.5). This is not a contradiction, it’s a wisdom saying. There are times when one is the right path and others when the other is. It takes time, dwelling in the text, correction, and learning from mistakes, to make the judgement about which situation this particular one is. That’s what wisdom is.
It’s a thing we all have to consider all the time, it’s cast into sharp relief on social media: are these trolls or good faith interlocutors? It’s often not easy to tell, nor are those the only categories available to you. It can’t be the right route to never engage like some with larger accounts don’t (though you can understand how the risk/reward considerations play out differently the more prominent your account), neither is it the right route to engage everyone (my tendency that I’m trying to unlearn). We shouldn’t cast our pearls before swine.
Jesus is suggesting that there is a time when judgement is not the right path—especially when that judgement makes you a hypocrite. We should attend to our own souls before others. However, that doesn’t make the others right just because you’re more wrong. They do need correcting too, but not by you, or perhaps not by you just yet.
There are also times when judgements are required to prevent the pigs attacking you after trampling your pearls. These may even be times when your judgement indicts you as well—which you must notice and may need good friends to point out to you—but you have to make it in order to not throw holy things before dogs.
Which is to say: should we judge or not? We must, and we will be judged with the same judgement we judge others. Charity is good and should be offered to all, but sometimes we have to make judgements for the sake of ourselves or others. This is especially true in gatekeeper roles like that of the pastor (who acts at times, at least at the Table, like the cherubim at the Garden’s gate). The pastor is not perfect, their judgements will often indict themselves. They must see this and repent. For the sake of the flock they must, nevertheless, make judgements.
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
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