Judgment

To judge or criticize another person is an easy thing to do and most of us are quite good at it.    To judge or criticize another person, however, is also always dangerous.  It is always a potential boomerang:  “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged” (Matthew 7:2).  Some say that Jesus forbade his followers to judge, but even a surface reading of the gospels indicates that Jesus himself judged.  In fact, the gospel, in and of itself, is a judgment, a criticism against the world as it is! In essence, Jesus’ teaching about judgment is not that he forbade it, but rather that it had serious implications.  If you don’t want to be criticized, don’t criticize. Every judgment you or I make involves a self-judgment.  We have to look to the plank in our own eye (and that plank exist in every human eye)—we have to realize how difficult a job it is to attempt to remove the speck we see in the eye of another.  

But what kind of life would we know if we did not make judgments?  What kind of world would it be if we did not criticize things that happen in it?  What kind of government would we have if we simply tolerated whatever that government did?  What kind of society would we be living in today if no one had ever judged and criticized it?  It seems to me that the very essence of Christianity is to take a stand, to judge, criticize, object,  and overturn whatever appears to be dehumanizing.  Slavery was wrong.  We made that judgment and fought a war to overcome it.  Segregation was wrong and we made a judgment and fought against it.  Women were not given right to vote until the early twentieth century.  That was wrong, and some made a judgment and  criticized, and that wrong was overturned. Do not use Jesus’ teaching to avoid making judgments or being critical.  Taking Jesus seriously is not some kind of mindless tolerance.  But we become mindlessly tolerant when we cease to be social critics, political critics, ethical critics and religious critics!  “Judge not, that ye be not judged” simply means that we are judged by the same “standards” by which we judge others.

Mr. Trump  has raised the possibility of starting “our own Worldwide Network” to smother the news spread by CNN internationally.  He said, just yesterday, that CNN “has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way.  Something has to be done.”  Mr. Trump criticizes and judges CNN without looking at himself and the “faux news” he spreads every day.  Mr. Trump wants a worldwide network “to show the World the way we really are.  GREAT!” I, unabashedly and unapologetically, judge such a proposal to be anathema to our democracy.  After all, there is already the Voice of America and BBC. If we don’t make judgments, or criticize, or object, our mindless tolerance will destroy all that we hold dear.