On Being Judgmental

 

If you do not condone what I do,

I will be offended,

I will be hurt,

I will say you are unloving,

And I will judge you to be judgmental.

 

It’s curious that I never feel more judged than by someone who informs me that I am being judgmental.

Somehow those who are exceedingly broadminded as to what they deem permissible, become suddenly rather ‘narrow’ towards those who don’t share those same permissive views. The new tolerance becomes highly intolerant of anyone holding a more scrupulous position. 

Certainly, there is a Scriptural injunction to, “Judge not lest we be judged.” Within the context this means we are not to adopt a Pharisaic ‘holier-than-thou’ stance towards others lest we be judged by God. However, as Professor Richard Hays points out, this has come to mean, “I’ll wink at your sin if you wink at mine.” 

The fact is that there are two kinds of judging:

the one we must not do

and the other which we must do. 

The one which we must not do is the stone-throwing, condemnatory kind, the one which mistakes self-righteousness for righteousness, which fails to acknowledge that there is none without sin and that but for the grace of God we are all in deep, deep trouble. 

The kind of judging which we must do is perhaps better termed the practice of discerning right from wrong. 

Romans 12. 2  puts it this way:

“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may test and approve what is God’s good and perfect will.” 

Thus, while believers must live each moment with a profound consciousness of God’s grace, we must also be spurring one another on in the quest for holiness. 

None of us can claim to have arrived, yet together we press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and if anyone is caught in a transgression, those who are spiritually mature should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. (Philp. 3. 14; Gal 6. 1) 

To do so is not to be judgmental but simply to recognise that, “I am my brother’s keeper.” 

Peter Frow

October 2022