It is generally understood that as Christians we are forbidden to judge others. Judgement, after all is for God, not for us. But when a genuine evil appears in the world, does that mean we are meant to do nothing. Do we simply ignore evil and go on with our lives, leaving it for God to deal with?
What does the bible say?
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 someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the 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 the other person’s eye.
Matthew 7 1-6. NIV
That seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? Do not judge others or God will judge you.
Let’s look at the next verse.
Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.
Wait a minute, we are not talking about literally throwing pearls in front of pigs here. Jesus is talking about people. Specifically, He is talking about people who will not only reject the word of God, but who will react angrily or even violently to it.
Calling people dogs, or even pigs; an unforgivable insult to a devout Jew. It sounds a little, well, judgemental.
Immediately after telling us not to judge others, Jesus makes an oblique reference to doing just that. I look at this person and judge that he is a dog, not worthy of my words of wisdom.
Here is another example of Judgement from Matthew 18 verses 15-18.
If a brother or sister sins, go and point out the fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, teel it to the church and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
This is clearly a form of judicial process which could end in the excommunication of a member of the church. Christ’s next words have an ominous ring to them.
Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18 verse 18).
That would seem to suggest that, as Christ’s disciples, we have authority to judge, and in some cases to condemn.
Christ said nothing that is not true, so all these things must be true. If there seems to be a contradiction it means we are missing something.
Does Matthew 7 really mean don’t judge? Let’s look at it again, but first, let me remind you of something. It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I am not an angel or a saint. I’m just a man. I could be wrong.
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.
I don’t think this means literally do not judge, because clearly there are times when you should judge others. For one thing you must judge whether someone is worth talking to, or a swine who will reject your words and trample you underfoot. I think these two verses mean “be careful how you judge, because you will be judged according to how you judge others”. Jesus said much the same thing in the prayer he gave us. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Now the next verses:
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the 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 the other person’s eye.
Now I think we are getting to the heart of the matter. Jesus doesn’t say “Don’t bother about the speck in your brother’s eye, you’ve probably got a plank in your own.” He says, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person’s eye.”
You will be judged according to the way you judge others, so first judge yourself and make sure you are right with God. Jesus also uses the accusation “You hypocrite.” Few things make Jesus angrier than hypocrisy. How often have you heard someone make an accusation that could just as easily be a confession. In modern parlance it’s called projection. Have you done it yourself? I know I have.
Jordan Peterson has a modern take on this principle. ‘Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world’. It’s rule six of his initial twelve rules. I do quibble about ‘setting your house in perfect order’, because nothing on this earth can be made perfect, but I see the point. We accuse others to avoid looking at ourselves.
Of course, the most famous example of Christ not judging someone is the woman taken in adultery. Under Jewish law at the time, to condemn a man or woman to death required the testimony of two witnesses. That would be difficult to obtain in a case of adultery, but we are told that in this case the woman was taken in the very act. She was brought before Christ for judgement. Christ’s answer: let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone.
Ever since, this story has been used by unscrupulous people as a stick with which to beat Christians. How many times has someone played the ‘you’re just as bad’ game with you? How many times have you played it with others?
There is, I believe, an equal and opposite error: that of not judging others in the hope of avoiding judgement. This is what so upset me in the weeks following October 7th; the absolute refusal to judge what Hamas did as wrong. I believed, and still believe, this was an act either of moral cowardice or moral laziness. “Look at me! I’m so non-judgemental I don’t even judge people who massacre civilians, rape women to death, and torture children in front of their parents. I mean, who am I to judge?’
What if God’s answer to that was “If you are truly just as bad as they are, you can go to the same place.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this very thing happening when he watched the German Church sleepwalking toward the horror that was Hitler and the holocaust. Comparisons with Hitler and the nazis are so overused that when an evil that truly is comparable appears, we have nothing to compare it to. I truly believe Hamas is as evil as the nazi regime, yet people who visited Auschwitz and murmured ‘never again’ refuse to see it.
To make matters worse, many of the same people who refused to judge Hamas rushed to judge Israel, even when the IDF took more care than any army in history to avoid civilian casualties, even when the enemy deliberately surrounded themselves with civilians.
The German church at least had the excuse that they couldn’t imagine how bad it could get. We don’t have that excuse.
I believe we will all be judged according to the way we judge others, and that includes refusing to judge when it is our duty. It is the shame of our church that it has, all too often, turned a blind eye to the abuse of children. I wonder how much of that came from a misguided belief that they must not judge others and hence let the perpetrators go on with their abuse. In refusing to condemn the abusers, they condemned themselves. When you see evil, you must act. Otherwise, you will be complicit in the evil and share the guilt.
Judging others is sometimes our duty, but it is dangerous. Before judging others, we must judge ourselves and be equally just with ourselves as we are with others. We must not call the plank in our eye a mote, or if there is a mote in our eye, call it a plank. Mote or plank, it must come out. We must look clearly at our brother or sister. We must try as best we can to understand why they behave the way they do. Their behaviour may still be reprehensible, but it may at least be understandable. If possible, the objective is to win your brother or sister over and that will be far easier if they are treated with understanding as well as firmness. Sometimes it may not be possible for us.
But with God, everything is possible, and that is why Jesus told us to pray for our enemies.
Here is an example. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl tells the story of a doctor he met in a concentration camp. He thought of the man as truly diabolical, a fiend in human form. After the war, Viktor heard from someone who had encountered the same man in a soviet labour camp. The doctor was, so the man said, the best comrade a man could have. What epiphany the concentration camp doctor had gone through, Viktor never found out, but there it was.
If I am judged worthy of Heaven, I have no doubt that among the saints I will meet concentration camp guards, murderers, terrorists and even some of the men who committed those terrible atrocities on October 7th. They will all have one thing in common: all will have realised the enormity of their crimes and repented of them. All will have atoned for their sins by suffering agonies of contrition.
Sometimes we must judge others, but only after judging ourselves. And we must always be aware that God is judging us.
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