Do Not Judge

Day 28 

Do Not Judge

One of the things that has struck me most in writing our way through the Sermon on the Mount is the generosity of God laced through it all… ‘Don’t see with stingy eyes, see with generous eyes’, ‘Love your enemy’ ‘Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.’ ‘When you give…’. 

If you could sum up the spirit and values underneath Jesus’ mountainside mandate it would be generosity and humility. He calls us to generosity and humility not simply in our actions, but also in our attitudes… our entire way of seeing. Look at God’s generosity to you! Now likewise be generous in how you see and respond to others. 

So on this hillside Jesus continues His revelations about the generosity of God and calls God’s children to see the world through His eyes…

‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.’

Matthew 7:1-2

This command in many ways is actually a development of the beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” and it is also a call for us to see human being the way God sees them… with generous mercy and compassion. 

God, in Exodus revealed Himself to be a God of both justice and lovingkindness… 

‘Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ 

Exodus 34:5-7

Compassion and mercy are who God is. God’s mercy, lovingkindness and grace is a path available for us because the cross was the path walked by Him. The cross of Christ was the moment where God’s deep love and passionate justice collided. God’s loving mercy towards us calls us to view others with the same loving mercy as He has viewed us. 

Its so important that we never forget where we have come from. But in this broken world of prejudice, ’cancelling’ and taking offence it’s so easy to do.

We humans have come up with a thousand ways of judging one another, but so few ways to love.

I love the practical way Eugene Peterson translates Matthew 7:1-2 in ‘The Message’…

“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own.” Matthew 7 ‘The Message’, Eugene Peterson

Eugene Peterson describes what judging others looks like in practical and vivid ways… ‘Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults’. I find Peterson’s use of the term ‘critical spirit’ helpful, especially if we line it up against the underlying spirit of generosity in the Sermon in the Mount, and God’s own Spirit of lovingkindness. 

The opposite of a judgemental spirit is a kind and generous one. Judging others is actually very much linked to a scarcity mentality, the idea that there isn’t enough to go round, that everything is a competition. It’s generally much less about the person being judged than it is about the insecurities of the person doing the judging. 

‘Many people who have not been privileged enough to receive unconditional love have an unconscious idea that there is only so much to go around. So much attractiveness, so much wealth, so much youth, so much beauty, so much achievement, and, ultimately, so much love. They have a belief in finiteness. When someone else has something, it seems like something that they are deprived of. The quantities are limited and there is no such thing as baking a bigger pie…

The pull is to see people in a rank-order, hierarchical fashion. When two people encounter one another, one is better and one is worse. You might use any metric—wealth, status, social ability…

‘And so, judgmentalism is about safety. If you are the “better person” in a given scenario, you don’t have to worry that you might be the “worse” one. You don’t have to reckon with potential feelings of inferiority, shame, and generally not being good enough.’ Dana Harron Psy.D

When we’re trying so hard to make ourselves look and feel good amidst the perceived competition projected all around us by our scarcity mentality, it creates a sort of blindness. Jesus’ illustration about dusty specks and logs in eyes points out that the problem is with our human ways of seeing… and His answer? See differently. My way. 

In a world of scarcity, seeing people through the eyes of Jesus is revolutionary.

‘Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating.  By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled as we are. But in the love of Christ we know all about every conceivable sin and guilt; for we know how Jesus suffered, and how all men have been forgiven at the foot of the cross. Christian love sees the fellow-man under the cross and therefore sees with clarity. If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts.  But if we are on the lookout for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves, for we are seeking to escape punishment for our own sins by passing judgment on others, and are assuming by implication that the Word of God applies to ourselves in one way, and to others in another.’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The antidote to judging others? Seeing, knowing and comprehending the incredible generous grace God has shown us through HIs son.

On this breezy hillside this day, surrounded by the beauty and generosity of God, Jesus calls each of us to see one another through His eyes… 

In a world of criticism, let’s be affirmers.

In a world of labels, let’s be listeners. 

In a world of summing-up lets understand deeply that we do not see all there is to see

In a world of suspicion let’s be hospitable spaces 

In a world of categories let’s be generous hearted

In a world of judgement let’s see people through the lovingkindness of our God.

 

 

Journaling the Journey 

Consider the relationships you find most difficult. What have you been measuring  their behaviour by? Are these measures from scripture or are they based on attitudes that you have grown up with, or how their behaviour makes you feel?

A judgement is an opinion or a conclusion. 

Make a list of people who you have drawn conclusions about or formed an opinion of, people about whom you have thought or said “they are just this way”. 

Ask God for grace to help you see them through His eyes. 

 

Today’s Mountainside Photograph was taken by David Campbell at Trestle Mountain in the Kunanyi Mountain Range,  Southern Tasmania, Australia.

 

References 

Dana Harron Psy.D., “Why Do We Judge Other People? Hating others is at odds with loving ourselves. What compels us to do it?”, Psychology today, 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Cost of Discipleship,” pg 185, Simon & Schuster, 1995. Translated from the German, 1937.