Jeffrey C. Long

A few days ago, I took one of my children to the doctor’s office because of severe headaches. After the exam, the doctor prescribed some pain reliever that had to be filled by the pharmacy. We dropped off the prescription at Walgreens to be picked up later. Unfortunately, I forgot to pick it up and so had to make a late night trip.

When I got there, I walked to the back and found that a Holderman Mennonite couple was already there, so I walked around the store picking up a few other items we needed. I then headed back only to discover that the couple was still there. I stood back a few feet to not be rude. But as I waited I got impatient listening to them talk about how to make their insurance work. I gradually began to feel a prejudice that they were trying to get away with something. I inherited this prejudice of conservative anabaptists from our eastern Washington neighbor’s opinion of the Hutterites. I caught myself realizing that I was judging them.

Luke 6:37 cautions us to not judge. “Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Set free, and you will be set free.” Each of us struggles with judging. Whether it is believing the worst about the poor, basing an opinion about people on their ethnicity, or being critical of people around us or in the church who do not live up to our expectations. We even have a tendency to judge people who deal with grief too long or aren’t recovering from an illness, believing that there must be something wrong with them.

Judging means to be always critical. To have a habit of thinking the worst about someone or a group of people. I learned a habit of thinking the worst about conservative anabaptist people like the Holdermans or the Hutterites because I have listened to the criticisms of others.

Judging also means to condemn. To look at others we believe are sinners and to pass judgement on their destiny and value. In Luke 18:10 Jesus tells the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector in prayer.

“He spoke also this parable to certain people who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others. Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this: ‘God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Pharisee in this story saw only the sins of the men around him and comparing himself to them condemned them. Abbot Moses wrote in the 10th century that “they who are conscious of their own sins have no eyes for the sins of their neighbors.” When we are like the tax collector and humbled by our own sinfulness we won’t have the room to condemn those around us.

However, judging should not be confused with forming opinions. A phrase I have heard before is that we judge for classification but never condemnation. It is not judgmental to acknowledge that someone’s temper, gossip, abusiveness or even judgmentalism is a sin. But it is not our place to have a critical attitude for this person or to condemn them. Instead we are to show them love.

We’ll close with an old story about two neighbors, a baker and a farmer. The baker began to be suspicious of the farmer, suspecting that he wasn’t getting his money’s worth when he paid for a pound of butter. He weighed the farmer’s butter on several occasions and finally had him arrested for fraud.

The judge asked the farmer at the trial, “I presume you have scales?”

“Yes, of course, Your Honor,” the farmer replied.

“And weights?” the judge asked.

“No,” replied the farmer. “I don’t have a set of weights.”

“Then how do you hope to weigh accurately the butter you sell to your neighbor?” the judge asked.

“That’s easy,” the farmer said. “When the baker began to buy from me, I decided to buy my bread from him. I’ve been using his one-pound loaves to balance my scales. If the weight of the butter is wrong, he has only himself to blame.”

Matthew 7:2 warns that “with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.” The baker found that the measure with which he was judging the farmer actually measured against himself. Keep an eye on your thoughts and conversations asking God to remove any judgmentalism that may have crept in.