Do Not Judge

Blind lady Justice is reading her a book and squeezing on a tiny little dude.


Jesus famously said:

"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."
- Luke 6:37

Now judging people was implicit in the Jewish religion, so people must have thought, what are you talking about Jesus? It is a religion based on law. There is no use in having laws if you do not judge people according to them. So for Jewish people particularly in the First Century, this was a pretty alien concept.

This is a prime example of Jesus' audacity, his vision, his differentness from his own generation. For normal human beings, this level of vision, this level of originality, is not really possible. Of course, he was the Son of God, so different rules apply. :) This is also one reason to believe that the biblical miracles did in fact happen, because if he wasn't doing some serious supernatural stuff, nobody would have listened to him. He was that different.

Anyway, there are several reasons why not judging people is a very good idea for Christians.

1. Human judgment is extremely flawed.
There are all sorts of instances where innocent people have been put in jail for long periods of time. Outside of a legal context, when we judge other people ("you're lazy", "you're foolish" ect.) we are acting as if we have perfect knowledge of their situation. Even the person involved doesn't have perfect knowledge of their situation. What we may call lazy may be a symptom of a legitimate fatigue-causing illness, for example. Human judgment is not colorblind, genderblind, or otherwise unbiased. Even people who we might think are paragons of fairness, are still susceptible to bias in these ways. We also tend to excuse people we like more than those we don't like.

2. Judgement as an approach does not lead people to repent of what they did.
The most obvious fault of human justice is that in itself it does not reduce the incidences of injustice. Of course, if you throw someone in a dungeon and throw away the key, whether they are guilty or innocent it is certain that they will never commit an injustice because they are locked in a dungeon. In most cases however, people who do things wrong do remain in society or return to it eventually.

The Christian thing to do is to work with someone to try to get them back into the community, back into a decent relationship with their fellow human beings. To approach them with compassion and teach them the same compassion. There is a problem with this however in that nowadays, "the community" is so screwed up and so many people are alienated from their fellow human beings that there is no "community" for people to get themselves right with. This is not a fault of the approach, its a fault of society. That is why we have so many criminals to begin with.

Of course we have to get dangerous people off the streets. However in most cases, people who go to jail will be right back out again after a few months, having learned the crafts of evil all the better. I am not asking for a new legal system here, but a new way of treating other people. I am saying, and I think Jesus is saying, that it is far better to get people to understand what they did than to stick a nasty label on them. It is better for all of us, because only that and not condemning them can actually lead them to stop doing whatever it is that they are doing wrong.

Of course judging and condemning people is easier and more emotionally satisfying, so that is why we do it. Easier, not better.