Judging Others

Ask people outside the church to describe Christians in one word, and many will give the same answer. In 2007, researchers at the Barna Group surveyed Americans aged 16 to 29 who were not Christians. Eighty-seven percent said Christians are "judgmental." Eighty-five percent said "hypocritical." Those are the words people reach for first, about the followers of a man who said, "Don't judge."

It is painful to read, and it may not describe you or the people you worship with. But it describes how many people experience Christians, and that is worth taking seriously. If you are Centered, the reputation is a question to ask yourself first. This lesson asks what Jesus actually taught about judging, and whether the reputation came from following him or from something else.

Read it3 min

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, his longest recorded teaching, Jesus spoke about judging, and he used a joke.

Luke records the same teaching, and adds two more commands.

Then Jesus told a story aimed at a particular kind of listener: people "convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others."

The world behind the words4 min

A speck and a beam. The Greek word for the speck, karphos, means a bit of straw or a splinter. The word for the beam, dokos, means a roof beam, the timber that holds up a house. Jesus' neighbors called him "the carpenter" Mark 6:3, and the picture is a carpenter's joke: a man with a beam sticking out of his eye, squinting at a splinter in someone else's. People would have laughed. Then they would have stopped laughing.

Notice the order Jesus gives. Judge yourself first. Only after the beam is out can you "see clearly" to help someone else. Jesus does not pretend that no one ever does wrong. He says that the person most eager to point it out is usually the one least able to see.

The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector makes the same point from the other side. The Pharisee was not a fraud. He fasted twice a week and gave a tenth of everything, more than the Law required. His mistake was the comparison: "I am not like the rest of men... or even like this tax collector." The tax collector made no comparison at all. He only said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Jesus said that he, not the Pharisee, went home right with God.

Jesus' own life fits his words. Respectable people complained that he ate with "tax collectors and sinners," and he answered, "Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do" Matthew 9:10-12. When a woman known for her sins anointed his feet at a dinner, his host thought, "This man, if he were a prophet, would have perceived who and what kind of woman this is" Luke 7:39. Jesus defended her.

Jesus did judge some people harshly. Read Matthew 23 (Follow Me §135) and you will find him calling religious leaders "hypocrites" and "whitened tombs" Matthew 23:27-28. But look at who he judged: the powerful, the religious and the self-righteous. He never once spoke that way to the outsiders, the sinners or the people others looked down on.

How it drifted5 min

Jesus did give a way to deal with wrongdoing among his followers, and it was small and quiet: if someone wrongs you, go to them "between you and him alone" Matthew 18:15, with the goal of winning them back. Even Paul, who wrote firmly about discipline inside the church, drew a line around everyone else.

Over the centuries, the church kept the discipline and lost the quiet. By the Middle Ages, excommunication could cut a person off from worship, from business and even from burial in consecrated ground. Church courts tried people for moral offenses, and from the 1230s the papacy established inquisitions to root out heresy, with punishments carried out by secular rulers.

In colonial New England, moral judgment became civil law. In 1658 Plymouth Colony ordered that a person convicted of adultery wear the capital letters "AD" sewn on their clothing, and anyone found without them could be publicly whipped. Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (1850) was built on laws like this one.

You may know the saying "Love the sinner, hate the sin." Jesus never said it. Its roots are in a letter by Augustine around 423 that urged "love for persons and hatred of sins," and Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu, gave it a modern form in his autobiography: "Hate the sin and not the sinner." It is often used today to justify exactly what Jesus warned against: focusing on other people's sins first.

Honest objections3 min

"Jesus judged people. He called the Pharisees hypocrites." He did. But look at whom he judged: religious leaders, the powerful and the self-righteous. He never spoke that way to sinners and outsiders. If you want to follow his example in judging, judge the religious and the powerful, starting with yourself.

"We're supposed to call out sin. Love tells the truth." Jesus did give a way to correct someone: privately, one to one, after dealing with your own beam, with the goal of winning them back Matthew 18:15. That is almost the opposite of a public rebuke of strangers. And even Paul said judging outsiders was not his business. "Those who are outside, God judges."

"If we don't speak up, people won't know they're sinning." People usually know. The tax collector in Jesus' story already knew. What he needed was mercy, and Jesus gave it.

Measured against the center2 min

Measured against the center, this is not close, and it is a contradiction, not an add-on. Jesus said "Don't judge," "Don't condemn," and "first remove the beam out of your own eye." He saved his hardest words for the self-righteous and ate with the people they condemned. When Christians become known for pointing at others, they are doing what the Pharisee in his story did, not what he did.

This may be hard to hear, especially if you have spoken up about someone's sin believing it was right. Jesus does not ask you to pretend wrong is right. He asks you to start with the beam, to speak privately and humbly if you speak at all, and to leave outsiders to God. If your church is better known for what it is against than for whom it loves, that is worth bringing back to him.

A keeper1 min

Whatever you believe about who Jesus was, this teaching works for anyone. Before you criticize someone, look at yourself first. Assume you have a beam too. If you must correct someone, do it privately, humbly and with the aim of helping.

Psychologists have a name for the blind spot Jesus described. In 1977 the social psychologist Lee Ross called it the "fundamental attribution error": we tend to blame other people's faults on their character and underrate the circumstances behind them. Related research finds we see the circumstances behind our own faults far more easily. The beam in our own eye really is harder to see.

For you as a believer, this is the harder road: it means facing yourself before you ever speak about anyone else.

Reflect2 min

1. When you talk about other people's sins, whose do you talk about most, and whose do you talk about least?
2. Which character in Luke 18 sounds more like your prayers: the Pharisee or the tax collector?
3. Is there someone you have judged who needed mercy instead? What would winning them back look like?

Take your time with each one. There is space to write your answers in the book and the PDF.

Practice this week1 min

For one week, every time you notice yourself judging someone, out loud or in your head, stop and name one fault of your own instead. Keep a tally. At the end of the week, look at the number and ask what it tells you.

Talk it over1 min

• What are the Christians you know known for in your town? What would Jesus want them to be known for?
• Why is it easier to see other people's specks than our own beams?
• How could you and a friend practice Matthew 18:15 instead of talking about people behind their backs?

A quiet moment1 min

Remember it

Judge yourself first. Matthew 7:1, "Don't judge," opens the chapter. Picture a carpenter's beam: the bigger the beam, the louder the pointing.

The beam and the speck: a heavy dark strip right in front of you, and a tiny speck far off. Take the beam out first.

1. What were the speck and the beam, in the original Greek?
   A bit of straw (karphos) and a roof beam (dokos).
2. In Luke 18, who went home right with God?
   The tax collector.
3. Who said "Love the sinner, hate the sin"?
   Not Jesus. Its roots are in Augustine (c. 423), and Gandhi gave it a modern form.

Show the answers