by John Moloney

Created on: August 21, 2009

Refuse to judge and you give up a primary duty as a human, and not a little fun too.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged"!

This cornerstone of the Christian faith is self-evidently true. But like all truths that collide with the human experience it is an absolute and applying it to everyday life can only lead to disaster. Think of Jim Carrey's character's predicament in the film "Liar, Liar". God is all knowing, all seeing, and all powerful. God does absolutes. We mortals do balance; we have no choice. If we always tell the truth, it will serve us as badly as never doing so. We use our judgement, we judge. Never taking a drink, it seems to me, is almost as wrong headed as getting rat-arsed every day with a "y" in it. If you don't read, you won't achieve your potential; read to the exclusion of action, and you will be ineffectual. Almost everything to do with life requires balance. Our very bodies themselves are a marvel of this quality.

In modern times, all liberal right-thinking people are exhorted to not be "judgemental" in order that they be distinguished from knuckle-dragging bigots. As with Christ's command in the sermon on the mount this is, once again, a good idea as far as it goes. We grow up in a particular family, community, country and naturally become prejudiced in favour of the familiar. It's part of our innate human desire to belong. This means that the first time the curry fumes waft over from our new Indian neighbours or we read about a Sikh's refusal to wear a motorcycle/policeman's helmet we instinctively and wrongly judge. In these cases and many others, we do well to remember not only "Don't judge" but even "Embrace it".

That being said, having values and standards is to a great extent what makes us valuable. We have all experienced another's selfless actions which have multiplied their standing in our eyes. We appreciate their standards, their worth. Possessing standards and values, though, also includes the duty of fighting for them: judging. The beliefs our free society is based on were fought for by people who judged. Much of our desire not to judge is born out of a desire to be thought of as nice or progressive when it actually conceals laziness or indifference.

One stark illustration of the need to judge is provided the phenomenon of suicide epidemics. Several studies have revealed how one suicide is often followed by many copycat attempts. Sometimes the initiator may be a celebrity such as Curt Cobain or simply a relative or friend. A recent example of the latter happened in Bridgend, Wales, a town of 20,000. In the space of a few months 19 young people killed themselves. Many of them knew each other and there was a website memorialising their deaths. Each death was reported in the media together with many banal non-judgemental comments of their friends and acquaintances and the media itself. In two cases where suicide was prevented the survivors seemed unable to account for their actions. Indeed, many of those who took their lives appeared to do so for the most trivial of reasons.

The advent of suicide epidemics appears to be strongly connected to the decriminalisation of suicide and our non-judgemental, understanding approach to these tragedies. It is harder on us to judge the suicide as stupid, unthinking, cruel or even pathetic, but what if such a judgement gave the next suicide pause for thought about the chasm of pain caused to his nearest and dearest, rather than the encouragement provided by stoking his immature vanity with cliche. It's tough, but it's also our duty to tell it as it is.

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