by Mary W. Matthews

Created on: December 09, 2010

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the giant sequoia in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1-5)

Do you consider one of the most important of Jesus’s teachings to be a “Christian principle”? If not, why not?

There are well over 300 verses in BOTH testaments of the Bible like this quotation from Jesus, and all of them say the same thing: Judging humanity is God’s department, not yours. If you call yourself a Christian, you must accept that sitting in judgment upon other people is against your own principles.

“But wait!” I hear you say. “Opportunities for judgment appear dozens of times a day! Are teachers not supposed to grade students? Are courtrooms supposed to let the bad guys go free?” (Well, yes, but such a purely Christian community is too perfect to be anything but Utopia!)

The ancient Hebrew and Greek words translated as “judge” covered not merely assessing or evaluating, but “to assume power over,” “to call to account,” “to judge as if in a courtroom,” “to sentence,” “to arraign,” and even “to condemn.” Jesus was not forbidding elementary school teachers from writing notes like “Chris needs to work harder”; nor was Jesus forbidding you to look both ways before crossing a road so as to judge whether it is safe to do so.

What Jesus was forbidding was not assessing or evaluating, but assuming a position of moral superiority. “You do not love the same sorts of people that I love; therefore you are evil, and God hates you,” says the anti-gay “Christian.” “You are a baby-murderer; therefore you are evil, and God will condemn you to Hell. Therefore a good Christian murderer like Randall Terry should murder YOU,” says the “Christian” who believes that women are not created AS MUCH in the image of God as men are, but must be controlled as if they were slaves or children. “You are a woman who believes

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