Judge not

Recently some of my commenters went back to their blogs, pointing the finger here and quoting Bible verses containing the text “Judge not Lest Ye Not Be Judged”, from the sermon on the mount. I just thought I’d throw my 2 cents out there on this, since these Christian-hating posts were directed at me. In many cases like that one, their hatred of Christians and bigotry are showing. (I would link but the one in particularly that I’m referencing which I left comments on, was taken down.)

First, I’d like to point you in the direction of Jean Bethke Elshtain’s piece, “Judge Not?” In this piece, she weighs the ethics of judgement and how we’ve gone astray from our moral foundations and underpinnings with such things as “sensitivity training” and “political correctness”.

She says,

…what is at stake is the capacity to make judgments as an ethical issue of the gravest sort, and along with it, the discernment of what it means to judge well. In other words, we need a clear sense of why judging is important and what is involved in the activity of judging, and we need a way to distinguish between rash judging-not judging well-and the kind of judging that lies at the heart of what it means to be a self-respecting human subject in a community of other equally self-respecting subjects.

Now the heart of what Anna and Quackenbush were complaining about is my pointing out, along with many many others, the fact that in the war in Iraq, The Enemy is Islam. An even, with the murders of the Armanious Family, the enemy is still Islam. What I clearly see here is the level to which appeasement has gone. These people are not able to discern or judge things which are plain to regular people, which is deeply disturbing to me.

I have always been fond of a pithy sentence in a letter Freud wrote to his fiancee, Martha: “A human being must be able to pull himself together to form a judgment, otherwise he turns into what we Viennese call a guten Potschen [doormat].” Apart from being stepped on, what is the problem with persons as doormats? Precisely this: they have sloughed off that which is theirs to do-to enter a community of judging, meaning that one can see error and try to put it right, one can distinguish the more from the less important, one can appropriately name phenomena and act accordingly. As an example of the latter, think of the distinction to be marked between “misfortune” and an “injustice” and what we are enjoined to do whether we confront one or the other. Now Freud was not urging Martha to be cruel or incapable of compassion or forgiveness; rather, he was urging her to stiffen her spine a bit, to stand up for herself, and not to shrink from acts of assessment and discernment.

This seems to be what the leftist/socialist crowd is encouraging us to do in the name of God: shrink from acts of assessment and discernment. And many of them do it themselves, so what I do seems terribly wrong to them. What’s more, the fact that I’m an extremely strong personality and no shrinking violet seem to really horrify the appeaseniks who have absolutely no sense of standing up for themselves. Dianne Maire is a good example of that; she sends her nasty husband over here with his foul mouth to dish out his verbal abuse. Sometimes I even wonder if the guy is a wifebeater…he’s so unbelievably foulmouthed.

But you have to be smart, I think. Because judging involves calling things by their real names, recognizing that “an enormously enlarged empathy” does not alone create the capacity for that critical thinking (that some call “judging”). I personally have little use for those who treat adults as if they were children by spoon-feeding them palatable “truths” rather than the harder truths of life and politics. If we over-assimilate our situation to that of others, and pretend that we are “at one” with them, we may lose the point at which we leave off and they begin. We are then in danger of losing ourselves completely, and the faculty of judgment that consists in “thinking the particular” and through this concrete act reaching for more general conclusions and truths.

It’s about critical thinking IMO. When I talk about Dianne Maire, for example, with her pathetic story of leaving the United States because she was afraid for her life, that’s a classic example to me of the “victim’ mentality.

Victimization ideology is little more than a politics of resentment, given the growing body of evidence demonstrating that women, though they often have been victims of injustice, have played a variety of active roles throughout history and in every culture. Of course, who didn’t know that? It is quite incredible that one must make this point against those who, in the name of feminism, promote the generic prejudice that women are victims simpliciter. Our world is filled with noisy forces urging us to refrain from judging precisely in the name of justice. This dangerous nonsense is in evidence in every issue of any daily newspaper anywhere. The jurors in the Reginald Denny beating case decided not to convict because the thugs who smashed a man’s face to an unrecognizable pulp and exulted for the cameras as if they had just made the winning touchdown at a Superbowl Game were in the grip of a “mob psychology” and could not, therefore, be judged for their specific acts of wanton, and repeated, violence. The Menendez brothers were “victims” who, although they blasted their parents numerous times with a shotgun, were not to be held accountable. We cannot judge them given what they “went through,” as one juror put it.

And here again, we have what seems to me to be a twisted thought process bent on fooling people into thinking that they’re not responsible. Judging is involved in critical thinking; it is the core of it. Judging involves our whole nature-it isn’t just icing on the cake of self-identity. Judging makes it possible for us to “find our way through a whole forest of possibilities.”

Now when people come and quote selectively scripture (such as Jesus’ Sermon on the mount): Judge Not Lest Ye Not Be Judged, I just have to laugh. Because scripture absolutely commands us to judge. The Lord Jesus Christ commanded, “Judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24). He told a man, “Thou hast rightly judged” (Luke 7:43). To others, our Lord asked, “Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” (Luke 12:57).

The Apostle Paul wrote, “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say” (1 Corinthians 10:15). Again, Paul declared, “He that is spiritual judgeth all things” (1 Corinthians 2:15). It is absolutely no doubt our positive duty to judge.

“Beware of false prophets!” (Matthew 7:15) is the warning and command of our Lord. But how could we “beware” and how could we know they are “false prophets” if we did not judge? And what is the God given standard by which we are to judge? ” To the Law and to the Testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” (Isaiah 8:20). “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16), Christ said. And in judging the “fruits,” we must judge by God’s Word, not by what appeals to human reasoning. Many things seem good to human judgment which are false to the Word of God.

The Apostle Paul admonished believers, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple” (Romans 16:17-18). This apostolic command could not be obeyed were it not right to judge. God wants us to know His Word and then test all teachers and teaching by it. Notice also that it is the false teachers who make the “divisions,” and not those who protest against their false teaching. And these deceivers are not serving Christ, as they profess, “but their own belly,” or their own “bread and butter,” as we would put it. We are to “mark them and avoid them.”

“Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:17, read verses 14-18). and “From such turn away.” (2 Timothy 3:5). “Withdraw yourselves” (2 Thessalonians 3:6). “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them ” (Ephesians 5:1 1). “Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Romans 12:9). “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). It would be impossible to obey these injunctions of God’s Word unless it were right to judge! And remember, nothing is “good” in God’s sight that is not true to His Word.

The Apostle John wrote, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try [test, judge] the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world ” ( 1 John 4:1 ) . Again he wrote, “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh…. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 7,10-11). This Scripture commands us to judge between those who do, and those who do not bring the true doctrine of Christ.

Cross posted at The Wide Awakes

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