Passing judgement – 21 September 2012

I notice that we puzzle quite a lot over this matter of judging and being judgemental.  They are two different things.  We all have to make judgements.  For judges it is their job.  For the rest of us, we expect to be able to form opinions, come to decisions, about people and events.  And sometimes our judgements do have to be, rightly we hope, negative and condemnatory.  If we have a Christian conscience we hope our judgements are accurate and charitable, even generous.  We also hope we recognize those times when it is unnecessary to judge someone, even if everyone else is doing so.  Jesus refused to pass judgement on the adulterous woman in John’s gospel. 

Judgementalism however is another matter.  This is an attitude, a habitual reaction -- even for some, including some Christian believers, a way of life and a righteous responsibility.  Emily Dickinson remarked about one preacher she heard, The subject of perdition seemed to please him, somehow.  

Judgementalism is when we pin indelible labels on people, write people off, consign them to some place somewhere else but not here.  It usually entails a willful blindness to the good in people, or to the possibility of reform.  It is a lack of care about another person.  Judgementalism generally proceeds from our own anger and fear, to say nothing of our ignorance.  I think it was because of the perils of judgementalism all around him that Jesus said, Judge not, and you won’t be judged.  The world we know is full of judgementalism.

In the still and silent world of contemplative prayer we are consenting to the long-term and gentle work of the Spirit in us, achieving changes in us which we can never engineer ourselves.  And so it is that the judgementalism in us starts to attenuate.  We begin to notice it and don’t like it.  We find ourselves doing without it.  We notice that the judgementalism in our friends begins to irritate us.  We find ourselves more inclined to patience and understanding with human error and frailty, with all its risks.

Partly this is that we are learning to live freer of fear and anger.  The world and all its dangers are unchanged.  But in silence and stillness, somehow, we find ourselves much better able to meet Jesus’s frequent question to people, “Why are you afraid…?”